CARRIER SOCIOLOGY. Il3 



more years, accordiug to the dignity of the deceased and the ability of his surviving 

 fellow-chiusmen to gather a suflicieut amount of eatables and dressed skins to be 

 distributed in a final potlach. Upon this occasion the deceased's bones were ultimately 

 deposited in a mortuary post or column close by the village. 



This was the signal of the widow's liberation from the very exacting bondage she 

 had suffered at the hands of her late husband's relatives, her hair having been clipped 

 by them to the skin and her face disfigured by gum or dirt as a token of her degraded 

 condition. 



If we now examine those aborigines' beliefs and their notions with regard to the 

 creation, we find that they are practically identical with those of their immediate or 

 mediate western neighbours ; their myths and legends, and a like similarity is observed. 



Well may we ask ourselves : Since these Indians are ethnologically, philologically 

 and psychologically so diflferent from those neighbouring races, the Tsimshian, Salish, etc., 

 how did it come to pass that both maritime and inland aborigines possess so strikingly 

 similar social institutions, such identical superstitions and folk-lore ? Being of such 

 confessedly unrelated stock, one race must, of necessity, have borrowed from the other. 

 Who, then, were the borrowers ? Who the originals ? 



Thinking scientists who examined and admired the very elaborate social system and 

 customs obtaining among the Coast Indians have naturally tried to investigate the source 

 from which they must have originated. Some fancy to see it iu the primitive Aztec 

 civilization ; others think they have found it in the inhabitants, ancient and modern, 

 of the Japanese isles. As far as I know, the only authors who ever ventured a comparison 

 between coast and inland sociologies are Drs. Gr. M. Dawson and Franz Boas. It is 

 somewhat remarkable that both should seem to have reached an identical conclusion, 

 which may be resumed in two words : The coast and south races have copied, at least 

 partially, from the inland northern aborigines. Under date March 3, 1891, the first-named 

 wrote to the author : 



" In your letter of June last I see that you refer to the probability of the Tinneh hav- 

 ing borrowed mythology and customs from the coast. Is it not probable that borrowing- 

 has been on both sides ? The similarity of the Tinneh creation myth to that of the Haida — 

 of Us-tas to M"-A-/Z-s//as— induced me to think that the Haida had it from inland, and this 

 seems to be borne out by the fact that Dr. Boas has lately found practically the same story 

 among the Bilhoola, probably iudependeutly obtained by them from adjacent Tinneh 

 peoples." 



On the other hand, Dr. Boas has the following to say iu a note appended to his report 

 on the Shushwap : 



" The mourning ceremonies of the Shushwap are evidently influenced by those of 

 their northern neighbours, the Carriers, which have been described- by the Rev. A. G. 

 Morice in the ' Proceedings of the Canadian Institute,' 1889. The strictness of the levirate 

 and the ceremonies celebrated at the grave are almost the same in both cases." ' 



More recently. Sir Daniel Wilson, after noting the commercial relations which 

 existed from time immemorial between the coast and the inland aborigines, adds in his 

 introduction to the Seventh Report on the North- Western Tribes of Canada : 



' Sixth Report on the N.W. Tribes of Canada. P. 91. 



Sec. II., 1892. 15. 



