Further Results of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition

Abstract

THE recently published memoirs of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition maintain the excellence both as to matter and illustration of the previous volumes. Mr. Swanton¹ gives an account of the religious ideas and social organisation of the Haida Indians, who, to the number of about 600, occupy the towns of Skidegate and Masset, Queen Charlotte Islands. The whole Haida stock is divided into two “clans,” the Raven clan and the Eagle clan, the significance of the division being purely social. Each is strictly exogamic, a Raven man being compelled to marry an Eagle woman, and an Eagle man a Raven woman, while the children always belong to their mother's clan. A man of the Raven clan was reckoned in that clan wherever he might go, and the Ravens among whom he settled were his uncles, elder and younger brothers, sisters and nephews. The members of the opposite clan were frequently considered downright enemies. “Even husbands and wives did not hesitate to betray each other to death in the interest of their own families. At times it almost appears as if each marriage were an alliance between opposing tribes; a man begetting offspring rather for his wife than for himself, and being inclined to see his real descendants rather in his sister's children than in his own” (p. 62).