14 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
connected by marriage ties. Here we see the evolution of a totemic 
gens or phratry within the Salish tribes themselves without, I believe. 
any extraneous suggestion from northern or other sources, this brother- 
hood originating in the adventure of a youth and his sister far up the 
river among the upper tribes, who probably never heard of the totemic 
systems of the Haida-Tlingit and Tsimshian. When we reach the 
Kwakiutl adjoining the Coast Salish, whose original social organization 
was undoubtedly similar to, or identical with, that of the Salish to 
whom they are linguistically and otherwise related, we find that by 
amalgamation the gens has developed into the clan; and among that 
isolated tribe of the Salish, the Bella-Coola, we find the same thing. 
This tribe, according to Dr. Boas, is now divided into four clans. Like 
the other Salish tribes, it is made up of a number of families, but the 
families are here classified not on a village basis as among their con- 
geners, but on a four-clan system, each clan being made up of groups of 
gentes as among the northern tribes. 
The northern crests and totems, according to Dr. Boas, uniformly 
spring from the second of the two sources I have intimated, viz.: mythic 
adventures. An abstract of one of these taken from the Tsimshian is 
as follows: “ An Indian went hunting mountain goats: When he had 
reached a remote mountain range he met a black bear, who took him to 
his home, taught him how to catch salmon and how to build boats. Two 
years the man stayed with the bear ; then he returned to his village. 
All the people were afraid of him, for he looked just like a bear. One 
man caught him, however, and took him home. He could not speak and 
could not eat anything but raw food. Then they rubbed him with 
magic herbs and he was retransformed into the shape of a man. Thence- 
forth when he was in want, he went into the woods, and his friend the 
bear helped him. He built a house and painted the bear on the front 
of it, and his sister made a dancing blanket, the design of which repre- 
sented a bear. Therefore the descendants of his sister use the bear 
for their crest.”1 The Tsimshian are governed by mother-right, hence 
the sister’s descendants and not his own became owners of the totem. 
It is unnecessary to give other instances, for though the myths differ in 
detail the same idea runs through them all, whether we find them among 
the Tsimshian, Haida-Tlingit, Kwakiutl or Salish. A superficial view 
of the accounts of the origin of these crests and totems will make them 
appear childish and absurd; but when judged by the animistic concep- 
tions of these tribes they are really consistent and wholly rational. 
Neither Dr. Boas nor Dr. G. M. Dawson, our chief sources of informa- 
tion on the totemic systems of the northern tribes, makes any mention 


1 Fifth Report of the Committee on the Physical Characteristics, etc., of 
the N.W. Tribes of Canada, B.A.A.S., p. 24. London, 1889. 
