340 
cluced by Europeans and the breaking down of the social life, the 
total population scarcely equals three hundred, all confined to a 
single village at the mouth of the Bella Coola. 
The language spoken by this tribe aiul its position at the heads 
of the fiords and along the rivers that empty into them indicate that 
it broke off from the main body of the Salishan people to the south 
and pushed its way across the mountains into its present location on 
the coastd Yet the Bella Coola have no tradition of such a migra- 
tion, and until recently knew little of any other peoples except the 
Kwakiutl who bounded them on three sides and the Carrier and 
Chilcotin Indians who hemmed them in behind. Like the Kwakiutl, 
from whom they derived most of their customs and religious beliefs, 
they divided the year into two cycles, a winter season given over to 
potlatches and religious performances, and a summer when they 
gathered their food supplies. Their principal food, of course, was 
the salmon, but in April and May, before the commencement of the 
salmon run, they gathered in purse-like nets almost as rich a harvest 
of oolakan as the Tsimshian,- They killed, too, a few seals, bears, 
and }:)orcupines, and a considerable number of wild goats, ducks, and 
geese. Although meat was never plentiful, the abundance of berries 
and edible roots compensated for its scarcity, and provided the natives 
with a rich and varied diet even in the months of mid-winter. 
The Bella Coola had no phratries, but a number of what have 
been called “ genealogical families or what we have considered 
clans. The members of each clan claimed flescent from a mythical 
ancestor who in the beginning of time came down from the home 
of tlie sky-god Alkuntam and settled at some spot in the valley 
of the Bella Coola or Kimsquit river. The village he supposedly 
established there, and the surrounding territory he used for hunting 
and fishing, belonged to all the members of the clan through inherit- 
ance from their fathers or mothers. But as w^omen w’ent to live in 
their husbands’ villages the rights of their descendants tended to 
lapse from disuse. Furthermore, since membership in a clan gave 
not only property rights, but authority to use certain names, to hold 
certain ceremonies, to w^ear certain masks at dances, to employ certain 
1 T.o.ss prohalily, it readied its present home by sea. 
2 Like the Tsimshian, they carried its oil over the mountains, along another " Grease Trail,” to 
the Athapaskan Indians of the interior. 
3 Using “ dan ” in its unspecialized sen.so, without reference to (he motliod of reckoning descent, to 
avoid the more unfamiliar terms gens and sept. 
