146 ASSINNIBOINE AND SASKATCHEWAN EXPEDITION. 



mouth of Eed Eiver. The family consisted of a young 

 Indian, his wife, and two little children. The father was 

 born on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, and had never tra- 

 veled east of that lake. After a few words had passed 

 between him and a half-breed Ojibway from Lake Supe- 

 rior (Wigwam), they shook hands and proclaimed them- 

 selves related to one another. Each belonged, as I was 

 informed, to the tribe whose " totem " or insignia was the 

 "Bear," and having by some means, which Wigwam 

 could not or would not explain, ascertained this fact, they 

 spoke to one another as brothers. A similar relationship 

 was established between Wigwam and another Ojibway 

 on Moss Eiver, solely, as he assured me, because he and his 

 newly found friend belonged to a tribe whose " totem " 

 was the " Bear." The Cree half-breeds told me that in 

 their communication with the Ojibways of Lake Winni- 

 peg, and farther to the west, this recognition of relation- 

 ship not unfrequently took place between individuals who 

 met for the first time, and who were born and lived 

 in districts far apart. In connection with this singular 

 kind of consanguinity and the bearing it may possibly 

 have upon the origin of the Indian races, I append the 

 following extract from an ethnological paper, read at the 

 Montreal Meeting of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science * : - — 



a It lias occurred to me, after a careful examination of the system of con- 

 sanguinity and descent of the Iroquois, that we may yet be able, by means 

 of it, to solve the question whether our Indian races are of Asiatic origin. 

 Language changes its vocabulary not only, but also modifies its grammatical 

 structure in the progress of ages ; thus eluding the inquiries which philo- 

 logists have pressed it to answer ; but a system of consanguinity once 

 matured and brought into working operation is, in the nature of things, 

 more unchangeable than language ; — not in the names employed as a vo- 

 cabulary of relationship, but in the ideas which underlie the system itself. 



* By Lewis H. Morgan, Esq., of Rochester, N. Y. 



