[sapir] social organization OF THE WEST COAST TRIBES 365 



will inherit only some, probably the lesser, privileges. In the course 

 of time, as their relationship to the heads of the family or clan becomes 

 more and more remote, they must be expected to sink lower and lower 

 in the general social scale, and there is no doubt that a large pro- 

 portion of the commoners are to be considered as the unprivileged 

 kinsmen of the nobles. This is no doubt the attitude of at least some 

 of the Indian tribes, such as the Nootka, among whom such a notion 

 of the relation between the classes of society as we find among the 

 castes of India, say, is certainly not found. There is no doubt, how- 

 ever, that with the growth of power attained by the chiefs and with 

 the increasing remoteness of the ties of kinship binding them with 

 most of the commoners, the chasm between the two would gradually 

 widen. The slaves must be left out of account in this connection. 

 They do not enter into the genealogical framework of the tribe, but 

 seem to a large extent to have been recruited from captives of war. 



Indian legend, at least among the Nootka and Kwakiutl, generally 

 conceives of the village community as having grown up out of the small 

 family immediately connected in the remote past with a legendary 

 ancestor. All the members of the village community are therefore 

 looked upon as direct descendants of a common ancestor and must 

 therefore, at least in theory, bear definite degrees of relationship to 

 one another. Whether or not the members of a village are actually 

 so connected is immaterial, the essential point being that even in 

 those tribes where there is no clan organization properly so-called, 

 there_is, nevertheless, a distinct feeling of kinship among all or most 

 of the members of each of its village communities. This is borne out 

 by the fact that individuals are taught to address each other by 

 certain terms of relationship, even where the appropriateness of such 

 terms is not obvious to them.. Thus, a man well advanced in years 

 might call a little child his older brother, for the reason that they are 

 respectively descended from ancestors who stood to each other in that 

 relation. Naturally intermarriages would bring about intercrossings 

 of all sorts, and in course of time the more remote degrees of relation- 

 ship would be forgotten and new ones, brought nearer home by more 

 recent marriages, take their place. 



Let us suppose that a village community is strictly homogeneous 

 in structure, that is, contains no members that cannot count their 

 descent in either the male or female line from the common ancestor. 

 It is obvious that this state of affairs cannot last indefinitely. The 

 accidents of war will doubtless bring it about that sooner or later 

 some neighbouring village community, that has suffered considerably 

 at the hands of an enemy and that finds itself subject to extermination 

 at their hands, will seek protection from the first village community 



