Note 113 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

On the other hand, there is a circumstance tending to accelerate the growth of slavery on the Pacific Coast. These tribes form a somewhat homogeneous group, and have much intercourse with each other. So we may suppose that some of them, that were not yet in such an economic state as spontaneously to invent slavery, have begun to keep slaves, imitating what they saw among their neighbours; the more so, as the slave-trade made this very easy. For our group is not quite homogeneous. The picture we gave of their highly developed economic life does not equally apply to all these tribes. The summer and winter dwellings of the Similkameem are rather primitive. They depend on hunting for a large portion of their food. Trade and industry, property and wealth are not mentioned; it is only stated that at a later period they had horses and cattle113. Niblack tells us that the Tsimshian sold slaves to the Tlinkits and interior Tinneh; but “the last-named had no hereditary slaves, getting their supply from the coast”114. No more particulars are given; but we may suppose that among these interior Tinneh slavery existed in a rather embryonic state, and would not have existed at all but for the slave-trade. The early ethnologists overrated the influence of imitation and derivation of social institutions; but we must not fall into the other extreme and underrate it. An institution may be derived and thereby its growth accelerated, of course within restricted limits.