62 THE INDIANS OF CAPE FLATTERY. 



respecting their religious belief, that they think the sun is the representative of 

 the Great Spirit, and to him they make their secret prayer. He also said that 

 &quot;The Indian Sunday is not one day, like your Sunday, but it is many days. 

 When we want to talk with the Great Chief, we wait till the moon is full, and then 

 go into the mountain, and rub our bodies with cedar twigs, after having first washed 

 them clean. The cedar makes us smell sweet, and that the Great Chief likes. We 

 watch for the sun, and when he first makes his appearance, we ask him to let us 

 live long, to be strong to defend ourselves or attack our enemies, to be successful 

 in our fisheries, or in the pursuit of game ; and to give us everything we want. 

 Every night we wash and rub ourselves with cedar, and every morning talk to the 

 Great Chief, or his representative, the sun, whose name is Kle-sea-kark-tl.&quot; 1 We 

 continue praying daily for one week, or from full moon to the quarter. The 

 only instruction the children have as to the Supreme Being, of rather the only form 

 of address taught them, is during the same period, when they are waked up at 

 daylight and made to wash themselves before sunrise, and to ask the sun to let them 

 live. Their tamanawas ceremonies are in reference to events they believe to have 

 happened on the earth, and they try to represent them. But the doings of the 

 Great Supreme they do not dare to attempt to represent, and only address him in 

 private and at stated times. Their prayer is simply a selfish petition; they do not 

 ask to be made wiser or better, but simply for long life, and strength, and skill, 

 and cunning, so that they may be able to enrich themselves and obtain an ascend 

 ancy over their fellow-men. 



At certain periods, generally during the winter months, they have ceremonies, 

 or mystical performances, of which there are three distinct kinds. The Dukwally, 

 or black tamanawas ; the Tsiark, or medicine tamanawas, and the Dot hlub. The 

 latter is seldom performed, the great variety of scenes to be enacted requiring a 

 large number of persons, and a much greater expense on the part of the individual 

 who gives them. All these ceremonies are commenced in secret, none but the 

 initiated being allowed to be present ; and it is then, if ever, that they make 

 common supplication to the Deity. Although I have never been able to ascertain 

 the real facts in the case, it would seem that they address themselves to some 

 intermediate being. Certain other ceremonies are performed in public, and 

 spectators admitted. From those that I have seen, I infer that the Dukwally 

 is a ceremonial to propitiate the T hlukloots, or thunder bird, who seems with 

 the Makahs to take precedence over all other mythological beings. Into all 

 these mysteries persons of both sexes, and even children, are initiated; but the 

 initiation does not endow them with medicine or tamanawas qualities until they 

 have gone through the private ordeal, of finding their own tamanawas, or guardian 



1 Among the western Selish, or Flathead tribes of the Sound, I have not detected any direct wor 

 ship of the sun, though he forms one of their mythological characters. He is by them represented 

 as the younger brother of the moon. According to Father Mengarini he is, however, the principal 

 object of worship among the Flatheads of the Rocky Mountains, or Selish proper, as well as by the 

 Blackfeet. Among both the tribes mentioned he was supposed to be the creation of a superior 

 being. G. G. 



