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ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 477 



tribes, by common totems or crests. They comprised the blood relatives 

 of any given family on both sides of the house for six generations. 

 After the sixth generation the kinship ceases to hold good and the 

 clanship is broken. Under this arrangement an individual's relatives 

 were legion, and he would often have family connection in a score or 

 more different okwiunuq. Among the present Sk-qo'mic almost all of 

 them are related in this way to one another, and their cousinships are 

 endless and. even perplexing to themselves. Marriage within the family 

 or clan as thus constituted was prohibited, but members of different clans 

 in the same village could intermarry with each other. If each village 

 community is to be regarded as a separate gens having a common origin 

 from some common ancestor — which I think is extremely doubtful — tlien 

 marriage among the Sk'qo'mic was not forbidden to members of the same 

 gens. For my own part I am disposed to regard these separate communi- 

 ties as mere subdivisions of the tribe which were effected at different 

 periods in their tribal existence, and generally, probably, from the same 

 causes which have all over the world led to the founding of new homes 

 and new settlements, viz., increase andsti-ess of population. The evidence 

 in favour of regarding these divisions as distinct gentes having each a 

 sepa.rate origin and soringing from a separate ancestor, as among the 

 northern tribes, is scanty and doubtful. This view is strengthened by 

 the traditional origin of the tribe, which makes them all spring from a 

 common pair. I do not desire to be understood as asserting that totemic 

 gentes did not formerly exist among the Sk-qo'mic, as Dr. Boas seems to 

 hold. All I say is that after diligent inquiry from several of the chiefs 

 and others I could myself find no evidence of it. I could not learn that 

 any particular group or family bore names peculiar to that group or 

 family, or possessed privileges not shared by the others other than the 

 right to certain dances and their accompanying songs the origin and 

 source of which was some personal dream, or vision, or experience of their 

 own or their parents. But the ownership of these dances differed in no 

 way from the ownership of a canoe or any other piece of property, and 

 constituted no kind of bond or union between the owner of them and 

 others of the tribe or ukwumuq. 



The only peculiar name that I could learn other than those of the 

 supreme chiefs was that borne by the offspring of female slaves by their 

 masters. This was the term std'cE-m, and was a word of reproach. 



Polygamy was commonly practised among the Sk-qo'mic, the number 

 of a man's wives being limited only by his rank and wealth. A chief 

 would frequently have four or five wives. Each wife had her own 

 quai-ters in the house, which included a fire and a bed of her own. A 

 favourite wife would rank first. She would be regarded in consequence 

 with jealousy and hatred by the others. The husband would sometimes 

 eat with one, sometimes with another. Infidelity in wives was punished 

 by cutting the soles of their feet, or, in some instances, by stoning them 

 to death. 



Moiiuary Customs. 



The burial custoii'is of the modern Sk-qo'mic are now commonly con- 

 ducted in the same way as our own, few, if any, of the older ceremonies, 

 •which are discountenanced by the priests, being observed. In former 

 days the following customs were universally practised : — "When life had 

 left the body the corpse was taken out of the house and washed by some 



