230 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
The social organization of the Tlingit is founded upon matriarchy and 
consists of a number of clans or totemic families grouped under two exoga- 
mous phratries which intermarry and supplement each other upon all occa- 
sions of ceremony. In the building of the home, the erection of the heraldic 
or mortuary column (totem pole), the preparation and cremation of the 
dead, and the mutilations of the body, the service is invariably performed 
by those of the opposite party, and the potlatch is given in payment 
for these acts; but underlying the more social function is a deep religious 
fervor in the worship of ancestry and the communion with the dead. The 
food and tobacco that are cast into the fire become a spiritual administra- 
tion to those who are ever present though invisible, and with each offering 
there is called the name of one departed who receives honor in proportion 
the gift. 
The peculiar food and climatic conditions throughout this area have 
not only rendered this wholesale giving possible but also have encouraged 
its practice and development to an enormous degree. Here life is com- 
paratively easy. The wonderful annual run of salmon, trout, herring and 
eulichon, the steady supply of halibut, cod, whale, seal and shell fish, the 
generous yield of berries, roots and green things, as well as the great forests 
of cedar, spruce and hemlock, and pure water ever at hand, combine to 
offer the greatest advantages with the least exertion. Along this Pacific 
coast there are but two seasons. During the milder and pleasanter period 
from April until October the food supply is procured, and the remainder of 
the year, not extreme in temperature but wet and stormy, becomes a time 
of leisure. These leisure months from October till May are devoted to 
social pleasures and ceremonies among which the potlatch holds the first 
place. 
Preparations for the function may occupy much of a lifetime in the 
accumulation of material to be given away, and the invitations are personally 
delivered months or a year in advance. The guests, including generally 
two tribes or village clans, if living at a distance get ready as soon as they 
return from the summer camps. The canoes are repainted and decorated, 
dancing paraphernalia is unpacked and gone over, a sufficient food supply 
for the travel is put aside, and a programme of dances and songs with which 
to honor their host is arranged. Households embark together in the lar- 
gest canoes and as in war parties they are under the direct supervision of 
their chief. They travel and camp together and practice their dances 
and songs en route. From time to time the host receives notification of 
their progress and when they are within one camp of their destination, he 
sends out envoys and food to them. The final day when they embark, the 
canoes are assigned their places with the chief leading. The men and women 
