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planned a raifling expedition invited neighbours to participate; but 
co-operation was always voluntary, unless the leader of the warring 
village had temporarily made himself so powerful that he could 
imjiose his will on others. There was no subordination of villages 
to a tribal organization, no tribes at all, strictly speaking, along this 
entire coast, although the convenience of the term has led to its fre- 
quent application to groups of neighbouring villages whose inhabi- 
tants spoke the same dialect. The broader divisions by language 
(Kwakiuth Tsimshian, etc.) bore little relation to political organiza- 
tion, the only definite unit being the village. 
Let us then examine the village more in detail. Its inhabitants 
were grouped into “ houses ”, each belonging to a certain clan ; and 
the “ houses ” contained people of three grades — nobles, commoners, 
and slaves. The nobles, of course, were the aristocracy, theoretically 
able to deduce their ancestry from the mythical founder of the 
“ house ”, They, too, were graderl according to rank, and their exact 
position in the scale made visible by the seats they occupied at feasts 
(“ potlatches ”), and the order in which they received invitations and 
presents. Kach position carried not only a title, but many other 
privileges such as the ownership of a certain fish-weir or strip of 
hunting territory, the right to sing a certain song, execute a certain 
dance, carve or paint a particular design on the pillars and walls of 
the dwelling, or erect a s])ecial form of totem-pole. In every “ house ” 
there seem to have been more titles than people qualified by birth 
to fill them; ana since no one could assume a title without giving a 
feast and making a lavish distribution of gifts, a man who wished 
to take out a new or higher “ patent of nobility ” could often choose 
between several. But the dignity of a title depended largely on the 
magnificence of the feasts given by its previous incumbents, so that 
by accumulating wealth and enlisting the support of relatives, a com- 
parative parvenu could sometimes revive an ancient title that had 
temporarily lapsed, and raise himself above his fellow nobles. This 
happened most frequently after white colonization began, and the 
natives were able to acquire money and trade goods by working in 
canneries and other places; but even in pre-European times it was 
always a source of unrest, like the struggles for j:ilace and power in 
more civilized countries. Normally, the successor to a nobleman’s 
