123 
important characters — on geographical propinquity in this case and a 
feeling of kinship, on correspondences in dialect, and on the presence 
or absence of certain arts, beliefs, and practices. But it should be 
clearly understood that they were not tribes in the usual acceptation 
of that word; they were not coherent bodies of people united under 
a common rule, like the tribes of Africa or Polynesia; they were 
merely groups of scattered bands, very similar in speech and customs, 
that had no central governing authority, but through close neighbour- 
hood and intermarriage possessed many interests in common. Among 
the Eskimo even loosely-defined tribes such as these were lacking, 
because the bands were dispersed over so wide an area that they 
lived in complete ignorance of all but their nearest neighbours; and 
yet they so closely resembled eacli other that one could travel hun- 
dreds of miles in certain regions witliout noticing any clearly marked 
differences. During the last fifty to seventy-five years, however, there 
has been not only a marked decline in the population, but a tendency 
for the remaining bands to concentrate at certain strategic points for 
the fur trade, so that we may now legitimately group the Eskimo also 
into tribes, if we wish, naming them from their geographical loca- 
tions, or, in two rather exceptional cases, i from peculiar features in 
their culture. 
The bands, as we have seen, were composed of families of near 
kindred, and kinship was reckoned in slightly varying w’ays, all differ- 
ent from our own Indo-European system. Few of the more prim- 
itive tribes in eastern or northern Canada, however, stressed the male 
line of descent to the exclusion of the female, or the female to the 
exclusion of the male-; they followed, that is to say, neither the patri- 
linear nor the matrilinear systems of organization, although there 
was a tendency, natural perhaps among migratory hunting peoples 
where the wives nearly always went to live with their husbands, to 
pay rather more attention to the male line. Marriage depended on 
blood relationship only,^ and often occurred within the bands; but 
many were so small that they were practically exogamous units. The 
1 The Copper Eskimo of the Coronation Gulf area, who, unlil a few years ago, used native copper 
instead of stone for their tools and weapons, and the Caribou Eskimo between Hudson bay and 
Great Slave anrl Great Bear lakes, who, unlike other Eskimo, never hunted seals on the coast but 
depended almost entirely on caribou. 
~ The Miemae, prtssii>l.\- too tlie Malecite, and most of the Ojibwa had exogamous clans with descent 
in the male line. The Ojibwa north of lake Superior had similar clans with descent in the female 
line. 
3 This statement does not take into consideration .special relationships brought about by adoption, 
or, among the Eskimo, by the practice of exchanging wives. 
