Oral tradition transmits history, literature, law and other knowledges verbally across generations, without a writing system, and forms the basis for most of the Squamish people's history. The passing on of this history is regarded as the "duty of responsible elders." Those who possessed a great deal of knowledge were regarded as aristocrats. Like other Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Squamish have stories of the "Transformer" brothers who went around the world transforming things and people. Other stories transmitted through generations are of ancestral characters doing things or involved in events. Oral tradition and history, including new events, continues to be passed on in this form to this day.