THl: SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND THE SECRET SOCIETIES OF 

 THE KWAKIUTL INDIANS. 



By Franz Boas. 



PREFACE. 



The following paper describes and illustrates tlie collections of the 

 U. S. Njitional Museum referring to the social organization and secret 

 societies of the Indians of the coast of British Columbia. It is based 

 on studies made by the author during a series of years. The great body 

 of facts presented here were observed and recorded by Mr. George 

 Hunt, of Fort Rupert, British Columbia, who takes deep interest in 

 everything pertaining to the ethnology of the Kwakiutl Indians and to 

 whom I am under great obligations. I am indebted to him also for expla- 

 nations of ceremonials witnessed by myself, but the purport of which 

 was difficult to understand, and for finding the Indians who were able to 

 give explanations on certain points. 



My thanks are due to Mr. C. O. Hastings, of Victoria, British 

 Columbia, who took a series of photographs, reproductions of which 

 will be found in this report, A series of ptionographic records of 

 songs belonging to the ceremonials were transcribed by Mr. John C. 

 Fillmore and myself. I also had opportunity to verify many of the 

 phonographic records by letting the Indians repeat the songs two years 

 after the records had been taken. 



I have also to thank Prof, A, Bastian, director of the Royal Ethno- 

 graphical Museum at Berlin, Sir Augustus W. Franks, keeper of the 

 ethnographical department of the British Museum, Mr. Franz Heger, 

 director of the ethnographical department of the Imperial Royal 

 Museum of Natural History at Vienna, and Prof, F. W. Putnam, 

 curator of the department of anthropology of the American Museum 

 of Natural History at New York, for permission to use specimens con- 

 tained in the collections of these museums for illustrating the present 

 report. 



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