The gamblers would sit opposite each other on the grass or in the large houses, and a great crowd would gather on both sides, making a rattling noise with short sticks on boards, and singing to work themselves up for luck, or “power,” as they called it. The gambling would go on night and day, almost week in and week out, until they had not a shred of clothes left. Money, muskets, canoes, horses, and sometimes the houses over their heads, they would stake on a chance. The story is told of one old man among the Kling-gets who gambled away everything he had. Then, with the hope that he would have a lucky day some time, he put himself down and gambled away for days, still losing, until his wife, seeing that he was “going,” persuaded him to stop. She had to pay two hundred blankets to buy him back. The gambling passion still lives with them, and now some of them have adopted the methods of their white brothers--they were always fond of imitating him, even to their own hurt--and are going deeper and deeper into sin. CHAPTER XII. _NATIVE WORSHIP AND SUPERSTITIONS._ “Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, Who have faith in God and Nature, Who believe, that in all ages Every human heart is human, That in even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings, For the good they comprehend not, That the feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God’s right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened....” --“_Hiawatha._” The An-ko-me-nums, like most of the Indians of British Columbia, were spirit worshippers. First of all, they believed in a great Chief Spirit, who created all things and was all-wise and all-powerful, and ruled over them for good, but who was not actively concerned for them, and whom they never called upon except in cases of great difficulty or distress. Then they believed in a multitude of lesser spirits, who were in most cases evilly disposed towards them. These inhabited certain mountains and headlands and rocky, dangerous points, around which the waves raged and tossed their frail canoes, and sometimes upset them. A swirling eddy, a dangerous rapid, a lonely lake in the mountains, a steep precipice where perhaps at some time or other one of their people had met with disaster and possibly death, was the abode of a “Stlaw-la-kum,” or evil spirit. They prayed a great deal to the sun, to the moon, to the Great Being who gave them all the fish and food, or to the spirit whom they believed might be responsible for any impending danger. They were often found in the woods praying. Hunters would pray and fast for days in the mountains, bathing themselves and performing certain exercises, in order to be successful hunters. They would pray, while fishing, for a successful catch. And for weeks before going on a war expedition they would fast and pray and bathe and paint themselves in preparation for the undertaking.