THE DOWN OF BIRDS IN CEREMONIAL OBSERVANCES.
No exhaustive and accurate examination of the subject of hoddentin could be made without bringing the investigator face to face with the curious analogue of "down" throwing and sprinkling which seemingly obtains with tribes which at some period of their history have been compelled to rely upon birds as a main component of their diet. Examples of this are to be met with on both sides of the Pacific as well as in remote Australia, and were the matter more fully examined there is no doubt that some other identifications might be made in very unexpected quarters. The down used by the Tchuktchi on occasions of ceremony had a suggestion of religion about it.[411] "On leaving the shore, they sung and danced. One who stood at the head of the boat was employed in plucking out the feathers of a bird's skin and blowing them in the air."
In Langsdorff's Travels[412] we learn that some of the dancers of the Koluschan of Sitka have their heads powdered with the small down feathers of the white-headed eagle and ornamented with ermine; also, that the hair and bodies of the Indians at the mission of Saint Joseph, New California, were powdered with down feathers.[413]
The Indians from the North Pacific coast seen visiting the mission of San Francisco, by Kotzebue in 1816, "had their long disordered hair covered with down."[414]
Bancroft says of the Nootka of the northwest coast of British America: "the hair is powdered plentifully with white feathers, which are regarded as the crowning ornament for manly dignity in all these regions."[415]
The bird's down used by the Haida of British North America in their dances seems very closely related to hoddentin. They not only put it upon their own persons, but "delight to communicate it to their partners in bowing," and also "blow it into the air at regular intervals through a painted tube." They also scattered down as a sign of welcome to the first European navigators.[416]
In all these dances, ceremonial visits, and receptions of strangers the religious element can be discerned more or less plainly. The Indians west of the Mississippi with whom Father Hennepin was a prisoner in 1680, and who appear to have been a branch of the Sioux (Issati or Santee and Nadouessan), had a grand dance to signalize the killing of a bear. On this occasion, which was participated in by the "principaux chefs et guerriers," we learn that there was this to be noted in their dress: "ayant même leurs cheveux frottez d'huile d'ours & parsemez de plumes, rouges & blanches & les têtes chargées de duvet d'oiseaux."[417]