358 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



in spite of all complications that have been brought about among 

 some of the tribes, the legends of the Indians themselves and the 

 study of the facts involved seem, in practically every case, to argue 

 back to the village community as the primary social unit. 



The social groupings that prevail among the West Coast Indians 

 may be classified under four heads: groupings according to rank, 

 groupings based on kinship, local groupings, and ceremonial or ritual- 

 istic groupings. The last of these may hardly be considered as coming 

 within the scope of social organization; but among certain of the 

 West Coast tribes, more particularly the Kwakiutl, they have become 

 so intimately connected with the social structure that it is difficult 

 to exclude entirely a reference to ceremonial groups. These four 

 types of social units naturally intercross in a great many different 

 ways, so much so that it becom.es no easy matter to present a thor- 

 oughly intelligible picture of the social structure of a typical West 

 Coast tribe. 



Before examining each of these types of organization somewhat 

 more closely, it will be well to acquaint ourselves briefly with the 

 distribution of the tribes we are considering. The northernmost of 

 the tribes generally included under the term of West Coast Indians, 

 are the Tlingit, who occupy the long strip of coast forming the pan- 

 handle of southern Alaska. They are subdivided into a large number 

 of distinct tribes, among the better known of which are the Yakutat, 

 Chilcat, and Sitka Indians. These speak a number of mutually 

 intelligible dialects forming a linguistic unit that is only very remotely 

 related to certain other American languages. The Haida Indians 

 occupy the Queen Charlotte Islands and part of the Prince of Wales 

 archipelago north of these. These Indians formerly inhabited a large 

 number of villages distributed along the coasts of the Islands; but 

 are now almost entirely reduced to the two villages of Skidegate and 

 Massett in the Queen Charlottes, and a number of villages in the 

 Prince of Wales archipelago, occupied by the Kaigan,!. South of 

 the Tlingit, on the mainland, are the Tsimshian, who inhabit the 

 region of Nass and Skeeiia rivers. They are divided into three 

 closely connected dialectic groups which form one of the isolated 

 linguistic stocks of America, at least so far as is at present known. 

 The Haida and Tlingit languages, on the other hand, can be shown to 

 be distantly related. South of the Tsimshian are the Bella Coola, 

 in many respects a peculiar tribe, that form an isolated offshoot of 

 the great Salish family which has representatives as far south as 

 Columbia river. The northwestern, northern, and northeastern 

 shores of Vancouver Island and the mainland opposite are occupied 

 by a large number of tribes that are closely connected linguistically 



