HISTORICAL 



The idea of evolution is often looked 

 upon as a comparatively modern one. 

 As a matter of fact, it reaches back 

 into remote antiquity. Most races of 

 primitive man believed in some vague 

 way that they had kinship with the 

 lower animals. Many of the clans of 

 American Indians used animals as 

 their totems. Among the Indians of 

 the northwest coast the bear, the 

 raven, and the beaver were used in 

 this way, and in New England the 

 wildcat, the wolf, the muskrat, the 

 squirrel, the porcupine, and the frog 

 were similarly employed. Although 

 these totems were primarily signs of 

 the clan and were used as such, par- 

 ticularly in religious observances, 

 they were in many instances invested 

 with an ancestral aura, and the clan 



