[sapir] social organization OF THE WEST COAST TRIBES. 363 



customary for medicine men to be organized on the basis of rank, 

 such ranking not necessarily depending entirely on the individual 

 supernatural powers displayed by the medicine men as on the fact 

 that they are entitled by inheritance of medical lore to such and such 

 honours. 



As already indicated, the subject of privileges is a vast one, and a 

 complete enumeration of all the economic, ceremonial, and other priv- 

 ileges of one high in rank would take a long time. To a certain extent 

 a man has the right to split his inheritance, in other words, to hand 

 down to one of his sons or nephews, as the case might be, certain privi- 

 leges, to another certain others. Very often such a division is reducible 

 to the association of privileges with definite localities, a point which is 

 of primary importance in connection with the village community as the 

 fundamental unit in West Coast organization. Thus, if one by the 

 accidents of descent has inherited according to one line of descent a 

 number of privileges associated with village A, in which he is no longer 

 resident, and a number of other privileges according to another line of 

 descent originally associated with village B,in which he is resident, 

 it would be a quite typical proceeding for him to bring up one of his 

 heirs, say the one naturally highest in rank, to assume control of one 

 set of privileges, a younger heir of the other. If the privileges origi- 

 nally connected with village B, let us say, tend to give one a higher 

 place in the tribe than those connected with village A, the chances are 

 that the first heir will be induced to take up his permanent residence 

 in that village, while the transmitter may take the younger heir down 

 to the more distant village and take up residence for a period in order 

 to introduce his heir, as it were, to the privileges designed for him. 

 In other words, there is a more or less definite tendency to connect 

 honours with definite villages and, indeed, no matter how much 

 rights of various sorts may become scattered by the division of in- 

 heritances, by the changes of residence due to inter-marriage, and by 

 other factors which tend to complicate their proper assignment, a 

 West Coast Indian never forgets, at least in theory, where a parti- 

 cular privilege originated or with what tribe or clan a particular right, 

 be it name, dance, carving, song, or what not, was in the first instance 

 associated. In short, privileges are bound to the soil. 



This brings us to what I believe to be one of the mopt fundamental 

 ideas in the social structure of these Indians, that is, the idea of a 

 definite patrimony of standing and associated rights which, if possible, 

 should be kept intact or nearly so. Despite the emphasis placed on 

 rank, I think it is clear that the individual as such is of very much less 

 importance than the tradition that for the time being he happens to 

 represent. The very fact that a man often bears the name of a re- 



