ON THE NOETH-WESTERN TRIBES OF CANADA. 181 



father or head of the household and others ; the law of vengeance and its 

 restrictions ; the tribal jurisdiction in matters, especially criminal, concern- 

 ing the community ; the holding of land and other property by the tribe 

 or family ; personal property, and the rules of its distribution and 

 inheritance ; the law of hospitality. The observer will in such inquiries 

 frequently come into contact with forms of primitive communism, not 

 only as to food, but as to articles of use or wealth, such as guns and 

 blankets, which are of great interest, as is the custom of obtaining social 

 rank by a man's distributing his accumulated property in presents. All 

 these matters, and far more, are, as a matter of course, known with legal 

 accuracy to every grown-up Indian in any tribe which is living by native 

 rule and custom. In the rapid breaking-up of native society it remains 

 for the anthropologist at least to note the details down before they are 

 forgotten. 



Religion and. Magic. — The difficulty of getting at native ideas on these 

 matters is far greater than in the rules of public life just spoken of. On 

 the one hand the Indians are ashamed to avow belief in notions despised 

 by the white man, while on the other this belief is still so real that they 

 fear the vengeance of the spirits and the arts of their sorcerers. It is 

 found a successful manner of reaching the theological stratum in the 

 savage mind not to ask uncalled-for questions, but to see religious rites 

 actually performed, and then to ascertain what they mean. The funeral 

 ceremonies afford such opportunities ; for instance, the burning of the 

 dead man with his property among Rocky Mountain tribes, and the practice 

 of cutting off a finger-joint as a mourning rite, as compared with the actual 

 sacrifice of slaves for the deceased, as well as the destruction of his goods 

 among the Pacific tribes. Here a whole series of questions is opened up — 

 whether the dead man is considered as still existing as a ghost and coming 

 to the living in dreams, of what use it can be to him to kill slaves or to cut 

 off finger-joints, why his goods should be burnt, and so on. In various 

 parts of America it has long been known that funeral rites were connected 

 with the belief that not only men but animals and inanimate objects, 

 such as axes and kettles, had surviving shadows or spirits, the latter 

 belief being worked out most logically, and applied to funeral sacrifices, 

 by the Algonkins of the Great Lakes. It is probable that some similar 

 train of reasoning underlies the funeral ceremonies of the Rocky Moun- 

 tain and Columbian tribes, but the necessary inquiries have not been 

 made to ascertain this. More is known of the native ideas as to the 

 abode of the spirits of the departed, which is closely connected with the 

 theory of Souls. There is also fairly good information as to the pre- 

 valence in this region of the doctrine, only just dying out in the civilised 

 world, of diseases being caused by possession by devils, that is, by the 

 intrusion of spirits into the patient's body, who convulse his limbs, speak 

 wildly by his voice, and otherwise produce his morbid symptoms. Books 

 of travel often describe the proceedings of the sorcerer in exorcising these 

 disease-demons ; and what is wanted here is only more explicit information 

 as to the nature of such spirits as conceived in the Indian mind. Even 

 more deficient is information as to how far the ghosts of deceased rela- 

 tives are regarded as powerful spirits and propitiated in a kind of ancestor- 

 worship, and the world at large is regarded as pervaded by spirits whose 

 favour is to be secured by ceremonies, such as sacred dances, and by 

 sacrifices. The images so common on the Pacific side are well known as 

 to their material forms, but anthropologists have not the information 



