Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/503

 Bibliographical Notes. 155

cal as regards the representation of ancestral experience ; the underlying idea is that the person seeking initiation must live in the wilderness, where he will be visited by one of the spirits belonging to his clan, from whom he may obtain supernatural power, and in whom he will find a divine helper. That the ceremonies are connected with cannibalism has naturally led civilized observers to an erroneous conception of their significance.

With respect to the origin of the beliefs and practices, general remarks are offered. Dr. Boas has done more than any other investigator to show the interfoliation of American myths and rites, and the effect of culture contact in producing continual and often rapid diffusion. He has made the existence of this process so evident, that doubt must be set down as an exhibition of ignorance or prejudice. It is plain that the several tribes have appropriated a mass of tales, customs, doctrines, which have come to them from without, or which are communicated from one to another. Such reception does not exclude mental reaction on the material ; the borrowers bestow on the information an interpretation answering to their state of mind, and to this extent the ideas or usages may be considered as an inde- pendent expression of mentality, irrespective of originally foreign deriva- tion. The materials of the structure being supplied, these may be elab- orated to an edifice built up by ingenuity and free speculation ; this Dr. Boas supposes to have been the case with the Bella Coola, who from whatever reason appear to have systematized their mythology to an un- usual degree. We cite the concluding words of the account : —

" The mind of the Bella Coola philosopher, operating with the class of knowledge common to the earlier strata of culture, has reached conclusions similar to those that have been formed by man the world over, when oper- ating with the same class of knowledge. On the other hand, the Bella Coola has also adopted ready-made the thoughts of his neighbors, and has adapted them to his environment. These two results of our inquiry em- phasize the close relation between the comparative and the historic methods of ethnology, which are so often held to be antagonistic. Each is a check upon rash conclusions that might be attained by the application of one alone. It is just as uncritical to see, in an analogy of a single trait of cul- ture that occurs in two distinct regions, undoubted proof of early historical connection as to reject the possibility of such connection, because some- times the same ideas develop independently in the human mind. Ethno- logy is rapidly outgrowing the tendency to accept imperfect evidence as proof of historical connection ; but the comparative ethnologist is hardly beginning to see that he has no right to scoff at the historical method. Our inquiry shows that safe conclusions can be derived only by a careful analy- sis of the whole culture."

W. W. Newell.

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