I have in my published vocabulary of the native language, under each family name, given its derivations as far as I could collect them from the statements of the natives.
But as each family adopts some animal or vegetable as their crest or sign, or Kobong, as they call it, I imagine it more likely that these have been named after the families than that the families have been named after them.
SECOND COINCIDENCE.
A certain mysterious connection exists between a family and its kobong, so that a member of the family will never kill an animal of the species to which his kobong belongs, should he find it asleep; indeed he always kills it reluctantly, and never without affording it a chance to escape.
This arises from the family belief that some one individual of the species is their nearest friend, to kill whom would be a great crime, and to be carefully avoided.

Similarly a native who has a vegetable for his kobong may not gather it under certain circumstances and at a particular period of the year.

The North American Indians have this same custom of taking some animal as their sign.

Thus it is stated in the Archaeologia Americana:* "Each tribe has the name of some animal.

Among the Hurons the first tribe is that of the bear; the two others of the wolf and turtle.
The Iroquois nation has the same divisions, only the turtle family is divided into two, the great and the little." And again, in speaking of the Sioux tribes:** "Each of these derives its name from some animal, part of an animal, or other substance which is considered as the peculiar sacred object or medicine, as the Canadians call it, of each band respectively." To this we may add the testimony of John Long, who says,*** "one part of the religious superstition of the savages consists in each of them having his totem, or favourite spirit, which he believes watches over him.