X.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 379 



Asiatic shaman in embryo, arriving in the late Stone Age, and 

 afterwards diverging in various directions from his Siberian proto- 

 type. 



More striking perhaps than these resemblances are those of 

 an aesthetic order, which are found to prevail be- 

 tween the British Columbian Indians and the South Totenf Posts 

 Sea Islanders, and which are well illustrated by and Maori 

 the rich symbolic carvings of the Haida totem or 

 heraldic posts, and the tiki, or carved pillars, often set up at the 

 tombs of the Maori chiefs and others in New Zealand. The best 

 reply to the still current daring speculations based on the simi- 

 larity in form and design presented by some of these objects will 

 be found in the remarks of Mr Niblack, who has made a special 

 study of the subject, and contrasts the famous tiki near the grave 

 of Te Whero-Whero's daughter with several sculptured columns 

 of the Thlinkits and Haidas : "Many resemblances of the Haida 



* 



to widely remote stocks have been pointed out by writers ; but 

 to illustrate how futile such clues are in tracing the origin and 

 relationship of the tribes of the world, a parallel is here briefly 

 drawn between the Maori of New Zealand and the Haida. The 

 political organization of the tribe, their ownership of land, and 

 their laws of blood-revenge are similar. The men tattoo with 

 designs intended to identify them with their sub-tribe or house- 

 hold, and they ornament their canoes, paddles, house-fronts, etc., 

 in somewhat the same manner.... The carved wooden mortuary 

 columns erected in front of the Maori houses are also suggestive ; 

 but it is safe to say that while all this is not in one sense acci- 

 dental, yet the resemblances and similarities are as likely to have 

 arisen from the like tendencies of the human mind under the 

 same external conditions, or environment, to develop along 

 parallel lines as through contact of these tribes or through a 

 common origin." Here it may be added that if the Thlinkits 

 and Maori are one in virtue of their common door-posts, the 

 Thlinkits and Yakuts must also be one in virtue of their common 

 shamanism, and as things equal to the same are equal to one 

 another, we arrive at the conclusion that the Turki Yakuts and 

 the Polynesian Maori are also one, which nobody has yet ventured 

 to assert. 



