Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/78

68 coast of America are the result of many different influences which have met and crossed in that interesting region. The custom of acquiring a transfer of name and privileges by slaughtering their previous owner points to the more or less violent breaking-up of an older organisation in which great value was attached to clan-membership. It is obvious that where the clan-system is powerful such a custom would not be tolerated, and that in any society where it once got a footing it would prove a strong disintegrating force. That it has done so among these north-western tribes is evidently Dr. Boas' opinion. "In this manner," he says, "names and customs have often spread from tribe to tribe." Furthermore, he brings evidence to prove "that the present system of tribes and clans is of recent growth, and has undergone considerable changes," some of which I may add are still in progress. Not less important is it that the so-called secret societies are of novel introduction. If amid all these movements confusion had not been generated there would have been cause for wonder. Nor can we be by any means sure that the manitou-idea was always at the basis of the belief and practice of the tribes, closely as it now seems to underlie their legends and institutions, or even that any form of totemism was known to some of the tribes until a comparatively recent period. My own impression decidedly is that, whether or no totemism was anciently a part of the tribal organisation, the manitou-conception is of modern date. It is part of the individualism which is tending, not among these tribes only, to obscure the older communistic traditions. I will not say that it is useless to examine the beliefs and institutions of the British Columbian peoples, with the hope of arriving at any conclusions on the origin or early form of totemism. But I greatly doubt that any trustworthy