337 
sea-lions, and sea-otters among the islands off the coast. Neverthe- 
less all three groups depended mainly on the incredible numbers of 
salmon that migrated each year up the rivers, and all three gathered, 
towards the end of winter, at the various oolakan fishing stations 
along the Nass. One would have expected that the abundance of 
fish and game, and the cpiantities of berries and edible roots that 
could be gathered during the summer months, would have relieved 
the people from all anxiety concerning their food supply; yet occa- 
sionally they exhausted all their reserves in February, and suffered 
great ]U'ivation until the oolakan appeared in the Nass river about 
the beginning of April. 
Although there wore only two exogamic phratries among the 
Ilaida and Tlinkit,^ the Fsimshian had four, subdivided as usual 
into clans and “houses.” The Tsimshian proper and the Gitksan, 
i)ut not the Niska apparently, distinguished four strata in the popu- 
lation instead of three, viz., slaves, commoners, nobles, and. 
abo\'e the nobles, a class of ruling or “ royal ” families who 
strictly jjrohibited marriage outside of their own order. The Haida 
had the germs of this “royal ” class in their social system, inasmuch 
as the heads of certain “houses” that ranked higher than others 
in their clans tended to intermarry in order to keep their property 
and rights within the same set of people.- But among the two sub- 
tribes of the Tsimshian, owing perhaps to the greater authority of 
the chiefs, such intermarriages became obligatory, so that noble and 
“ royal ” families were as sharply separated as nobles and commoners. 
In their customs and beliefs, however, the Tsimshian differed but 
little from the Haida. Tliey held similar feasts and potlatch es for 
eveiy inpiortant event, such as the erection of a new house-post or 
the assumption of an ancestral name; and they had the same faith 
in a supreme sky-god whom they occasionally approached in prayer, 
but more often neglectefl in favour of lesser supernatural powers 
believed to influence the food supply, or to have rendered assistance 
to their forefathers in the past. Aledicine-men practised their art 
in the same way. and acquired their status either by purification and 
fasting, as among the Haifla. or else by sickness and subsequent 
recovery, their recovery being regarded as proof that they had power 
1 But See footnote p. 144. 
2 Tlui.« a Haida chief, like tlie chads of the Tsimshian, cointnonly married Id.s cousin, i.e,, iiis 
father’.s sister's daughter, who bclongerl, of course, to another i)hratr 3 '. 
