'' 4 sBbentaias.

4 | REPORT— 1890.

Fuego, where apparently a climate and mode of life almost exactly
similar have produced the same effect on the people and their language.
Anyone who will compare my above-quoted description with the well-
known and amusing account given by Darwin of the speech of the
Fuegians will be struck by the resemblance. He writes, in his ‘ Voyage
of the “ Beagle ”’’ : ‘The language of these people, according to our notions,
scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has compared it
to a man clearing his throat; but certainly no Huropean ever cleared his
throat with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds.’ Yet the
Fuegian language has been found to be, in its grammar and vocabulary
(like the languages of our north-west coast), highly organised, and
abounding in minutely expressive words and forms.’

South of the Columbia River the coast becomes nearly bare of islands.
Harbours are few. The purely fishing tribes are no longer found. ‘The
milder climate of California, resembling that of Southern Italy, begins to
prevail, and the soft Italian pronunciation pervades all the languages,
except those of a few Tinneh septs which have wandered into this region
from the far north, and still retain something of the harshness of their
original utterance.

Not merely in their modes of speech, but also in more important
points, do the northern coast tribes show a certain general resemblance,
which, in spite of radical differences of language, and doubtless of origin,
seems to weld them together into one community, possessing what may
fairly be styled a civilisation of their own, comparable on a small scale to
that of the nations of Eastern Asia. Dr. Boas is the first investigator
whose researches have extended over this whole region. Other
writers have given us excellent monographs on separate tribes. The
work of Mr. Sproat on the Nootka, and those of Dr. Dawson on the
Haida and Kwakiutl may be particularly mentioned. But a general
description was needed to bring out at once the differences and the
resemblances of the various stocks, and to show the extent to which
similar surroundings and long-continued intercommunication had availed
to create a common polity among them.

Two institutions which are, to a greater or less extent, common to all
the coast tribes, and which seem particularly to characterise them and to
distinguish them from other communities, may here be specially noted.
Both appear to have originated in the Kwakiutl nation, and to have
spread thence northward and southward. These institutions are the
political secret societies and the enstom of ‘potlatch.’ Secret societies
exist among other Indian tribes, and probably among all races of the
globe, civilised or barbarous. But there are perhaps no other communi-
ties in which the whole political system has come to be bound up with
such societies. As Dr. Boas informs us, there are in all the tribes three
distinct ranks—the chiefs, the middle class, and the common people—or,
as they might perhaps be more aptly styled, nobles, burgesses, and
rabble. The nobles form a caste. Their rank is hereditary ; and no one
who was not born in it can in any way attain it. The nobles have dis-
tinction and respect, but little power. The government belongs mainly
to the ‘burgesses,’ who constitute the bulk of the nation. They owe their
position entirely to the secret societies. Any person who is not a member
of a secret society belongs to the rabble, takes no part in the public

' See Fr. Miiller, Grundriss von Sprachwissenschaft, vol. iv. p. 207; and Max
Miiller’s Science ef Thought, p. 437.