ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 363 



in the story of the origin of the sqoi'aqi crest or totem given below. There 

 can be little doubt, I think, that these latter gave rise to the secret 

 societies and fraternal organisations of the Kwakiutl and northern Salish 

 tribes ; while the totems of the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshean sprang 

 from the former. This I think becomes clear from a study of the social 

 organisation of the various Salish tribes. 



Among the N'tlaka'pamuQ of the interior, whose social organisation 

 is of the loosest and simplest kind, the crest, as such, was unknown. 

 Pictographic, and even plastic, representations of their su'lia were by 

 no means rare. The former were quite commonly found on personal 

 belongings, such as utensils, weapons, clothes, ifec, but they never appear 

 to have assumed the character of the crest ; they are merely decorative. 

 When we descend the river and reach the Halkome'lEm tribes, the per- 

 sonal and family crest and fraternal emblems begin to appear. A carved 

 or painted representation of an individual's su'IIa is found on the posts 

 of his house and on his family corpse-box, as well as upon other of his 

 personal belongings. It has now become identified with the owner, and 

 the owner with it. It is the mark or crest by which he and his are dis- 

 tinguished from others of the tribe. I have already observed that the 

 adoption of the communal dwellings must have deeply affected the social 

 life of those who inhabited them ; and here, I think, we may see an 

 instance of this. In communistic societies the individual is more or less 

 lost sight of in the common family or brotherhood ; but this is contrary 

 to the spii'it of the Indian character. Under the communistic organisa- 

 tion of the Tcil'Qe'uk it became necessary, then, to adopt some artificial 

 means by which the personal and family units might retain their individu- 

 ality in the tribal economy ; and as pictorial representation of a person's 

 su'lia was commonly employed to decorate his belongings, this, as a 

 personal and family mark, may well have been adopted to supply the 

 means. At any rate, however we may regard the association and identi- 

 fication of the individual with the representation of his su'lia to have 

 come about, we see that among the Halkome'lEm tribes the idea of 

 a personal distinguishing crest has been evolved from the earlier and 

 simpler pictographic emblem of the su'lia. From the personal and family 

 crest is but a step to the clan crest or totem ; for the totems of our 

 northern tribes are little more than symbols of unity, binding together by 

 common possession the members of a gens or clan. The clan is but a 

 collection of families ; and when from any cause or purpose an association 

 of families or gentes took place, it remained only for the strongest and most 

 influential of these to absorb or adopt the rest, according to Indian custom, 

 to give rise to the clan crest or totem. That this was done, and that 

 amalgamation of groups of families or communities took place among the 

 northern tribes, we may clearly gather from the abandonment of so many 

 of their former village sites, as well as from their own traditions. Within 

 these clans every gens had its own totem or totems or personal crests ; 

 and that these are, among the northern tribes, commonly animals does 

 not in the least militate against the view of their origin here taken. It 

 is but a higher, more advanced form of the su'liaism of the interior Salish 

 and the Eskimo tribes to the north of them, among whom the animal 

 su'lia is also commonly, though not exclusively, found, and is quite in 

 accordance with the natural evolution of primitive philosophy. On both 

 sides they are surrounded by tribes in the stages of fetishism or su'liaism, 

 some of which have risen to the concept of the personal or family crest or 



