The male initiation rites of the Ona were conducted in a special lodge of the men’s society, the kloketen, from which women were excluded; and associated with the mystifications of this institution were a number of such Hallowe’en spooks as we see here. These apparitions would appear from time to time, ranging through the bush of areas about the men’s house, and any woman or child seeing one or more of them was to suppose that they were the inhabitants of the kloketen with whom the men held converse in their meetings. An important moment in the initiations of a boy took place when he was compelled to get up and wrestle with one of these characters, who would let the youngster put him down, after which the masquerade was uncovered, and the boy turned into a man. There was a legend of the kloketen having been originally of the women, but taken and kept from them by the men. (Cont’d on next card.)
