68 THE TOLOWA. 
all night, while marching around. This is continued for nine nights in sue- 
cession, and during all this period she is allowed to partake of nothing 
except water. During the day-time the dance is intermitted, but the woman 
is straitly guarded throughout the whole period of the consecration, lest 
the flesh should prevail over the spirit, and her ravenous hunger should 
cause her to profane the ceremony and invoke the wrath of the spirits by 
secretly eating. As they have no tangible forms of worship, this priestess 
is only really a shaman, corresponding nearly to the female barking- 
doctor of the Karok. She is supposed to have communication with the 
devil, and she alone is potent over cases of witchcraft and witch-poisoning. 
The Tolowa share in the superstitious reverence for the memory of the 
dead which is common to the Northern California tribes. When I asked 
’, “mother”, 
the chief, Takhokolli, to tell me the Indian words for ‘father’ 
and certain others similar, he shook his head mournfully and said, ‘All 
dead, all dead; no good”: They are forbidden to mention the names of 
the dead, as it is a deadly insult to the relatives; and this poor aboriginal 
could not distinguish between the proper names and the substantives which 
denote those relations. 
Heaven, according to the Tolowa, is situated just behind the sun. Cap- 
tain Dick, an old pioneer of Del Norte County, and intimately acquainted 
with the Indian habits, thinks they worship the sun; but he mentioned no 
more satisfying proofs of it than the fact that during certain of their dances, 
incantations over the sick, and various other solemn ceremonials, they fre- 
quently cast their eyes toward the sun. This is the happiness in store for 
the good, while the bad will, in another world, cold and dark, be condemned 
to be chased by the devil forever and ever. 
This belief in the location of heaven just behind the sun is a very 
natural outgrowth of their climate. Amid those chilling, dank, leaden fogs, 
which lazily swing and swash all summer on the northern coast, cold as ice, 
or sullenly brood motionless all day and all night for a week, dimming the 
sun’s eye to a sickly glare, or shutting him out totally, so that the people 
get not one hour’s glimpse of his face, until the very blood and the marrow 
of the bones are chilled, it is as natural for the Indians to conceive of the 
highest possible human happiness to be the privilege of basking forever in 
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