186 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



population at Ladak hold that a malicious person 

 is reincarnated as a marmot. 1 Among the Haida 

 of the Queen Charlotte Islands some souls are sent 

 back to earth to be born again in human form, others 

 enter the bodies of animals and fish. " Sometimes 

 the soul enters the body of a fin-back whale, and 

 consequently fin-back whales are much honoured and 

 at the same time feared. On no account could an 

 Indian a few years ago be persuaded to shoot one." 2 

 An old Jesuit Father reports of the Hurons on informa- 

 tion from one of their chief men that many believe 

 we have two souls, both divisible and material and 

 yet both rational ; one leaves the body at death, 

 but remains in the cemetery until the Feast 

 of the Dead, after which it is either changed into 

 a turtle-dove, or according to the more general belief 

 it goes immediately to the village of souls. The 

 other soul remains with the corpse, never quitting it 

 unless to be born again. 3 The medicine-men and 

 women of the Sioux, it was believed, might be 

 changed after death into wild beasts. 4 " In two of 

 the buffalo gentes of the Omaha there is a belief that 

 the spirits of deceased members of those gentes return 

 to the buffaloes/' 5 The Southern Cheyenne hold the 

 opossum to be a dead man. 6 



In South America the Abipones were reported by 

 DobrizhofTer as calling little ducks, which flew about 



1 Powers, 182 ; Knight, 109. The Caribs are stated to hold a 

 similar doctrine ; but see the question discussed, Muller, Am. Urrel. 

 207 sqq. 2 /. A. I. xxi. 20. 



3 Jesuit Rel x. (1636), 286. 



4 Bourke, Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 479, quoting Schultze in Smiths. 

 Rep. (1867). 5 J. O. Dorsey, Ibid. xi. 542. 



H. L. Scott, Amer. Anthr. N.S. ix. 560. 



