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.
Food and drink were often thrown on the fire as an offering to the unknown Divinity, while the ascending smoke bore the prayers of the poor blind worshippers onward to the Great Chief above.
Speaking of this, one of our native preachers says: “My grandmother in the early morning used to kindle a fire as she sat on the river bank. When it was a clear, quiet morning and the smoke would ascend, as it seemed, straight up to the land above, she would say, as she prayed for more food or for protection from sickness or trouble, ‘Now our prayers will be answered.’ But if the wind blew the smoke about, she would say it was no use praying, as such prayers were useless.”
Out on the water, with the tempest threatening, they were accustomed to turn around and whistle and wave their hands to the wind, to keep it away, and when it grew stormy they would pray to the mighty wind. Crossing the Gulf of Georgia on one occasion in a big storm, the old heathen captain and his wife, with whom we voyaged, prayed most appealingly, “Oh, you big storm, don’t you drown us; you are so strong and we are so weak; don’t you make such a rough sea. Why should we go down? We are all dirty, our clothes are dirty, we are very dirty; if you take us down we shall dirty your clear waters, they are so clear and blue. Don’t have us dirty your beautiful waters.”
The south men, as well as the north, would throw out food and even clothes as a sacrifice to appease the storm.