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Kwakiutl, who generally deposited the dead in trees, in caves, or, 
in the case of special chiefs, in canoes. 
Yet the borrowing was not all one-sided, for it was the Kwakiutl, 
apparently, who originated the secret society that spread over most 
of the coast-line. Fundamentally, this society seems to have evolved 
from the concept of the guardian spirit obtained by youths through 
714 
Koskiino, a Kwakiutl village on Quatsino sound, IkC. (Fhoio hy 0. M. Dairfton.) 
prayer and fasting. Throughout eastern and central Canada, as we 
saw earlier, every boy, and sometimes girls as well, solicited the aid 
and protection of one of the countless supernatural beings that the 
Indians postulated in the worhl around them. None of them knew 
which of these spirits would answer his prayer, and none of them 
conceived that he might hand on his “ blessing ” to a successor; it was 
a secret source of power that lai)sed with the individual’s death. The 
Blackfoot and Sarcee slightly modified the doctrine inasmuch as they 
believed that by resuscitating the conditions of the original “ bless- 
ings,” and by the correct repetition of the sacred songs, they could 
transfer certain medicine-bundles without losing the protection of 
which they were the symbols. 
86959—23 
