Affinity of Polynesian and Columbian Social Systems

(16) But resemblances must go much deeper before we can assume any primeval community or proximity of race. It is in the social and political system first of all that we must search for kinship. In a country whose whole method of existence is based on mother-right we have two great divisions of these British Columbians with a strong patriarchal tendency. The Thlinkeets in the north, though exogamous or inclining to choose wives from another division of the race, pass on their hereditary nobility through the males. The Nootkas towards the south tend to the patriarchate, though there are traces of mother-right; the chiefship is hereditary by the male line. And though, as in Polynesia, polygamy prevails in both tribes amongst the well-to-do, the women have great influence. The Haidahs, between the two, follow the American practice of the matriarchate; their rank is nominally hereditary, chiefly by the female line, and the chieftainship often passes to a woman. But, as all along the coast and as in Polynesia, there is. a certain democratic electiveness about all their page 56honours, depending on skill and feats in war and practical life.

(17) The tribes are independent in both regions; but the village community rules the social life; hence the great houses in which all the families of the village pass most of their life, in winter at least. In both regions the women prepare the fish and game for winter use, manufacture cloth and clothing, and increase the stock of food and cook it, whilst the men make the houses, boats, and implements, snare birds, catch fish, and engage in war. Women have nothing to do with religion, and yet they are much respected by the men, and some of them are looked up to as seers and sorceresses; in married life before the advent of the whites they were chaste; yet in order to limit the families, abortion and infanticide were not uncommon; they had to bring forth their children in a place away from the household, as they were considered unclean; the marriage ceremony was very slight, although all other occasions in life were surrounded with solemn rites, and divorce was easy.

(18) War was one of the main functions of social coordination; for war was the outcome of vendetta, and supplied the slaves that were so essential to the primitive warrior and the primitive household. When prisoners were not suitable for slaves, they were generally slaughtered; nor were they ever tortured by the Maoris or the British Columbians, in spite of the likeness of the latter to the American Indians; nor were they ever scalped; their heads were cut off as war trophies, as in Polynesia. The methods of warfare were much the same in the two regions; the warriors alike preferred ambush and stratagem to open fighting. And hence they were in both regions masters in the art of choosing an impregnable position for their villages and of fortifying it; they placed them on some cliff overhanging a river or the sea, and carefully guarded the approaches to it by stockades and entrenchments.