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Impearls: HIC 3.06: Dances at the mouth of the river

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Earthdate 2005-11-12

Dances at the mouth of the river   by A. L. Kroeber

Rekwoi had a similar Jumping dance, held partly in a sacred house.  The climax was a dance made in two large canoes, which approached across the broad lagoon abreast.  The season for the ceremony seems to have been autumn.

Wetlkwau, on the opposite side of the mouth, formerly had a more venerated rite.  There was a sacred house and sweat house, and the formulist kept a pipe that was regarded with the greatest fear.  Each year, it may be presumed about April, he and his assistant proceeded to the very debouch of the river and speared the first salmon.  This was cooked on the beach and the assistant attempted to eat it entire.  Should he ever succeed it was thought that he would become extremely wealthy.  Some fragments of the formula that are known tell of the coming of the great salmon leader from the miraculous country across the ocean.

Wetlkwau also made a Deerskin dance, which, with the shriveling of the village, has long been abandoned.  It was evidently an aftermath to the salmon rite.  In this the competing towns were Turip, Rekwoi, and Wetlkwau.  On the last day they danced across the lagoon in boats and finished on the hill above Rekwoi.  No one was allowed to witness the boat dance whose father's payment for his mother had not included either a canoe or one of the large Hudson Bay Co. knives, which before 1850 were extremely valuable.  Sometimes at Wetlkwau the final dance above Rekwoi was omitted and a separate Jumping dance substituted.  This is said to have been held 20 miles upstream on the hill back of Pekwan.



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