[sapir] social organization OF THE WEST COAST TRIBES 357 



Iroquois Confederacy that harassed these tribes. Similarly, there 

 is no doubt that the relatively greater degree of social complexity 

 obtaining ajnong certain Athabaskan hunting tribes of British Colum- 

 bia, such as the Carrier and Chilcotin, when contrasted with their 

 more simply organized kinsmen to the north and east, was more or 

 less directly due to imitation of social features found among the Coast 

 tribes that neighboured them to the west. 



This note of warning is here sounded because it is too often as- 

 sumed by facile system-makers that the social organization of a people 

 can be more or less directly inferred from its economic conditions. 

 With all reservations, however, I believe it is fairly clear that the 

 peculiar environment of the West Coast tribes of British Columbia 

 had much to do with the development of their rather complex social 

 life. Not so much that these conditions explain in every case the 

 actual forms of organization that we find to prevail among these 

 tribes, as that they seem to furnish a general stimulus for the growth 

 of relatively settled communities with intricate social ramifications. 

 In the first place, the Indians of the West Coast had abundant means 

 for subsistence at their disposal. The streams teemed with various 

 kinds of salmon throughout the year, and the sea offered a great 

 variety of edible sea-mammals and invertebrates. It was thus 

 possible for a rather large group of people to make a comfortable 

 living in a quite restricted bit of coast territory. Access to the sea 

 at a few points and the control of a few streams up which the com- 

 munity could follow the salmon at their spawning periods were all 

 that^as needed to insure ample means of subsistence for all. Further- 

 more, the unusually great rainfall of the coast country made it neces- 

 sary for the Indians to house themselves in substantial shelters, and 

 at the same time gave them the ready means wherewith to fill this 

 want. I refer to the heavily wooded character of the coast. The 

 inexhaustible supply of readily worked wood, particularly the red 

 cedar, gave the Indians all that was necessary for the building of large 

 houses. In a word, the West Coast Indians were fishermen and sea- 

 mammal hunters who, unlike the Eskimo, were able to thrive within 

 relatively restricted territories, and who dwelt for the greater part of 

 the year in permanent villages consisting of a long row of large wooden 

 houses strung along the beach. Most of these houses were large 

 enough to provide not merely for a family in the narrower sense of the 

 word, but for a large house group forming a family in a larger sense 

 and dominated by one man who, on grounds of descent, took 

 precedence of all others in the house group. The village com- 

 munity with its definite number of house groups may, then, be ex- 

 pected to be the most fundamental social unit in this area and, indeed, 



