Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/315

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should have relapsed after this intercourse into an endogamy of the strictest kind. Dr. Boas accounts for this by the desire to emulate the surrounding tribes in the exclusive possession of special tradi- tions. Among the surrounding tribes the clan-traditions are property very jealously guarded, but transmissible by marriage. If I rightly understand Dr. Boas, the Bella Coola have been infected with similar jealousy, and have come to regard their traditions as pro- perty likewise, and as transmissible in the same way. Endogamy would in that case have the effect of keeping the exclusive posses- sion of given traditions within the village. Dr Boas accordingly assigns this motive for it. But if endogamy be the ordinary rule of the Coast Salish, I cannot help thinking that the endogamy of the Bella Coola is a reversion to the earlier customs of the race chiefly due to racial instincts, however those instincts may have been reinforced, and rendered more stringent, by other motives.

Incorporated with some of the village traditions is material of very recent date. One, for instance, relates that six men and a woman were sent down from the House of Myths. " In their house all the languages were ivritteji down, and were distributed among the various tribes." Probably the reference to the distri- bution of languages, but certainly the mention of writing, is of a date long since the villagers became acquainted with civilised people. It would be interesting to examine the stories with a view to ascertaining how far such modern material extends.

The lower worlds are the regions of the dead. The description of the world immediately below our own is derived from shamans who have been there. It is much like this world, but with a difference. Winter there is summer here. Night there is day here. The souls of the dead speak a different language from ours, and receive a new name. They walk on their heads, not on their feet. They have — this is a gruesome thought — a dancing-house just beneath the cemetery of every earthly village. If a person once enters the dancing-house there is no return to this world. Otherwise, there is a rope ladder whereby he may climb to the lower heaven, and thence be born again into the family to which he previously belonged. There appears to be no beUef in retri- bution. A dead man who does not avail himself of the oppor- tunity for a new birth, after awhile dies the second death, and, sinking to the lowest world, comes back no more.

I must pass over the mythological beings not forming part of