TLINKIT VILLAGES 



45 



and scrambled for by them. The festal occasion may 

 last for several days or a week, and when it is at an end 

 the Indians go their several ways, leaving the giver of 

 the potlatch a poor man. When the next one takes place, 

 however, he recovers a portion of his wealth, and after a 

 few more he is better off than ever — for the time being. 

 Canoes may be given away at these feasts, or guns and 

 ammunition, and the greater the gift the more is due the 

 giver, when those who have been his guests themselves 

 give potlatches. 



Xfyft 



DESERTED VILLAGE, CAPE FOX. 



The villages occupied by these Indians are permanent. 

 The houses are made of rough planks, split or hewn from 

 large trees — to the southward the cedar and to the north- 

 ward the spruce — and roofed with shingles split from 

 the trees, though in olden times the roofs were more 

 commonly of planks similar to those used in the construc- 

 tion of the walls. These houses, which are often forty feet 

 square, and sometimes even larger, were usually without 

 floors in old times, though the bed places which run 

 around the walls were raised a foot or two from the 

 ground, and were formed of planks hewn smooth by a slow 

 process of chipping, which must have been very laborious. 

 Often gravel is brought into the house, and the floor 



