| OCR Text |
Show i9oo] NORTHERN INTERIOR INDIANS 121 combined with certain fixed symbolic rites. During the exhaustion thus produced, or in answer to the nervous expectancy under which he lives, vivid dreams or hallucinatory waking visions appear, and in these is revealed to him the being who will act as his helper on the future. In order to become a recognized shaman of the professional class, a much longer period of " training" is necessary. Sometimes years are spent in the acquisition of the necessary wisdom and powers. 1 These customs will be noticed again in the general discussion of Indian religious beliefs, but should be emphasized here as forming the central interest in the life of the people of this region. In certain of the tribes, as the Kootenay, 2 an annual ceremonial is held which seems to be a sort of worship of the sun, and connected with the idea of the possible return of the dead from the other world. The art of the plateaus is characterized by the absence of the plastic forms which are so striking on the coast. Among many of these interior tribes carving is practically unknown. Decoration, therefore, consists largely in painted or woven designs, which were undoubtedly originally attempts at pictorial representations, but which have become, through difficulties of execution, conventional in 1 Teit, " The Thompson Indians of British Columbia" ( Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., Memoirs, II., 254 ff). ' Cf. Chamberlain, in British Assoc. Advancement of Science, Eighth Report on Northwestern Tribes of Canada. |
