798 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
think it wrong to take all the young from the nest at any one time. It is "evidently due to this taboo," says Dr. Fewkes, "that the perpetuation of the species in Tusayan is effected."® Among the Seri Indians the pelican is the bird held most in consequence, for it forms one of the chief articles in the native dietary. The principal haunt and only known breeding-place is an island in t^e Gulf of California. Now the pelican, a fleshy, sluggish creature is almost defenseless when attacked on its sleeping- grounds. If hunted indiscriminately the bird would be the easiest source of a food supply. "Yet it survives in literal thou- sands to patrol the waters of all Seriland in far-stretching files and veers seldom out of sight in suitable weather." Dr. McGee explains the phenomenon by referring to religious ceremonies and taboos among the Seri, the result of which is to protect the fowl during the breeding season.®
For our present purpose it is unnecessary to multiply illustra- tions. These communal taboos, whatever their origin, do have the practical result of preserving the animals and plants most important in the tribal economy. Through their operation, crops, are allowed to mature, fruits to ripen, beasts of the forest and fish in the sea to increase and multiply. Prohibitions so emi- nently useful must have arisen very early in the social life of man. As such they place a restraint on individual selfishness for the benefit of the group as a whole. They have played a part, per- haps a noteworthy part, in deepening the sense of community obligation and in strengthening the concept of community prop- erty. Truly harvest-home and Thanksgiving have a remote but by no means dishonorable ancestry.
To turn now to the influence of superstition on private prop- erty. It is probable that we shall never be able even with the aid of the scientific imagination completely to retrace those early steps by which there arose the social recognition of an individual's right to own that which he had in actual possession.
- Fewkes, "Property-Right in Eagles among the Hopi," Atner. Anthropolo-
gist, n. 8. (1900), II, 702.
'Seventeenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Atner. Ethnol. (Washington, 1898), Part I, 191.*
