Now, as the Indians of this part of America are divided
into totem clans, of which the Wolf clan is one of the principal,
and as the members of each clan are in the habit of wearing some
portion of the totem animal about their person, it is probable that
the prince belonged to the Wolf clan, and that the ceremony
described by Jewitt represented the killing of the lad in order that
he might be born anew as a wolf, much in the same way that the
Basque hunter supposed himself to have been killed and to have come
to life again as a bear.
This conjectural explanation of the ceremony has, since it was first
put forward, been to some extent confirmed by the researches of Dr.
Franz Boas among these Indians; though it would seem that the
community to which the chief's son thus obtained admission was not
so much a totem clan as a secret society called Tlokoala, whose
members imitated wolves. Every new member of the society must be
initiated by the wolves. At night a pack of wolves, personated by
Indians dressed in wolf-skins and wearing wolf-masks, make their
appearance, seize the novice, and carry him into the woods.
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