360 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



gradually losing the place that properly belongs to him on the score 

 of inheritance. We read, indeed, of cases in which men of lower rank 

 have by dint of reckless potlatching gained the ascendency over their 

 betters, gradually displacing them in one or more of the privileges 

 belonging to their rank. Among the West Coast Indians, as in 

 Europe, there is, then, opportunity for the unsettling activities of the 

 parvenu. 



A necessary consequence of the division of the village community 

 into a number of large house-groups is that, associated with each chief, 

 there is, besides the immediate members of his own family, a group 

 of commoners and slaves, who form his retainers. The slaves are 

 immediately subject to his authority and may be disposed of in any 

 manner that he sees fit. The commoners also, however, while pos- 

 sessing a much greater measure of independence, cannot be considered 

 as unattached. Everything clustered about a number of house- 

 groups headed by titled individuals, and in West Coast society, as in 

 that of mediaeval feudalism, there was no place for the social free- 

 lance. If the number of commoners and slaves connected with a 

 chief's family grew too large for adequate housing under a single 

 roof, one or more supplementary houses could be added on to the 

 first; but they always remained under its sphere of influence. In this 

 way we can understand how even a group of houses forming an out- 

 lying village might be inhabited entirely by people of low birth, who 

 were directly subject to one or more chiefs occupying houses in the 

 mother village. From this point of view the whole tribe divides into 

 as many social groups as there are independent chiefs. 



The rank of chief or noble is connected in most cases with a 

 certain degree of personal power, but real communal authority is 

 naturally vested in only the highest chief or chiefs of the village, and 

 then not always as absolutely as we might be inclined to imagine. 

 Even the highest chief is primarily always associated with a particular 

 family and house, and if he exercises general authority, it is not so 

 much because of his individual rank as such, as because the house 

 group that he represents is, for one reason or another, the highest in 

 rank in the community. In legendary terms this might be expressed 

 by saying that the other groups branched off from or attached them- 

 selves to that of the head chief. 



Fully as characteristic of high rank as the exercise of authority 

 is the use of a large variety of privileges. The subject of privileges 

 among the West Coast Indians is an exceedingly complex one and 

 cannot be adequately disposed of here. Privileges include not only 

 practical rights of economic value, such as the exclusive or main right 

 to a particular fishing ground or the right to receive a certain part of 



