This supposition may appear at first sight highly hypothetical; plausible perhaps, but nothing more; yet there are other facts which in considerable measure support it. There is the belief that the spirit part of a child which is killed, or dies in infancy, comes to life again by and by, and undergoes incarnation in the same woman.[621] In this belief we see that the ties of individual kinship, once established, do not give way after death, and that they determine the rebirth of the child. This belief may be a special case of a more general one, viz. that rebirth in all cases is determined by ties of individual kinship established in a former life. There is yet another series of beliefs leading more directly to the same conclusion. I mean the well-known fact that white men were considered to be returned dead relatives, and treated accordingly. We know that there were several cases in which the life of a man was saved by this belief. The best known is the case of Buckley, a run-away convict, who lived about thirty years among the natives. He was treated with the greatest kindness and tenderness by his "relatives."[622] The same tokens of affection are related to have been shown to a settler in the vicinity of Perth by his "parents," who merely to see him would travel more than sixty leagues through a country which was in parts dangerous.[623] In another place we are informed that a white convict identified with a dead relative was presented with a piece of land which "belonged to him by right." Similar statements are numerous.[624] In order to establish the relevancy of these facts to our problem, it may be remarked that the most important features of the beliefs in question are (1) that white men are identified with a given dead individual, (2) that they get then _ipso facto_ a definite place in the tribe, in the local group, and--what is most important as regards the present question--in the individual family. The belief that people after death become white may account for the identification of white men with the dead. But the fact that in ever so many cases a white man was identified with a certain individual, and became thereby entitled to a social position, implies some additional beliefs. One of these beliefs is the idea of rebirth or reincarnation that we have established above in another way. The other collective idea, which must be assumed in order to explain the ease and readiness with which feelings of affection as well as worldly goods were bestowed upon these alleged relatives, is that in the ordinary form in which dead men return to this life, _i. e._ in reincarnation by birth, each individual brings with him, or her, full social position, including individual relationship. And this is the point at issue in the present discussion. The fact that white men were recognized as dead relatives compels us to assume that children--who were considered as reborn men--were also accepted as relatives.