218 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



child is to be called. When a man dies the atekata 

 remains with the body in the water or (where it is 

 buried) in the earth until a child is named after him. 

 It goes then into the child and there continues its 

 existence. 1 Moreover, of the Eskimo on the west 

 coast of Hudson's Bay, Captain Comer reports that the 

 souls of the dead, if they so choose, may return and 

 be born again. He adduces two recent cases where 

 this was believed to have occurred. " An old man who 

 died in 1896 said at his death that he would be born 

 again by a certain woman. Soon after this the 

 woman gave birth to a girl, who it was believed," in 

 spite be it observed of the difference of sex, "to be 

 the old man returned. Another man who died in 

 1885 said that he would be born again as a child of 

 his own daughter. The latter had one son ; and soon 

 another son was born, who was looked upon as the 

 dead one returned." 2 



Whatever may be the fact as regards the Melane- 

 sians and the Eskimo it is certain that in North 

 America the new birth of the dead was widely believed 

 in. Among the Thompson Indians of British 

 Columbia this opinion is now said to be confined to the 

 cases of children dying in infancy. If such a child be 

 succeeded by another of the same sex they say it is the 

 same child come back again. " They do not believe 

 that the soul of an elderly person can be reborn, nor 

 that the soul of a male infant can be born again in a 

 female infant, nor that the soul can return in an infant 

 having a different mother." Formerly, we are told 

 however, " this belief was more general than it is 



1 von Andrian, Wortaber. 20, citing Holm, Ethnologisk Skizze. 



2 Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. xv. 146. 



