Ba'wis, spelled variously Bawus, Ba'oosh or Pu'gwis, is the wild man of the woods in Tsimshianic tradition, a hairy, human-shaped being of the deep wilderness. Reclusive by nature, he rarely troubles people. Ethnographers note his kinship with the Bakwas of the Kwakwaka'wakw and with the ghost-beings of other Northwest Coast peoples; in some tellings he wears the face of a corpse, with drawn skin and lips curled from the teeth. He personifies the untamed forest that lies beyond the villages of the Nass and Skeena.