30 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIX. No. 467 



Wan or Wanaka, the red fox, which is the symbol of the 

 sun-halo." Not all souls, however, attain the home of the 

 spirits. Of Kmukamtch we are told, "He provides for man- 

 kind whom he has created, but does not tolerate any contra- 

 vention of his will; for he punishes bad characters by chang- 

 ing them into rocks or by burning them." Thus we find 

 that the Klamath mythology, like the Greek, though in many 

 parts childish, absurd, and inconsistent, had yet, in a certain 

 degree, reached the important point where religion is com- 

 bined with morality. 



Mr. Gatschet promises, in a future volume, some further 

 information concerning the social usages of the Klamath na- 

 tion. But he adds a few weighty sentences on this subject, 

 which deserve special consideration. "The Klamath In- 

 dians," he tells us, "are absolutely ignorant of the gentile 

 or clan system as prevalent among the Haida, Tblingit, and 

 the Eastern Indians of North America. Matriarchate is also 

 unknown among them; every one is free to marry within or 

 without the tribe, and the children inherit from the father." 

 According to certain theories which have been proposed of 

 late years by writers of much eminence, the Klamath nation 

 would appear from these facts to have reached a very high 

 degree of social advancement. It has emerged from the 

 primal and bestial condition of promiscuous intercourse, 

 euphemistically and absurdly styled " communal marriage;" 

 it has passed through the "gentile" organization, and the 

 matriarchal and exogamous stages, and has attained the 

 loftiest grade of the most highly civilized European nations. 

 The recent admirable work of Mr. Edward Westermarck on 

 the " History of Human Marriage" has disclosed the unsub- 

 stantial character of the bases on which these fantastic 

 theories were reared. But to get to the root of the matter 

 something further should be said, or rather has been already 

 said, and may here be repeated. In the volume for 1889 of 

 the British Association for the Advancement of Science, I 

 have expressed, in some "Remarks on North American 

 Ethnology," introductory to the excellent report of Dr. Franz 

 Boas on the Indians of British Columbia, the conclusions to 

 which — in common, I think, with most American ethnolo- 

 gists — I have been led by a prolonged study of the tribes 

 of this continent and a comparison of them with other tribes 

 and races. As these conclusions have since been stronarly 

 reinforced by the results of the careful investigations of Mr. 

 Gatschet and Dr. Boas, as well as by the comprehensive 

 studies of Dr. Brinton, as set forth in his valuable works on 

 "Eacesand Peoples" and "The American Eace," I may 

 venture to add a summary of them as a fit completion of the 

 present review. 



I haveurged that " in our studies of communities in the earli- 

 est stage we must look, not for sameness, but for almost end- 

 less diversity, alike in languages and in social organizations. 

 Instead of one 'primitive human horde' we must think of 

 some three or four hundred primitive societies, each beginning 

 in a single pair or group of children bereft of their parents, 

 and left, in the early settlement of a country, isolated from 

 all kindred and neighbors, each pair or group expanding 

 in their posterity to a people distinct from every other, alike 

 in speech, in character, in mythology, in mode of govern- 

 ment, and in social usages. The language may be monosyl- 

 labic, like the Khasi and the Paloung; or agglutinative in 

 various methods, like the Mantshu, the Nahuatl, the Eskimo, 

 and the Iroquoian; or inflected, like the Semitic and the 

 Sahaptin. Its forms may be simple, as in the Malayan, the 

 Maya, and the Haida, or complex, as in the Aryan, the 

 Basque, the Algonkian, and the Athapascan. The old theo- 



retical notion, that the more complex and inflected idioms 

 have grown, in the process of ages, out of the simpler agglu- 

 tinative or monosyllabic forms, must be given up as incon- 

 sistent with the results of modern researches. 



In like manner, we find among primitive communities 

 every form of government and of social institutions — mon- 

 archy among the Mayas and the Natchez, aristocracy among 

 the Iroquoians and the Tshimsians, democracy among the Al- 

 gonkians and the Shoshonees, descending almost to pure, 

 though perhaiDS peaceful, anarchy among the Athapascans, 

 the Eskimos, and various other families. In some stocks we 

 find patriarchal (or ' paternal ') institutions, as among the 

 Salish and the Algonkian; in others, matriarchal (or 'mater- 

 nal '), as among the Iroquoian and the Haida. In some the 

 clan-system exists; in others it is unknown. In some exog- 

 amy prevails; in others endogamy. In some, women are ' 

 honored, and have great influence and privileges; in others 

 they are despised and ill-treated. In some, wives are ob- 

 tained by capture, iu others by courtship, in others by the 

 agreement of the parents. All these vai'ious institutions and 

 usages exist among tribes in the same stage of culture, and 

 all of them appear to be equally primitive. Tbey are sim- 

 ply the forms in which each community, by force of the 

 special character of its people, tends to crystallize. 



We frequently, however, find evidence, if not of inter- 

 nal development, at least of derivation. Institutions, creeds, 

 and customs are in many cases adopted by one stock from 

 another. As there are now ' loan words ' in all languages, 

 so there are borrowed beliefs, borrowed laws, and borrowed 

 arts and usages. Then, also, there are many mixed commu- 

 nities, in which, through the effect of conquest or of intermar- 

 riages, the physical traits, languages, or institutions of two or 

 more stocks have become variously combined and intermin- 

 gled. In short, the study of human societies in the light of their 

 classification by linguistic stocks is like the study of material 

 substances in the light of their classification by the chemical 

 elements. In each case we find an almost infinite variety of 

 phenomena-, some primitive and others secondary and com- 

 posite, but all referable to a limited number of primary con- 

 stituents: in chemistry, the material elements; in ethnology, 

 the linguistic stocks. Such is the result of the latest inves- 

 tigations, as pursued on the Western Continent, where for 

 the first time a great number of distinct communities, iu the 

 earliest social stages, have been exposed to scientific obser- 

 vation, with all their organizations and workings as clearly 

 discernible as those of bees in a glass hive." 



It is to be hoped that the Bureau of Ethnology and the 

 British Association will continue their valuable researches 

 apd publications on this subject until all the distinct aborigi- 

 nal stocks which survive in western North America, from 

 Alaska to Lower California, have been as thoroughly studied 

 and their physical and mental traits, languages, mythologies, 

 and social systems made known as completely as this can 

 now be done. Prom a comparison of the results of these in- 

 quiries two important gains to science may be confidently 

 anticipated. (1) It will be made evident — as the facts 

 already adduced in this review sufficiently show — 

 that the physical differences in the varieties of men 

 can he adequately explained by climatic and other 

 local influences, and thus all ground for affirming the ex- 

 istence of several human species, evolved from different 

 sources, will disappear. (2) The " Aryocentric " theory of 

 linguistics and ethnology, which, during the past seventy 

 years, has perverted and hampered those sciences as seriously 

 as the geocentric theory for many centuries perverted and 



