TRIBAL SOCIETY 247 



probably a transition from male to female descent. 

 Through marriage, a man acquires the position and privi- 

 leges of his father-in-law which he cannot use for him- 

 self but transmits to his son. These are unmistakable 

 indications of a former descent through the father. 22 

 But the clans are not exogamous. Indeed, a woman is 

 advised to marry in her clan. The custom of marrying a 

 member of the same clan and of never making matrimo- 

 nial alliance with outsiders, is called endogamy. The two 

 phratries of the Tlingit are Raven and Wolf. The exog- 

 amy of the British Columbian Indians does not seem to be 

 indissolubly bound up with their system of totemism, so 

 that we cannot always expect totemism to appear in con- 

 nection with exogamy. Although many of the clans and 

 family names of these peoples are animal names, the clans 

 of the Tlingit and the families of the Haida bear names 

 derived from localities. Thus the institution of totem- 

 ism may exist without there being derivation of the clan 

 name from the totem. 



The British Columbian Indians do not generally be- 

 lieve that the clan descended from the totem animal. In 

 the most common type of tradition found among the 

 Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, the ancestors of the clan 

 or family were believed to have come into relations with 

 some animal in the early historical period and to have 

 derived from this animal the clan name. One of these 

 traditions is somewhat as follows : some people captured 

 a small beaver and kept it as a pet because it was cun- 

 ning and very clean. It was well cared for, but by and 

 by it took offense at something and began to compose 

 songs. Afterward one of the beaver's masters went 



22 Boas, F. The Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl 

 Indians, Report of the U. 8. Nat'l Museum, 1895, pp. 334-5, 431. 



