94 BRITISH COLUMBIA.

by offerings; thus presenting a strong contrast to the Interior Salish and tribes
of Athapaskan origin, who ceremonially offered the first fruits of fish and berries
to the “ Giver of Gifts.” The Kootenay had a definite Sun worship, in which
offerings and prayer played their parts. Before a Council tobacco was put in a
pipe and offered three times to the Sun, then turned three times horizontally, the
offering being thereby made to the four points of the compass.

CONCEPTIONS OF SOULS AND A FUTURE LIFE.

It was generally believed that all human beings possessed souls, which could
escape from the body even during life, either in dreams or during serious sickness,
but could be recaptured by a shaman and restored to the body of the owner. The
transmigration of souls, but not through animal forms, was also accepted; the
soul of a deceased person being born again as an infant of the same ‘‘ gens”’ or
clan. The Kootenay believed that their dead went to the Sun and would return
to earth at some future date, occasional festivals being held at Lake Pend-
d’Oreille to await this anticipated event. ‘The Tsimshian distinguished between
the fates of nobles and commoners. ‘The former passed after death to a pleasant
land, but the future of the latter was spent in a gloomy limbo, though free from
suffering.

“The Tahltan sang chants over the dying,’ writes D. Jenness, ‘ to guide
their souls on their journey to the Land of Sunrise,” and others were sung over
the funeral pyre, one of which runs as follows :—

“Yana-a. This way is the trail.
This way it goes. Don’t miss it.
The trail goes right to the east
Where the Sun rises.”

TABOOS AND THEIR SCOPE. z

“Taboos”? permeated every phase of tribal life. They have been defined as
“prohibitions imposed by supernatural beings (either directly or through their
mouth-pieces, the shamans) on the performance of certain specified acts, the con-
sumption of certain foods, on the use of certain words, at all times, or at a particu-
lar season of the year or at specified epochs of life.” Owing to the confusion in
untutored minds between coincidences and consequences, many of these ‘‘ taboos ”
originated in fear; others were imposed by shamans to increase their power over
a credulous community; others were possibly prompted by observation of un-
accounted-for consequences. Many were trivial, others degrading; some were
cruel, others unreasonable; but some possessed value, hygienic or legal, as, for
example, when they related to the seasons when fish or animals might or might
not be eaten; forbade contact with dead bodies, or throwing fish-bones to dogs.

‘There were “ positive’ taboos, resulting from an order of the mythical guar-
dian spirit to eat certain parts of an animal’s body in specified circumstances;
others were “ negative’ in their prohibitions of the use of certain foods or actions.
Some taboos could be lifted later in life or changed by special commands of these
“manitous,” through their mouth-pieces, the shamans, or in visions or dreams.

Many taboos were concerned with adolescence and with marital relations;
they safeguarded property rights or enforced respect for tribal boundaries. Sev-
eral referred to salmon, the use of which at the same time as meat was forbidden;
and to eat fresh salmon was prohibited to those who had had contact with birth,
death, puberty, or who were otherwise ceremonially unclean. The Lillooet
claim that salmon are particularly susceptible to the influence of dead bodies, and

‘