333 
maritime peoples, keen imitators of the tribes with which they came 
into contact. In their dug-oat canoes they raided the mainland as 
far as Sitka in the north, and to the lower end of Vancouver island 
in the south. Naturally they encountered most Irefiuently the Tlin- 
kit and the Tsimshian, and it was from these tribes that they bor- 
rowed most extensively. They copied with indifterent success the 
basketry of the Tlinkit, and derived from the same source most of 
their shamanistic paraphernalia and songs. Their phratries bore the 
same names as the Tlinkit phratries, Raven and Eagle. ^ and were 
similarly divided into a number of clans, with subdivisions into family 
groups or “ houses ” each governed by its own chiel. From the 
Tsimshian, with whom they traded canoes and sea-otter skins for 
Chilkat blankets and the oil of the oolakan or candle- fish, they 
derived the majority of their dance songs, and the beginnings of a 
secret society that the d\simshian had themselves taken over from 
the Kwakiutl. 
The shamans or medicine-men of the Haida and other west coast 
Indian tribes, like medicine-men elsewhere in Canaria, claimed to 
have received special powers from tlie supernatural world in answer 
to pi'aycr and fasting; but the ])assion of the west coast people for 
ritualism made them elal)orate the fasting process, and distinguish 
tlieir medicine-men by certain jieculiarities in appearance or dress. 
Diseases were treated in much the same way as elsewhere, e.g., by 
massage, sucking over the afflicted part through a tube, application 
of herbs, etc., all to the accompaniment of much drumming, shaking 
of rattles, and the singing of medicine-songs. Peculiar to the medi- 
cine-men of the Haida, Tlinkit, and Tsimshian was the use of a 
special “ soul-catcher,” a bone tube, generally carved, for capturing 
the wandering souls of the sick and restoring them to their bodies. 
Since the souls of even healthy people often wandei', especially when 
the body sleeps, every Haida war-party carried at least one medi- 
cine-man to capture and destroy the souls of enemies, whose bodies 
would then be slain in the approaching battle. Dread of the medi- 
cine-man afflicted the Haida Indians even after his death, impelling 
them to deposit his body in a special grave-house overlooking the 
water which none but other medicine-men had the courage to visit. 
The secret society of the west coast Indians probably originated 
among the Kwakiutl. Its members were men and women who under- 
Tsomc Tiinkit villases railed the second pliratry not Eagle, but Wolf, 
