682 jREPOiiT— 1898. 



by any means money enough in existence to pay tlicm, and the result of 

 an attempt of all the creditors to call in their loans results in disastrous 

 panic, from which it takes the community a long time to recover. 



It must be clearly understood that an Indian who invites all his 

 friends and neighbours to a great potlatch, and apparently squanders 

 all the accumulated results of long years of labour, has two things in his 

 mind which we cannot but acknowledge as wise and worthy of praise. 

 His first object is to pay his debts. This is done publicly and with much 

 ceremony, as a matter of record. His second object is to invest the fruits 

 of his labour so that the greatest benefit will accrue from them for himself 

 as well as for his children. The recipients of gifts at this festival receive 

 these as loans, which they utilise in their present undertakings, but after 

 the lapse of several years they must repay them with interest to the giver 

 or to his heir. Thus the potlatch comes to be considered by the Indians 

 as a means of insuring the well-being of their children if they should be 

 left orphans while still young. It is, we might say, their life insurance. 



The sudden jibolition of this system — which in all its intricacies is very 

 difficult to understand, but the main pomts of which wei-e set forth in the 

 preceding remarks — destroys therefore all the accumulated capital of the 

 Indians. It undoes the carefully planned life-work of the present gene- 

 ration, exposes them to need in their old age, and leaves the orphans 

 unprovided for. What wonder that it should be resisted with vigour Ijy 

 the best class of Indians, and that only the lazy should support it, because 

 it relieves them of the duty of paying their debts 1 



But it will be said that the cruel ceremonies connected with some of 

 the festivals make their discontinuance necessary. An intimate know- 

 ledge of the Indian character leads me to consider that any interference 

 with these very ceremonials is unadvisable. They are so intimately con- 

 nected with all that is sacred to the Indian that their forced discon- 

 tinuance will tend to destroy what moral steadiness is left to him. It 

 was during these ceremonies that I heard the old men of the ti'ibe exhort 

 the young to mend their ways ; that they held up to reprobation the young- 

 women who had gone to Victoria to lead a life of shame ; and that they 

 earnestly discussed the question of requesting the Indian Agents to help 

 them in their endeavour to bring the young back to the good, moral life 

 of old. 



And the cruelty of the ceremonial exists alone in the fancy of those 

 who know of it only by the exaggerated descriptions of travellers. In 

 olden times it was a war ceremony, and captives were killed and even 

 devoured ; but with the encroachment of civilisation the horrors of the 

 old ceremonies have died out. An old chief has been heard addressing 

 his people thus : ' How lovely is our time ! No longer do we go in fear 

 of each other ; peace is everywhere. No longer is there the strife of 

 battle ; we only try to outdo each other in the potlatch,' meaning that 

 each tries to invest his property in the most profitable manner, and 

 particularly that they vie with each other in honourably repaying their debts. 



The ceremony of the present day is no more and no less than a time 

 of general amusement, which is expected with much pleasure by young 

 and old. But enough of its old sacredness remains to give the Indian, 

 during the time of its celebration, an aspect of dignity which he lacks at 

 other times. The lingering survivals of the old ceremonies will die out 

 quickly, and the remainder is a harmless amusement that we should be 

 slow to take away from the native, wlio is struggling against the over- 

 powerful influence of ci^dlisation. 



