I Heard The Owl Call My Name

A rite-of-passage dance performed by select young men of the village, among them Jim, who calls the dance “the greatest moment of [his] life” (71). The dance reenacts the myth of the cannibal-man who bewitched a young man seeking his help in learning a ritual dance. The young man then became possessed by the cannibal spirit, and the village had to defeat him with magic, after which point he disappeared into the woods. The hamatsa represents the changing of the village’s myths and customs—the government banned the use of real human bodies in the ritual, and Peter claims that in his father’s time, men could be killed for making a mistake in the dance. However, Mark reflects that the village’s collective omission of the original ritual and its brutality might mean the young man of the myth is finally free of his madness—in other words, that the village may be better off forgetting some traditions. 

The most important god in the Kwakiutl culture, the Cedar-man represents the life-supporting importance of the cedar tree. Before Mark arrives at the village, the Bishop tells him the myth of the Cedar-man, how he was once a tree that the gods commanded to become a man.