SOME KITES AN TOTEM POLES 



365 



The social organization of the Kitksan is 

 founded on matriarchy, and consists of four 

 exogamic clans composed of households, each 

 under its immediate house head, but all ac- 

 knowledging the general authority of a hered- 

 itary chief who presides over the councils in 

 the discussions of all family affairs. The clan 

 is the unit of political and racial life. Indi- 

 viduality without the clan does not exist. 

 The act of one is assumed by all, and a very 

 exact code of well-formulated laws governs the 

 relations of these bodies to one another. The 

 members of a clan may marry in any of the 

 other three divisions. Descent being in the 

 mother's line, rank and property always re- 

 main in the clan. The brother or the mater- 

 nal nephew succeeds to the chieftainship and 

 the wife of the deceased retains her position 

 in the household only by marrying the suc- 

 cessor. 



The clans take their names from their prin- 

 cipal emblems, the wolf, the eagle and the 

 raven or frog, except in the case of the Kish- 

 hash — "people of the fire-weed " — who are 

 represented by two or more equally important 

 animal motives. A number of subsidiary em- 

 blems are claimed by each clan and others of 

 less importance belong to households only. 



In Kitwingach is a very elaborately carved column 

 of the Kanhada clan in which the frog crest is repre- 

 sented to the exclusion of the raven. At the base is a 

 bear figure in the position of having been strangled in 

 the noose of the twisted rawhide snare; above this is a 

 frog, then a story of the household is told by the canoe 

 with three heads : — In a Haida raid on the village a 

 woman of the family was carried away to the Queen 

 Charlotte Islands. Her captor treated her so cruelly 

 that she killed him and cut off his head, and making 

 her escape in a canoe with her child she crossed to the 

 mainland and finally reached her home. The canoe 

 typifies her escape, and the three heads represent in 

 succession the mother, the child and the husband. 

 Above the canoe is a human figure holding a frog and 

 seated on the head is the small owl mardex (which is a 

 clan emblem) holding a frog 



