being entertained in the guesthouse were murdered and their bodies piled into a canoe which was then paddled to Japonski Island. On striking the shore it was so heavily laden with the bodies of the dead that tradition says the canoe split from end to end. It is said that the bones of the dead are still to be seen in the undergrowth along the shore. In retaliation, about 1855, the Wrangell Kolosh made an attack on the Hot Springs settlement, burned the buildings, stripped the inhabitants of property and clothing and left them to make their way over the mountains around the head of Silver Bay to Sitka, where they arrived more dead than alive from hunger and ex- haustion. This feud was not settled until 1918, when a peace treaty was consummated between the kwans on Armistice Day, a coincidence which is much made of by the tribesmen.
The Kolosh were as firm believers in witchcraft as any of the more civilized nations. They resorted to their shamans (ekhts) or medicine men in case of illness. If his weird incantations failed to relieve the sufferer, his resort was that the victim was bewitched and some poor unfortunate paid the penalty by enduring the most fiendish torture.
One March day in 1855 a commotion arose in the Kolosh village. A sentry caught