Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/349

 Rh means more than the breach of tribal regulations as to the division of food. It is easily conceivable that young savages, not fully tutored in the ways of their ancestors, would be greatly influenced by the intensely individualistic life of the colonists with whom they had been brought into contact. An entirely new order of ideas would have been opened to them. The result would be a loosening of the old bonds, and the adoption of all such practices of the white men as might be agreeable, or might flatter their self-importance. Among these, the keeping to themselves of all the food they had earned or received as gifts would be of the first importance in the eyes of the elders; for upon the food supply the continued existence of the tribe would depend. It lies, therefore, upon Mr. Lang to show that the precept means anything beyond a prohibition of violating the tribal regulations concerning the distribution of food. That it will bear a serious comparison in its intention with "the central moral doctrine of Christianity" is assumed in an airy way, but at present I wait for the evidence.

The third precept, "to live peaceably with their friends," calls forth no remark from Mr. Lang. Nor is it necessary here to do more than point out its bearing on the general government of the tribe. As in the last precept, the word friends is ambiguous. Surrounded by actual and potential enemies, internal quarrels are likely to lead to a weakening of the community, and consequent inability to make head against its foes. Quarrels between clans, or between associated tribes, lead to results even more serious, at all events in their immediate consequences, in the blood-feud with its attendant calamities. An act of individual aggression or treachery gives occasion for reprisals which may mean a state of war for years. And all