Beatty—The Si. George, or Mummers', Plays. 311 
and women who lived for a season and sometimes died in the 
character of the visionary beings: whom they personated. The 
intention of these sacred dramas, we may be sure, was neither 
to amuse nor to instruct an idle audience, and as little were 
they designed to gratify the actors, to whose baser passions 
they gave the reins for a time. They were solemn rites which 
mimicked the doings of divine beings 1 2 , because man fancied 
that by smell mimicry he was able to arrogate to himself the 
divine functions and to exercise them for the good of his fel¬ 
lows. The operations, of nature, to his thinking, were carried 
on by mythical personages very like himiself; and if he could 
only assimilate himself to them completely, he would be able 
to wield all their powers. This is probably the original motive 
of most religious dramas, or mysteries among rude peoples.” 1 
The legends and the ceremonies in connection with these 
“gifts” given to the Kwakiutl youth are one and the same 
thing, and we cannot understand the one without the other. 
They “relate entirely to spirits that are still in constant con¬ 
tact with the Indians, whom they endow with supernatural 
95 2 
powers. 
One of the spirits who thus helps is Baxbakualanu Xsi-wae 
(= the first one to eat at the mouth of the river, i. 0 . in the 
north, because the ocean is considered a stream running north¬ 
ward). He is a cannibal living in the mountains who is al¬ 
ways in pursuit of man. One who meets his cannibal grizzly 
bear, Hai'alik'ilal, may become a hamaks’a, or any of eight 
other orders:. 3 
There are several versions of the legend dealing with the 
origin of the hamats’a\, one of which Boas: gives, 4 with a variant 
ending. 5 The substance is as follows: 
ISfanwaqawe, the chief of the Awikenox, had four 1 sons who 
were mountain goat hunters. At one time members of his 
tribe were disappearing one after the other and he did not 
1 “The Golden Bough,” vol. 3, p. 164. 
2 Boas, p. 393. 
3 L. c., pp. 394-395. 
VL. c., pp. 396-400. 
5 L. c., pp. 400-401. 
* 
