TSIMSHIAX SOCIETY 



539 



'"'On the following day the attendants of the host invited the 

 attendants of the visiting chiefs to a feast to be given on the beach. 

 They carried down boxes of oil, crabapples, cranberries, and other 

 kinds of food. Each man t,ook a large wooden ladle which was filled 

 with food, and these were distributed among the tribes that were 

 sitting according to their rank on the beach. The guests received 

 the food in very long narrow dishes (nearly two meters long, about 

 half a meter wide, and five to ten centimeters deep). They carried 

 the food home." 



A few years ago Mr. Tate wrote about the same subject as follows: 

 "In the third year, at the appointed time, all the guests woidd come. 

 Some tribes would come in five or six canoes, and ten or eleven tribes 

 were invited. Some of the larger tribes even had from ten to thirteen 

 canoes. They all arrived at one time in front of the house of the 

 great chief; and before the canoes reached 

 the shore the princesses and the chieftain- 

 ess would dance down from the chief's 

 house toward the canoes. Then the leader 

 of the dancers took his supernatural power 

 and threw it toward the guests in the ca- 

 noes. Then all the people in the canoes 

 began to dance, and some one among them 

 caught the supernatural power that made 

 them dance, and threw it back toward the 

 shore. The dancers on the shore caught it 

 and went back to the chief's house. Then 

 all the guests came ashore, and the chief be- 

 gan to dance. He used various kinds of 

 masks (fig. 22). Each mask had a song FlG - a Mask ^ " ilh haliotis 

 for itself; and after each dance the clown 



would make a speech. The singers staid until the next morning, 

 when the chief's dances ended. Then they had a great feast. The 

 people of the head chief took a large wooden spoon filled with oil 

 and handed it to the people of each tribe, who had to eat all the 

 oil that was in the wooden spoon. On the following day another 

 great feast was held, which was given to all the visiting tribes; and 

 each tribe was seated according to rank, by itself, on the beach. 

 The people of the head chief would fill a canoe seven or eight fathoms 

 long with dried berries width were soaked, or with red berries mixed 

 with grease. Some rich families had two large canoes filled right up, 

 and so on. On the fourth night of the gathering, the head chief gave 

 a dance called the thro wing-dance. Then each chief of the visiting 

 tribe danced with his own mask. He danced with Ids dancing-gar- 

 ment, his carved headdress inlaid with abalone shell and set with sea- 



