vi PREFACE

opportunity for the publication of the manuscript as a whole.
I am deeply grateful to the Canadian Social Science Research
Council for making this possible, and to their anonymous
readers, many of whose suggestions I have utilized in the final
draft, and to the University of Toronto Press for their sub-
sidization.

Though the lapse of time between the field investigation
and the appearance in print of the results is unfortunate, it is
a matter of less importance than would be the case in other
branches of science. To the student of social institutions, the
significant fact is that a certain group of homo sapiens has
practised certain customs, whether in 1922 or 1948 is imma-
terial. Furthermore, the aim of the investigation was to collect
information on Bella Coola life as it was defore the breakdown
of their own culture, and for this, data collected between 1922
and 1924 are more valuable than those acquired today. The
manuscript was prepared from my extensive field notes, when
the material was still fresh in my mind, and, with the exception
of this preface and a few minor changes in editing,’ is presented
as it was written in 1924-26.

When studying the Bella Coola, I was definitely under the
influence of the English school of anthropologists. To Haddon,
Rivers, and Seligman, to name the outstanding English field
anthropologists of their generation, the study of a native tribe
meant an expedition to some far-off corner of the world, to a
people about whom little was known. A return visit was im-
probable; aboriginal customs were passing away, hence it was
the duty of the field investigator to learn and to record every
scrap of information. I remember Dr. Haddon’s insistence that
it might be some trivial detail which would throw light on
culture distribution, and hence, perhaps, aid in the recon-
struction of tribal or racial movements, or in theoretical studies
of the development or degeneration of institutions. Character-
istic of this school, too, was an intense human interest in field

’Especially in changing the number of years which has elapsed since various
incidents took place.