SIAM
765
SIAM
tended the ripening and gathering of the berries, which
were crushed and dried for winter. The house was
the semi-subterranean circular lodge, built of logs
and covered with earth, common to all the interior
Salishan tribes of British Columbia. The temporary
summer lodge was of poles covered with mats or inter-
woven branches. As in other tribes the sweat-house
for steam baths on ceremonial occasions was an ad-
junct of every camp. The ordinary weapons were the
bow, lance, stone axe, and club. Body armour of
tough hide or strips of wood was worn. They made
no pottery, but excelled in basket making and the
weaving of rush mats. Dug-out canoes of cedar were
used for river travel.
The tribal organization was loose, without central authority. Village chiefs were hereditary, and the people were divided into "nobles", commons, and slaves, the last being prisoners of war and their de- scendants, perhaps purchased from some other tribe. There were no clans and descent was paternal. The "potlatch" or great ceremonial gift distribution was not so prominent as among the coast tribes, but there were elaborate ceremonies in connexion with marriage, mourning for the dead, and puberty of girls. The dead were buried in a sitting jxjsition, or if the death occurred far from home the body was burned and the bones brought back for burial. Horses and dogs were killed at the grave, and the slaves of the dead man were buried alive with the body, after which a funeral feast was spread, for the mourners, above the grave. Women were isolated at the menstrual per- iod, and twins, being held uncanny, were secluded to- gether with the mother until old enough to walk. Their religion was animism, each man believing him- self under the sp(>cial protection of some animal spirit, which had appeared to him in visions during his puberty vigil. Most of their important myths cen- tred about the coyote as the great transformer and culture hero.
Heathenism and old custom are now extinct, the entire tribe being civilized and officially reported Catholic, with the excciition of one band of forty-five attached to the Aiiglicnn Church. In addition to the flourishing Oblate mission at Williams Lake, another under the same auspices at Kamloops is equally suc- cessful. Besides their own language, they use the Chinook jargon for intertribal communication. The official report (1908) for the Williams Lake band will answer for all: "The general health has been good. Their dwellings are clean and premises kept in a good sanitary condition. Farming, stock raising, teaming, hunting and fishing are the principal occupations. They have good dwellings and stables, a number of horses, cattle anfl pigs. They are well supplied with all kinds of farm iiiij)lenients. Most of the children have attended the Williams Lake industrial school. They are industrious and law-abiding and making good progress. A few are fond of intoxicants when they can procure them. As a rule they are moral".
Bancroft, //i^■^■ Brit. Columbia (San Francisco, 1857); Boas, Sixth Rept. on Northwestern Tribes of Canada in Brit. Ass. Adzan. Sci. (London, 1890): Ann. Rep. Can. Dept. Ind. Aff. (Ottawa); Dawson, Notes on the Shuswap in Proc. and Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, IX, ii (Montreal, 1892); Morick, Catholic Church m Western Canada (2 vols., Toronto, 1910); Pili.ing, Bibliography of the Salishan Languages, Bulletin Bur. Am. Eth. (Washington, 1893).
James Moonby.
Siam, Vicariate Apostolic of. — Siam, "the land of the White Elephant" or the country of the Muang Thai (the Free), is situated in the south-eastern corner of Asia, lying between 4° and 21° north lat. and 97° and 106° east long. It is bounded on the north by Tong-king and the southern states of Burma, on the east by Annam and Cambodia, on the south by the Gulf of Siam and the Malay Peninsula, and on the west by the Indian Ocean, and thus forms a buffer state between French and British possessions.
From north to south Siam measures in length some
1130 and in breadth some 508 miles, covering an area
of some 242,580 square miles, about the size of Spain
and Portugal, and is divided into 41 provinces. Its
population is estimated to be between six and nine
million inhabitants, of whom a third are Siamese, a
quarter Chinese or of Chinese descent, whilst the rest
is made up of Burmese, Cambodians, Laotines,
Malays, Pegus, Tamils, and Europeans. The Sia-
mese are described as a polite, hospitable, obliging,
light-hearted, pleasure and feast-loving people, as
clever gold and silversmiths, possessing great taste
for art and skill as painters, decorators, and carvers
in wood, stone, plaster, and mosaic. They are,
however, not fond of work nor is it necessary for them
to be so, for they have few wants for housing and food,
fire and clothing, and mother earth has endowed them
with a perpetual summer and a fertile soil, yielding
rich harvests of rice and pepper, whilst the mountains
abound in teak and yellow wood, box and ebony,
sapan and padoo. The chief commerce is in silk,
which is carried on along the Menam River and its
numerous affluents and canals. The state religion
is Buddhism, which, according to the earliest annals,
was introduced as far back as 638. With perhaps
t!:e exception of Tibet, there is no country in the East
where Buddhism is so intensely interwoven with the
life of a nation from the king to the lowest subject,
and where the talapoins or bonzes play such an im-
portant role in the national life, so that every male
subject, the king and the crown prince not excepted,
has to live in a Buddhist monastery and join the ranks
of the talapoins for a short period. Up to a few years
ago these Buddhist monasteries were the only es-
tahlislunonts for education, which were restricted to
the male population. Though Buddhism is the
a(!knowledged religion of the state and towards it
the Government allows some .$20,000,000 yearly,
all other religious creeds are granted full liberty of
worship, nor does any one incur disabilities on account
of his religious beliefs. The king, being the highest
"supporter of the doctrine", stands at the head of the
religion and appoints all religious dignitaries, from
the four Sotndet Phra Chow Rajagana (archpriests)
downwards.
Little is known about the early history of the coun- try. It was first called Siam by the Portuguese (1511) and other nations who came into contact v/ith it. Before Ayuthia or Yuthia was established as the capital (1350), the country was divided into a num- ber of separate principalities bound together by race, language, religion, and customs. A continual migra- tion from the north to the south took place till in 1350 a branch of the Thai race established itself at Ayuthia. The history of Siam as a dominant power begins with Phra-Chao Utong Somdetcsh Pra Rama Tibaudi I (1351-71) and it was ruled by thirty-four kings (1351-1767) belonging to three different dynasties. During the inroads of the Burmese (1767-82), Ayuthia was destroyed and the new Siamese capital was established at Bangkok, "the Venice of the East ". As early as 151 1 the Portuguese made a commercial treaty with Siam and subse- quently the Japanese, the Dutch, and the British entered into commercial relations with it. But the present flourishing commercial condition only dates from 1851, when King Mongkut opened Siam to Europeans and to European trade, favoured European factories, and made himself acquainted with Western civilization. After his death in 1868, his eldest son, Chulalongkorn (d. 1910), succeeded as the fortieth ruler of Siam, and during a reign of forty-two years shov/ed himself one of the greatest and most farseeing princes who ever sat on an Asiatic throne, a king of European education and manners, to whose energy and initiative Siam owes much of her prosperity^, railways, telegraphs, army (20,000 men), navy (37
