The stories of seafarers are often peopled by monsters of the deep: bringers of bad weather, capsizers, devourers of men. The Yagim is all of those. Described as a destroyer of whole tribes, a shark-like monster who lurks behind canoes, or the source of storms, his name literally means badness. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

The paint is red, green, black, and white.

Among the Kwakwaka'wakw the use of the clapper is reserved to the Mitla dancer, one of the performers in the Tseyka series. In the dance it is shaken rapidly and produces a staccato clattering sound. The whole instrument is carved and painted to represent the killer whale, with a thin upright dorsal fin and pectoral fins. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)

Singers who sit at the back of the house in front of a painted screen use wooden batons such as these to beat on a plank in time with their songs. The baton (in front), which has a thunderbird design, may have been carved by Willie Seaweed.

The rivet is copper ore.