70 THK ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



are known as hitcma or "torches," a word that is also used to refer 

 to torches proper, fir bi-anches gummed and lit at one end, that were 

 in earlier days employed to light one on one's way. The number 

 of ceremonial torches lit at the puberty ceremony is symbolic of the 

 number of months after the ceremony that the pubescent girl is to 

 spend in seclusion and be subject to the menstrual taboos. The 

 number varies between four, six, eight, and ten, according to the 

 tradition of her family; it is rarely less than four, for with two 

 torches the minimum number of four months of seclusion have to 

 be observed, nor is an odd number of torches permissil)le. Four 

 seems to have been the normal number in earlier daj^s. Each of 

 the ten "torches" were then given to a man apiece, who filed out of 

 the house and arranged themselves in a row, with their l^acks to the 

 right wall of the house, and facing the river.* They stood with their 

 torches planted upright on the ground, whence the name of that part of 

 the ceremony that takes place outside the house, Kitcapas or "torches 

 standing outside the house." In the centre of the row of torch-bearers 

 was placed the pubescent girl, on either side of her a thunder-bird 

 dancer. These wore thunder-bird masks (jlitsklatqGX^sim^) and 

 were wrapped in blankets that covered everything up clear to the 

 masks, so that nothing of the faces or bodies of the dancers was visible. 

 Meanwhile four other men put down on their hair and bedaubed their 

 cheeks with red paint; down and red paint are often used to symbolize 

 a festive occasion, but have no further significance in this connection. 

 Each of the four held a basin in his hands. One after the other they 

 proceeded to the river, which was but a few yards from the house, 

 dipped up water, returned in the same order to the girl, and each in 

 order rapidly turned a short counter-clockwise circuit in front of 

 her and quickly poured out the water at her feet. The four men, 

 always in the same order, again dipped up water, returned to the 

 girl, turned counter-clockwise circuits, and poured out the water 

 at her feet. These actions were gone through four times in all; four, 

 as among many other West Coast tribes, is the ceremonial or sacred 

 number. At the same time the thunder-bird dancers moved their 

 arms up and down within their blankets to imitate the flapping of 

 the thunder-bird's wings, while a rattling noise, representing the sound 

 of thundei-, was heard to come from inside the potlatch house. The 

 noise, as I learned, was produced by shaking stones in tin wash-basins. 

 As soon as the last basinful of water had been poured out at the girl's 

 feet, all returned inside the house, the still burning "torches" were 

 extinguished, and the four men that had dipped up and poured out the 



*Soma.ss River, wliicli Hows out of Sproat Lake into All)crni Canal. It runs 

 along the length of the potlatch house. 



