38 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



inexplicable save on the supposition that the fruit 

 causes pregnancy. 



The Kwakiutl of British Columbia chew the gum 

 of the red pine. " That of the white pine is not used 

 by girls, because it is believed to make them 

 pregnant." 1 The Querranna, one of the cult societies 

 of the Sia, possess a medicine called sewili, composed 

 of the roots and the blossoms of the six mythical 

 medicine plants of the sun, archaic white shell- and 

 black stone-beads, turquoise and a yellow stone. This 

 is ground to a fine powder with great ceremony. To 

 a woman who wishes to become pregnant it is ad- 

 ministered, a small quantity of the powder being put 

 into cold water, and a "fetish" of Querranna dipped 

 four times into the water. A single dose ought to be 

 sufficient. The same medicine is also administered on 

 ceremonial occasions to the members of the society for 

 the perpetuation of their race ; and the honaaite (priest 

 or theurgist) taking a mouthful squirts it to the 

 cardinal points, " that the cloud people may gather 

 and send rain that the earth may be fruitful." Quer- 

 ranna was the second man created by Utset, one of 



origin, or beginning, of one of her children is a cocoa-nut, or bread- 

 fruit, or something of that kind " ; and this gives rise to a pro- 

 hibition of the object for food, just as in the case of a totem 

 (Codrington, in Id. xviii. 310; Rep. Austr. Ass. ii. 612). I hardly 

 know how to account for this notion except by the suggestion that 

 such a woman may have eaten the fruit about the time her preg- 

 nancy commenced, and thence have been led to believe that the 

 pregnancy was due to it. Upon inquiry, however, of Dr. Codrington, 

 he informed me that he had never heard of any belief of the kind. 

 It is perhaps worth noting as a coincidence, if nothing more, that 

 on Lepers' Island, the two intermarrying divisions are called "branches 

 of fruit, "as if," says Dr. Codrington (Melanesians, 26), "all the 

 members hang on the same stalk." 

 1 Boas, in Rep. Brit. Ass. 1896, 579. 



