There are many different types of rattles found in that region, the one given in this book being the most common form of shamens or medicine man’s rattle. It is carved of the famous yellow cedar wood and painted in several brilliant colors. The carving on the breast represents the sparrow hawk; the tail of the bird is carved to represent another bird’s head with a frog in its mouth. The frog is supposed to possess a poison in his head that the medicine man sucks out to give him power to work bad spells. The figure on the back is Ka-ka-hete, the whistling demon, who lived in the mountains. He was capsized while traveling in his canoe one day and nearly drowned. He swam ashore and made for the woods for shelter. Some times he came down into the villages and stole the children, which he took into the woods with him and ate. In later times he transformed himself into a land otter. The two figures on the top of the rattle tell a story of Haida love-making. The front figure represents the boy, while the other one, the “birdie,” if you please, is the girl. The frog passing from one mouth to the other indicates that a lie has been told by one of them, and from the direction that he is traveling it appears that there, as elsewhere, the boy had to bear the blame of it. The rattle, taken as a whole, represents the great raven, with a brand of fire in his mouth, which the Haida nations worship as the creator and benefactor of the human race. Before the whites came among them the Haidas made knives and daggers of stone and copper, but steel is mostly used among them now-a-days for such purposes. The daggers shown in the illustration have yellow cedar handles, and each has carved on it the individual totems of owner. One of them seems to be a chief of the beaver tribe, and is quite eminent, since there are four disks on his hat. The Haida tribes are rapidly undergoing a change. They are not slow to abandon their own customs and adopt the methods of the Europeans. If scholars wish to systematically acquaint themselves with the interesting traditions of these people as illustrated by their carving, etching and painting, they would better be about it. Their works are rapidly deteriorating in the face of the new civilization and in the indifference of the present generation. In fact the only young men who now engage in such pursuits are the curio makers. CHAPTER XXXIII TOTEMISM AND SUPERSTITIONS