ate,
but no doubt exists that they do.

"In British Columbia, when the fishing season commenced and the
fish began coming up the rivers, the Indians used to meet them
and speak to them. They paid court to them and would address them
thus: 'You fish, you fish; you are all chiefs, you are; you are all
chiefs.' Among the Northas when a bear is killed, it is dressed in a
bonnet, covered with fine down, and solemnly invited to the chiefs
presence." [155] And there are many other instances. [156] Savages
had no clear realisation of death, and they did not think that the
life of the animal was extinguished but that it passed to them with
the flesh. Moreover they only ate part of the life. In many cases
also the totem-animal only appeared at a certain season of the year,
in consequence of the habit of hibernation or migration in search
of food, while trees only bore fruit in their season. The savage,
regarding all animals and plants as possessed of self-conscious life
and volition, would think that they came of their own accord to give
him subsistence or life. Afterwards, when they had obtained the idea
of a soul or spirit, and of the survival of the soul after death,
and when, on the introduction of personal names, the personality
of individuals could be realised and remembered after death, they
frequently thought that the spirits of ancestors went back to the
totem-animal, whence they derived their life. The idea of descent
from the totem would thus naturally arise. As the means of subsistence
increased, and especially in those communities which had domesticated
animals or cultivated plants, the conception of the totem as the
chief source of life would gradually die away and be replaced by the
belief in descent from it; and when they also thought that the spirits
of ancestors were in the totem, they would naturally abstain from
eating it. Perhaps also the Australians consider that the members
of the totem-clan should abstain from eating the totem for fear of
injuring the common life, as more advanced communities abstained from
eating the flesh of domestic animals. This may be the ground for the
rule that they should only eat sparingly of the totem. To the later
period may be ascribed the adoption of carnivorous animals as totems;
when these animals came to be feared and also venerated for their
qualities of strength, ferocity and courage, warriors would naturally
wish to claim kinship with and descent from them.

66.