373 
In the earliest times the 'rahltan seem to have been divided into 
six loosely organized bands, each of which claimed a definite district 
as its hunting territoiy. Close contact with the Tlinkit, however, 
led to their adoption of the social organization of these neighbours, 
and long before the coming of Europeans the six bands hafl become 
six clans grouj^ed into two exogamous phratries, llaveii and Wolf. 
Descent then followed the female line, and succession to the chief- 
tainship of each clan normally passed from a man to his sister’s son. 
The thi'ee clans in eacli phratry still regarded themselves as local 
units in a sense, and claimed tlie ownership of definite districts, but 
in practice they pooled their hunting territories. The clans of the 
Raven ])hratry, on the strength of a rather fantastic myth, ])ostu- 
lated a common descent for themselves, and their phratry conse- 
ciuently ranked a little higher than the Wolf, whose clans could 
claim no common origin. About 1750, or a little later, tlie Wolf 
phratry developed a fourth clan through the marriage of a Tahltan 
Indian with a Tlinkit woman of Wrangell who belonged to a clan not 
previously represented among tlie Tahltan. This new clan could 
count several families a century later, but it never built a long com- 
munal house beside the six communal houses erected by the other 
clans on the Tahltan river, and it recognized as its chief, not one of 
its own members, but the head man of the clan among the neigh- 
bouring Tlinkit. 
Along with this coastal organization into phratries and clans, 
the Tahltan accepted also a division into nobles, commoners, and 
slaves. A slave remained a slave always; he might marry a slave 
woman, with the consent of his master, but their children still 
remained slaves, the property of the man who owned the mother. 
Any commoner, however, could attain high dignity and rank as a 
noble by amassing wealth and giving a series of potlatches. The 
Tahltan distinguisherl three kinds of potlatches, those given by par- 
ents to confer high rank on their children, those held at the conclu- 
sion of mourning for the dead, and those given by rival men to in- 
crease their personal prestige. In potlatches of the last kind the 
usual rivals of the Tahltan were Tlinkit Indians. 
Tahltan women carriefl their babies, not in the birch-bark 
cradles used by Carrier mothers, but in leather bags fitted with legs 
for older children, without legs for infants. Adolescent girls, secluded 
