6 
MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 19. 
black-bear as ordinary crests, but as specific ‘ * high” crests only 
insofar as his clan had the definite privilege of using one or both 
of them. The right to use a crest can be transmitted only within 
the limits of matrilinear inheritance. However, it is sometimes 
customary among the Nass River Indians for a chief to lend his 
main crest to be shown at his son’s potlatch, without his son 
thereby securing the right to the regular use of the crest. There 
is also a tendency to reserve the use of the most important 
crest or crests to the head chief and his titular successor, the 
other members of the clan being permitted to use only the minor 
crests. Thus, among the feitwd'na'fyt' 1 , the second family of the 
Wolf phratry of the feit'anwc'^kc, the two main crests, the 4 ’prince 
black-bear” and the lo''ayo‘'q ' crest, were reserved, as far as 
represententation at potlatches was concerned, for the chief 
(Chief Derrick himself) and his chief sororal nephew, while the 
minor crests of the family, such as the “underground people,” 
“doorkeepers,” and “stone platform,” could be used either by 
himself or his inferiors of the same family. It goes without 
saying that a special crest of a family can not be used by a 
member of another family of the same or another phratry, even 
if the latter is superior in rank. According to Mr. Woods, one 
cannot even pay a neighbour a visit and wear a garment decor- 
ated with a minor crest without justifying the use of such regalia 
by the expenditure of property at the house visited. In view of 
these circumstances I think it may be more proper to speak of an 
individual having the right to use a crest than owning a crest. The 
latter terminology implies, or may be taken to imply, a mystico- 
religious relation between the individual and the crest-being, 
an implication which it seems safest to avoid. Connected with 
the attitude of jealous respect towards the crest is the custom 
of not showing more than one crest at a single potlatch. 
There seems to be a marked tendency for each clan to show 
its crests in some more or less definitely circumscribed concrete 
form, different from that in which the same crests are exhibited 
by other fa lilies. In quite a number of cases this tendency is 
reflected in the formal name of the crest, the name of the crest 
animal being modified by some descriptive epithet. Thus, as 
we have already seen, the wolf crest occurs also in the special form 
