118 FATHER MORICE ON 



representatives writers ou Coast Indians iisnally call " chiefs." To eastern ears these two 

 words cannot fail to evoke ideas suggestive of dissimilar dignities ; and my reason for 

 avoiding the latter is that it is misleading to most people unacquainted wàth western 

 aboriginal sociology. Previous to the Carriers' contact with white men, a chief as Ihe 

 first officer, tlte leader of a place, never had an existence here, and those investigators Avho 

 are conversant with the languages and habits of the maritime Indians will bear me out in 

 my assumption that, there as here, genuine chiefs were but recently unknown, and, in 

 many places, have remained so to this very day.' It sometimes happens, indeed, that one 

 notable will obtain more influence and become more prominent than his colleagues ; but, 

 as I have said elsewhere," he was never but jirior inter pares. 



To come now^ to the origin of the notables as a social class. I find my best 

 evidence of the derivation of that institution from Tsimshian sociology in the very 

 ceremonies which accompanied the creation of such a dignitary. On that occasion, when 

 attendant young men had extended in a line the dressed skins they were going to distribute, 

 one of them would exclaim, addressing the assembly : " These he will give aw^ay as a 

 fee for his enthronization," upon which the whole crowd w^ould break forth in loud 

 acclamations: '' Sunuqel. ! .om^/r/eï .' " Now, what does that w^ord mean? A.sk a dozen or 

 more Carriers, and probably they will be unable to satisfy you. And no wonder, for that 

 word is exotic to their language, since it is nothing else than the Ssmayil of the Tsimshian* 

 noted by Dr. Boas as being used by those Indians when they address the sun. It means 

 " wealthy" or " chief through wealth." This borrowing of a foreign word would seem 

 as if it were intended to emphasize the extraneousness of the custom itself and quite 

 unnecessary for any other purpose, since the Carriers possess themselves a term {mulili) 

 identical in meaning. 



After the new notable had made his grand distribution of skins he would give an 

 immense repast to the crowd in trough- like carved vessels which w'ere called 'hnk, a word 

 w^hich evidently had not a different origin from that of I's^vkh, used by the Kitikson, to 

 designate a like vessel. It may also be noted that those utensils w^ere in many cases 

 either imported or incrusted with haliotis shells brought from the sea-coast. 



Then, to honour the new nobleman and signify his accepted accession to his 

 predecessor's rank and title, the hitter's hereditary song was taken up and repeatedly 

 executed by the assembly, Now, again, what was that song ? Merely a Tsimshian air 

 with badly pronounced Tsimshian words ! " 



' Dr. Boas (Fifth Report, p. 34), thougli not plainly asserting it, seems, however, to be aware of this peculiarity 

 ■when he says: " The last [i.e. the chiefs] form a group by themselves, the members of the class forming tlie 

 liighest vobilily." Horatio Hale is more explicit in hi.s prefatory notes on the Doctor's Sixth Report : " As 

 Dr. Boas informs us, there are in all the tribes three distinct ranks— the chiefs, the middle clas.s ami the common 

 people— or, as they might perhaps be mure aplhj sty hd, no?)/<s, burgesses and r.abblo. The ncibles form a caste. 

 Their rank is hereditary." (Sixth Rep., p. 4.) A. P. Niblack seems to rocognizo the existence (in modern times 

 at least) of a local chief with several petty chiefs. (" The Ind. of tlio West Coast," etc., p. 250 et seq.) But what he 

 says of the rivalries between chiefs of the name place leads me to infer that, even among the Tliiiu'il, of whom he 

 treats at greatest length, there was no real " chief" in onr sense of the word. 



As for the middle cla^s of Dr. Boas, so f.ir as 1 am aware, it was here in an embryotio state, and, had it 

 not been for the advent of European civilization, it might have grown to as prominent a position in tho Carrier 

 sociology as it enjoyed in that of most of the Coast tribes. 



- " The West. Dent's," p. 144, Proc. Can. Inst., Oct., 1889. 



■' Upon the information of several Indians who knew no better, I slated three years ago (" The West. Déués," p. 



