124 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920
The evidence appears to me rather the other way. If Dr. Farrand's and my own observations are correct, namely, that the prevailing line of descent among the northern Kwakiutl tribes is matrilineal, then it seems to me plausible to assume that in marriages between men of those tribes and Tsimshian or Haida women, privileges were imported which the foreign born women could transmit according to the customs of their own i:ribes only to their own children and through their daughters to their grandchildren, but not to the children of their sons. The conditions of life on the coast indicate that the possession of such privileges was felt as a great social advantage to which the owners would cling. Since the Kwakiutl do not permit transfer from a man to his sister's sons, it would seem natural that the characteristic method found in mythological tales of the acqui- sition of Tsimshian privileges and which is even nowadays practised in the potlatch, should be adopted. This method is the transfer of privileges by gift from the husband's family to the wife's family. When a northern woman marries a Kwakiutl man, her son would be entitled to her crests. Since according to the property rights of the Kwakiutl, he could not transmit them to his sister's children, the possibility presented itself, to transmit them as a present to the family of his daughter's husband and to secure in this way the transmission to her children. As stated before, the mythological data indicate that this custom must have prevailed among the northern tribes. 1 Perhaps I have myself unwittingly contributed to the disagreement of opinion in regard to the historical develop- ment of the social organization of this area. When I stated that in my opinion maternal descent was later than paternal, I did not point out specifically the difference between the type of maternal descent as usually conceived and that prevailing on the Northwest coast, because it seemed to me obvious that we have no trace of the characteristic succession from uncle to sister's son, but only a somewhat cumbersome transmission of privileges from daughter to daughter in which the husband is the bearer of name and privileges.
1 Leonhard Adam has called attention to the discrepancy between tradition and modern customs to which I referred above. Ztschr. f. vergl. Rechtswissenschaft, vol. xxx (1913): p. 193; also Boas, " Tsimshian Mythology," Thirty-first Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 528.
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