SOCIAL ORGANIZATION 119

and other relatives of their mothers as to their fathers. It
was taken as a matter of course that a child had full rights in
the village of his mother, and from her, as from her relatives,
he likewise received various prerogatives. Thus each child was
a member of a bilateral social group. From actual residence
in his father’s village he tended to be more intimately associated
with him and his brothers than with his mother’s relatives,
but this did not prevent him from visiting at the home of the
latter, where he was received as a member of that village.
Through the bestowal of prerogatives by his mother and
the members of her family, his relationship with them was
further emphasized. Such a child was, in fact, a full member
of two groups.

When the members of the second generation married and
begot children, each of these could have been a member of four
groups; that of his father’s father, father’s mother, mother’s
father, and mother’s mother. The Bella Coola believe that
there were approximately forty-five groups of first settlers,
corresponding to the forty-five towns, and it is obvious that
if the system of intermarriage had continued for a few gener-
ations, a man would have been a member of each of these first
groups. They assume that their first ancestors came to this
earth far more than a few generations ago, and yet at the
present time no one claims to be a descendant of more than
eight of these first groups, and most claim descent from only
two or three. In part this can be explained by forgetfulness,
though a Bella Coola would regard this statement as heresy.
The residence of a man in the village of his father has tended
to emphasize relationship with the ancestral group that first
populated that village, and there is no doubt that actual rela-
tionship, through the mother, with the members of other
groups must in many cases have been forgotten in the course
of generations. The term ancestral family, munmunts, is used
in this monograph to designate those individuals who believe
themselves to be descended from one of the first groups that
populated this earth.