I5I2X THE TSIMSHIAN CREST SYSTEM: A STUDY BASED ON MUSEUM SPECIMENS AND THE MARIUS BARBEAU AND WILLIAM BEYNON FIELD NOTES by MARJORIE MYERS HALPIN B.A. , The George Washington U n i v e r s i t y , U.S.A., 1962 M.A., The George Washington U n i v e r s i t y , U.S.A., 1965 1 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF I DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY i n the Department of ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY We accept t h i s thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH .COLUMBIA A p r i l , 1973 In presenting t h i s thesis i n p a r t i a l fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of B r i t i s h Columbia, I agree that the Library s h a l l make i t freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of t h i s thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. I t i s understood that copying or publication of t h i s thesis for f i n a n c i a l gain s h a l l not be allowed without my written permission. Department of dA^XJO^/^dJljD (P^ The University of B r i t i s h Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada i ABSTRACT This thesis i s about the r e l a t i o n s h i p of a r t and so c i e t y . Spe-c i f i c a l l y , i t inv e s t i g a t e s Tsimshian crest a r t and i t s r e l a t i o n s h i p to s o c i a l organization. The a n a l y t i c a l framework i s s t r u c t u r a l , with explana-tory formulations derived i n part from the wr i t i n g s of Claude Levi-Strauss and V i c t o r Turner. The study i s unusual i n that i t i s based upon museum specimens and records, data not often perceived as amenable to treatment wit h i n the context of contemporary s o c i a l anthropology. I t i s also the most systematic examination of Northwest Coast iconography yet undertaken. The data include the f i e l d notes of Marius Barbeau and William Beynon, c o l l e c t e d from the Tsimshian between 1914 and 1957, and preserved i n the National Museum of Man. These data were used to construct an i c o -nographic framework or g r i d w i t h i n which Tsimshian objects i n museums can be i d e n t i f i e d as c r e s t s . The crest system was analyzed as a s e r i e s of statements about Tsimshian s o c i a l s t r u c t u r e . There are seve r a l hundred d i s t i n c t named cr e s t s i n the Tsimshian system (these are l i s t e d i n an appendix), which i s consid-erably more elaborate than the crest systems of t h e i r neighbours, the Haida and T l i n g i t . This elaboration was p r i n c i p a l l y produced by the a p p l i c a t i o n of a s e r i e s of "operators" ( a t t r i b u t e s ) to crest animals i n order to produce new forms. Thus, the Haida had a s i n g l e raven c r e s t , while the Tsimshian had over a dozen (White Raven, S p l i t Raven, A l l Copper Raven, e t c . ) . S t i l l other forms were produced by merging features of d i f f e r e n t animals i n t o com-po s i t e "monsters." i i This complexity of forms is related in the thesis to a parallel elaboration and complexity in social structure, notably the greater elabor-ation of ranking and chieftainship in Tsimshian society. An analytical distinction was developed between "crests of differentiation" and "crests of integration." Crests of differentiation are totemic; that i s , they employ distinctions between natural species in order to express differences between human descent groups. Crests of integration are iconographically monsters, which blur the natural (species) distinctions upon which totemic systems are based, in order to express integrative tendencies in social organization at both clan and "tribal" levels. A sub-category of complex monster crests was defined and shown to be related to a cannibal theme in Tsimshian mythology. The cannibal was interpreted as a metaphor expressing the redistributive function of the chiefly role. Representations of complex monsters were found on totem poles, house front paintings, frontlets, and raven rattles (the face on its "stomach"). A number of these representations are illustrated. While the focus of the study is crest art, a non-crest iconogra-phic system based on spirit (naxn?7x) names was also defined and illustrated. This iconographic system is presented as the first ethnographically substan-tiated interpretation of Tsimshian masks. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract L i s t of Tables L i s t of Plates Acknowledgment Phonetic Key INTRODUCTION Chapter One: The Tsimshian Chapter Two: "Ethnology Under Glass" Chapter Three: S o c i a l Organization Chapter Four: The Crest Context Chapter Fi v e : The Crest System I: General Structure Chapter Six: The Crest System I I : Iconography of Museum Specimens EPILOGUE Plates 70-85 Bibliography APPENDIX I: Ranked Houses of the Tsimshian APPENDIX I I : Tsimshian Crests i i i Page i i v i v i x x i 1 7 19 51 113 138 171 249 253 270 279 327 i v LIST OF TABLES Page Table I. Tsimshian Clans and Their P r i n c i p a l Crest Animals. 61 Table I I . Tsimshian, Haida, and T l i n g i t Clans and Crests. 61 Table I I I . Schematic Representation of the Tsimshian Crest System; 150 LIST OF PLATES Page 1. Cedarbark headdress 82 2. Cedarbark headdress 83 3. Halibut hook 172 4. Halibut hook 173 5. a and b - Halibut Hook, two views 173 6. Halibut hook 174 7. Halibut hook 175 8. Halibut hook 175 9. Round r a t t l e 177 10. Human face mask 188 11. Human face mask 189 12. Human face mask 189 13. Human face mask 190 14. Human face mask 190-15. Human face mask 191 V Page 16. Human face mask with b i r d 191 17. Human face mask with b i r d 192 18. Animal mask . 192 19. Animal mask 193 20. Animal maskl 193 21. Animal mask 194 22. B i r d mask-headdress 195 23. B i r d mask-headdress 196 24. B i r d mask 197 25. B i r d mask 198 26. Bird-man mask 199 27. Eagle headdress 200 28. Eagle headdress 200 29. B i r d headdress 201 30. B i r d headdress 202 31. Animal headdress 203 32. Animal headdress 203 33. Frog headdress 204 34. Frog headdress 204 35. Painted hide armour 207 36. Ermine and abalone cap 212 37. C h i l k a t blanket 215 38. Chilkat blanket 215 39. Chilkat blanket 215 40. Chilk a t blanket 217 v i Page 41. F r o n t l e t 221 42. F r o n t l e t 221 43. F r o n t l e t headdress 222 44. F r o n t l e t 223 45. F r o n t l e t 224 46. F r o n t l e t 224 47. F r o n t l e t 225 48. F r o n t l e t headdress 226 49. F r o n t l e t 226 50. F r o n t l e t 227 51. F r o n t l e t headdress 227 52. F r o n t l e t 228 53. F r o n t l e t headdress 229 54. a and b - F r o n t l e t headdress, two views 230 55. F r o n t l e t headdress 231 56. F r o n t l e t 231 57. F r o n t l e t 232 58. Fr o n t l e t 232 59. F r o n t l e t 232 60. Fr o n t l e t 233 61. Raven Rattle ' 237 62. Raven Rattle 237 63. Raven Rattle 238 64. a and b - Raven R a t t l e , two views 238 65. a and b - B i r d r a t t l e , two views 239 v i i Page 66. Chilk a t dance apron 240 67. Painted s k i n legging 243 68. P a i r c l o t h leggings with appliqued designs 243 69. Painted screen 245 70. Representations of the gi^b9lk 254 a) F r o n t l e t b) mgnE 'sk's f r o n t l e t headdress c) Peter n i . s y j q wearing dance apron and f r o n t l e t headdress 71. Representations of the spmgi'k 255 a) Headdress b) Mask c) D e t a i l of lux j.n's totem pole, Kitwancool 72. Representations of the xske/ms9m 256 a) Mask b) Mask c) D e t a i l of wixE 's totem pole, Kitwancool 73. Representations of the imdz-aks 257 a) D e t a i l of wog.al?'s totem pole, Kitsegukla b) l E l t wearing f r o n t l e t headdress 74. Representations of the Thunderbird 258 a) F r o n t l e t headdress b) Carved figure 75. Representation of Hooked Nose; d e t a i l of wixE's pole, Kitwancool 259 76. Representations of the Decayed Corpse 260 a) F r o n t l e t v i i i Page b) D e t a i l of xsg.Jg.omlaxE /'s J. totem pole, Kitsegukla c) D e t a i l of haxp3gvo/tu's totem pole, Kitsegukla 77. Representation of the hagwglax; d e t a i l of ksg.? gomlaxE 7 -' s totem pole, Kitsegukla 261 78. House front paintings of the g* i { b alk 262 a) mjnE^sk's house at Gitlaxdamiks b) sg.agwe't's house at Fort Simpson 79. Painted housefront c o l l e c t e d by J.G. Swan i n 1875 263 80. Chief sgmadi'-k i n three costumes 264 a) Chilkat and mask-headdress b) Chilkat and eagle headdress c) and d) Crest robe and hat, two views 81. a) Chief Laganitz i n chi e f ' s costume 265 b) Albert Williams wearing F l y i n g Frog headdress c) Chief sqat'i.'n i n chief's costume 82. Kitwanga chief i n chi e f ' s costume 266 83. a and b - m?nE /sk's crest robe showing S p l i t Eagle and Person of G l a c i e r ; front and back views 267 84. Chief's chest 268 85. sqat'i'n's legging with appliqued g r i z z l y design 269 i x Acknowledgment This study i s based on materials c o l l e c t e d by Marius Barbeau and William Beynon, h i s Tsimshian associate. I have a great indebtedness to these two ethnographers, and to the q u a l i t y and quantity of the data they c o l l e c t e d . I hope that I have i n part discharged t h i s debt with the d i s s e r t a t i o n i t s e l f . Barbeau did not do these same data j u s t i c e i n hi s many pu b l i c a t i o n s , with the r e s u l t that h i s and Beynon's great service to the d i s c i p l i n e i n c o l l e c t i n g them has not been adequately recognized. Since t h i s i s the f i r s t major study to have been done by someone else using the Barbeau/Beynon f i e l d notes, i t may d i r e c t new attention to t h e i r singular and s i g n i f i c a n t c o n tribution. The Barbeau/Beynon notes were generously made a v a i l a b l e to me by Professor Wilson Duff, who i s also Chairman of my Advisory Committee. His continued generosity and patience i n helping me to understand the data, and the underlying order of which they are r e f l e c t i o n s , was the very best kind of teaching a g r a t e f u l student can receive. The other members of my committee, Professor Michael Ames, K. 0. L. Burridge, Harry Hawthorn, and Barrie Morrison, were c r i t i c a l and h e l p f u l readers of e a r l i e r versions of the d i s s e r t a t i o n . Professor Ames also c o n t r i -buted to i t s s t r u c t u r a l o r i e n t a t i o n through h i s rigorous course i n i n s t r u c t u r a l theory. Another of my teachers whose influence i s obvious i n these pages i s Professor David Aberle, who kind l y read and c r i t i c i z e d Chapter Three. X I photographed Tsimshian c o l l e c t i o n s and gathered a d d i t i o n a l information f o r t h i s study i n a number of museums, and wish to. acknowledge here the p r i v i l e g e s extended to me by the B.C. P r o v i n c i a l Museum, the Museum of Anthropology of the U n i v e r s i t y of B r i t i s h Columbia, the National Museum of Man, the Museum of the American Indian, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Thomas Burke Memorial Museum of the Uni v e r s i t y of Washington, and the F i e l d Museum. I also received h e l p f u l information by mail from the U.S. National Museum and the Museum and Laboratories of Ethnic Arts and Technology, UCLA. I am also g r a t e f u l to Lonnie Hindle, formerly of Kispiox, who held informal seminars on the Gitksan d i a l e c t i n his home i n Vancouver during 1971-72. F i n a n c i a l support was provided me by a Un i v e r s i t y Fellowship (1969-70) and Doctoral Fellowships from the Canada Council (1960-71, 1971-72). I was also permitted to take time from my duties as an ass i s t a n t curator i n the Museum of Anthropology during 1972-73 i n order to f i n i s h w r i t i n g the d i s s e r t a t i o n . X I Phonetic Key The orthography used i n t h i s study i s Marius Barbeau's f i e l d orthography, which he developed at the National Museum with the help of h i s colleague, Edward Sapir., I t has been s l i g h t l y s i m p l i f i e d . Vowels 1 as i n e as i n E as i n a as i n 9 as i n o as i n ? as i n u as i n seek" l a t e " pet" f a t h e r " again" 'mole" law" boot" Consonants p b t d k g as i n English q.g. f a r t h e r back than k and g k* g' (k^ g^) f a r t h e r forward than k and g, adding a y sound, as i n "thank you" s z as i n English 1 surd 1, l i k e the t h l i n " a t h l e t e , " whispered and s l u r r e d i n t o a s i n g l e sound with tongue i n 1 p o s i t i o n x as i n German " i c h " c t plus s, as i n cats the g l o t t a l stop, as i n "Hawai*!" 1. The English equivalents of Tsimshian sounds and the d e s c r i p t i o n of Barbeau's popular system are from Duff. (1964: 109-110). x i i Phonetic Key cont. Accent or stress (') a f t e r the vowel of the stressed s y l l a b l e . Length vowels marked with a dot are sounded f o r double the normal length of time. Barbeau's Popular Orthography In h i s publications Barbeau used a system based on the English alphabet. Correspondence between t h i s popular system and the preceding f i e l d system are as follows: Popular System F i e l d System ae E aw 3 r g-rh x h i 1 gy g' Examples: Gitrhahla g ' i t x a ' l a (Kitkatla) Legyarh legE'x (Legaic) Gitrhawn g"itxon (Gitkun) Rhaida xay'd? (Haida) There i s no point i n proposing a museum study of f o l k c l a s s i f i c a t i o n s , or of ethnoesthetics, or of attitudes about objects, or of the d e t a i l e d r e l a t i o n s between material culture and s o c i a l organization, f o r the data do not ex i s t i n museums. William C. Sturtevant, 1973 1 INTRODUCTION This i s a study i n museum anthropology, to which I have had a personal commitment since 1963, when I was h i r e d as the Smithsonian I n s t i t u t i o n ' s f i r s t docent (interpreter) i n anthropology. Since 1968, I have been p a r t i c i p a t i n g i n a modest renaissance i n object-oriented 1 research at the U n i v e r s i t y of B r i t i s h Columbia, stimulated by the example and teachings of Professor Wilson Duff. My choice of a problem i n museum anthropology f o r t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n was a r e s u l t of these two influences on my personal and s c h o l a r l y development. In order to make any kind of concrete f a c t meaningful — whether i t be event or thing — i t i s necessary to i n t e r p r e t i t i n terms of a t h e o r e t i c a l construct or a n a l y t i c a l framework. This basic s t r i c t u r e of science has been overlooked by most anthropologists who write about objects i n museum c o l l e c t i o n s , with the r e s u l t that we have a great many catalogues which increase our f a m i l i a r i t y with p a r t i c u l a r pieces, but do l i t t l e to increase our understanding of them. In t h i s sense, we can say that the a r t of the Northwest Coast Indians i s one of the best-known and l e a s t understood aesthetic expressions of the non-Western world. The notable exception i n studies of t h i s art i s B i l l Holm's Northwest Coast A r t : An Analysis of Form (1965), which masterfully explicated some of the formal p r i n c i p l e s of the a r t s t y l e . The present study i s an attempt to explicate some of the p r i n c i p l e s underlying i t s iconography. 1. The term "object-oriented research" comes from Scott and Segmen (1970: 1005). 2 According to Panofsky (1962: 3), "iconography i s that branch of the h i s t o r y of art which concerns i t s e l f with the subject matter or meaning of works of a r t , as opposed to t h e i r form." I f we follow h i s well-known d i s t i n c t i o n s , a d e s c r i p t i o n of the "primary or natural mean-ings" of a work of art i s a "pre-iconographical" d e s c r i p t i o n ( i b i d . : 5). This would be the d e s c r i p t i o n , f o r example, of the subject matter of a painting as a woman holding a c h i l d . I t i s when we connect such repre-sentations with themes or concepts which have meaning i n terms of the culture of t h e i r o r i g i n , which he c a l l s turning motifs into images, that we reach the domain of "iconography i n the narrow sense" ( i b i d . : 6). This would be the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of the woman and c h i l d as the V i r g i n Mary and Jesus. Iconography i n the narrow sense i s the p r i n c i p a l domain of the present study, although i t w i l l also attempt to fathom what Panofsky c a l l s "iconography i n a deeper sense": "those underlying p r i n c i p l e s which reveal the basic a t t i t u d e of a nation" ( i b i d . : 8). I am s p e c i f i c a l l y concerned with those images which had meaning to the Tsimshian as cr e s t s , although i n order to adequately understand crests I have had to look at c e r t a i n systems of non-crest representations. Fortunately, rather than working from the motif to i t s meaning, as have previous inv e s t i g a t o r s of Northwest Coast icono-graphy, I have had data at my disposal which permitted me to work from a system of meanings to motifs. This was poss i b l e because of the sys-tematic and c l a s s i f i c a t o r y nature of the Tsimshian crest system, but should also be poss i b l e f o r other bodies of totemic a r t . Tsimshian crests formed a c l a s s i f i c a t i o n system of the type defined by Levi-Strauss (1966) as totemic, that i s , an ethno-logical 3 construct used to c l a s s i f y s o c i a l groups. The terms i n a totemic c l a s -s i f i c a t i o n , as i n other taxonomic systems of n o n - l i t e r a t e peoples, are p r i m a r i l y drawn from nature, the d i s t i n c t i o n s between plant and animal species being used to represent differences between human groups. The d i s s e r t a t i o n i s based on l i s t s of several hundreds of crests owned by s p e c i f i e d houses or lineages of the Tsimshian, and represented iconographically on c e r t a i n items of material culture. These l i s t s were compiled from the unpublished f i e l d notes of Marius Barbeau and William Beynon and are contained i n Appendix I I . They constitute one of the most comprehensive l i s t s of "totemic" crests ever made a v a i l a b l e . A previous l i s t of Gitksan crests was published by Barbeau (1929: 158-169), although t h e i r systemic character appears to have gone unnoticed, even by Barbeau himself. The present l i s t s include also the crests of the Niska and Coast Tsimshian, and the Gitksan crests are reported more accurately and i n more d e t a i l than i n Barbeau's 1929 l i s t . The crest l i s t s were analyzed f o r r e g u l a r i t i e s or patterns suggestive of the rules underlying both t h e i r generation and t h e i r d i s t r i b u t i o n throughout the s o c i a l system. One of the most s i g n i f i c a n t and s u r p r i s i n g discoveries based on the crest l i s t s was a class of "monster" c r e s t s , defined as animal-like forms without natural prototypes, but composed of a t t r i b u t e s such as wings, f i n s , and beaks borrowed from nature. They thus b l u r the species d i s t i n c t i o n s upon which a totemic system i s based, and represent a new and evolving order of c r e s t s . Otherwise c a r e f u l scho-4 l a r s have co n s i s t e n t l y c l a s s i f i e d these monster forms as hawks, k i l l e r -whales, bears, or other animals on the basis of c e r t a i n perceived sim-i l a r i t i e s i n Tsimshian art to natural species on the pre-iconographic l e v e l , and thus they have with equal consistency misinterpreted the meaning of these c r e s t s . A sub-class of complex monster crests was defined and found to be r e l a t e d to a pervasive Cannibal theme i n Tsimshian thought. This, too, was unexpected and had not been anticipated from the l i t -erature, which deals only with a form of r i t u a l c a n n i b a l i s t i c dramati-zation believed to be recently borrowed from the Northern Kwakiutl. I i n t e r p r e t monster crests as a movement or transformation ^ i n the Tsimshian crest system from d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n to i n t e g r a t i o n , from d i v e r s i t y to unity. A s i m i l a r and p a r a l l e l process was found i n Tsimshian s o c i a l organization. The development toward the two u n i t i e s , the one metaphorical, the other s o c i e t a l , i s r e f l e c t e d most c l e a r l y i n the r o l e s and symbols of the c h i e f , e s p e c i a l l y among the Coast Tsimshian. This suggested, using the developmental stages of contemporary c u l t u r a l e v o l u t i o n i s t s , that the evolving s o c i a l system was i n t r a n s i t i o n from a t r i b a l l e v e l of i n t e g r a t i o n to a chiefdom l e v e l . Potlatches were the r i t u a l context i n which crests were v a l i -dated and displayed, with attendant d i s t r i b u t i o n of wealth to guest-witnesses. Potlatches permitted, i n e f f e c t , communal p a r t i c i p a t i o n i n and authorization of the construction of the metaphorical structure and ensured i t s f i t or congruity with the s o c i a l structure. The pot-l a t c h can thus be int e r p r e t e d , following Leach (1965), as a r i t u a l c e l e b r a t i o n of Tsimshian s o c i a l organization. 5 A f t e r i n v e s t i g a t i n g crests as a system of meanings, I used the system i n i d e n t i f y i n g and i n t e r p r e t i n g crest images i n Tsimshian a r t . These were found to be f a r l e s s ubiquitous than previously thought, and not to be synonomous with animal representations ( i . e . , an animal image i s not always a c r e s t ) . In the process of e s t a b l i s h i n g a r e s i d u a l category of non-crest images, I defined a previously undescribed sys-tem of mask iconography — naxnp 'x or s p i r i t names and t h e i r represen-t a t i o n i n masked dramas. I t i s the f i r s t ethnographically substantiated i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of Tsimshian masks i n the l i t e r a t u r e . Tsimshian crest art was a s p e c i a l use of a r t i s t i c images to make Tsimshian s o c i a l structure v i s i b l e . This suggests that a r t , at le a s t totemic a r t , i s more than aesthetic design; i t i s an i n t e l l e c t u a l or cognitive process by means of which man explores h i s world and renders i t meaningful and i n t e l l i g i b l e . As Levi-Strauss has argued, the so-c a l l e d p r i m i t i v e a r t i s t , and those who commission and use h i s a r t , are more cerebral than many have thought. There are seven chapters, with two appendices that contain supporting data. Chapter One i s an introduction to the culture and contains a taxonomy of l o c a l groups, intended to help the reader through a plethora of l o c a l and v i l l a g e names. Chapter Two describes the museum data and c o l l e c t i o n s used i n t h i s study. Chapter Three, " S o c i a l Organ-i z a t i o n , " i s a c r i t i c a l background chapter to the rest of the argument, which depends upon an a n a l y t i c a l d i s t i n c t i o n between two s t r u c t u r a l orders i n Tsimshian society. Chapters Four through Six describe the 6 crest system and present the major substantive findings of the d i s s e r -t a t i o n . The Epilogue i s a concluding statement. Appendix I contains a synoptic presentation of Tsimshian lineages by rank, t r i b e , and clan. Appendix II contains a c l a s s i f i c a t i o n of a ser i e s of crest l i s t s , the basic data upon which the study i s based. I have t r i e d to spare the reader from the necessity of lea r n -ing to recognize Tsimshian words. However, there are s i x which cannot be avoided. These include the names of the four clans: l a x s k ' i ' k , laxk' i b u / , g.anha^d^, and g'ispgwudwa'd-a. The l a s t two cannot be trans-l a t e d and i t would be misleading to use them while t r a n s l a t i n g the other two into E n g l i s h . The other two words are naxna /x, which, can be glossed as " s p i r i t , " and h a l a / i t , which i s a general word that can mean, according to i t s context, "shaman," or "dancer," as w e l l as r i t -uals such as secret society i n i t i a t i o n s i n which supernatural powers are involved. 7 CHAPTER ONE THE TSIMSHIAN The Tsimshian l i v e i n northwestern B r i t i s h Columbia, along the Nass and Skeena Rivers and on the coast and islands between t h e i r two estuaries and extending as f a r south as Milbanke Sound. With t h e i r neighbours, the Haida and T l i n g i t , they comprise a d i s t i n c t and d i s t i n c -t i v e c u l t u r a l grouping, known i n Northwest Coast studies as the Northern 1 Province. P r i o r to the modern period, which can be sa i d to have begun about 1880, the t r a d i t i o n a l cultures of the Northern Province shared a number of s t r u c t u r a l features which combined to give them the e s s e n t i a l u n i t y recognized i n t h i s anthropological c l a s s i f i c a t i o n . These included totemism, the p o t l a t c h , m a t r i l i n e a l descent, p r e f e r e n t i a l marriage, pre-ferred avunculocal residence, and ranking (see Rosman and Rubel, 1971: 2 7, 34). They also shared a great many c u l t u r a l t r a i t s , ranging from tobacco chewing to art and f o l k l o r i s t i c motifs, which r e i n f o r c e our 3 perceptions of t h e i r relatedness. Within the unity of the Northern Province, however, the d i s -t i n c t i v e n e s s of Tsimshian culture i s beginning to receive increasing a t t e n t i o n . In 1951, V i o l a G a r f i e l d summarized the then-current view of 1. The Northern Province was defined by Drucker (1955a: 187), who also included the northern Kwakiutl H a i s l a as marginal members. 2. Not a l l of these features, of course, were unique to the Northern Province; the combination was. 3. The Northern Province was, i n f a c t , defined by Drucker on the basis of t r a i t l i s t s (see 1955a: Chapter Nine). 8 the differences between the Tsimshian and t h e i r neighbours as follows: Three elements of Tsimshian culture set them o f f most d i s t i n c t l y from t h e i r neighbors. The language i s d i s t i n c t and, to date, no r e l a t i o n s h i p between i t and any others i n the area has been demonstrated. The Tsimshian have four exogamous kinship d i v i s i o n s i n contrast to the dual d i v i s i o n s of the T l i n g i t and Haida, though a l l four phratries are not represented i n every Tsimshian town. The Coast Tsimshian and Nisqa elevated c e r t a i n lineage heads to t r i b a l c h i e f s whose presti g e was greatly enhanced by t r i b a l economic sup-port and properties, and by t r i b u t e from a l l members of the l o c a l group regardless of clan a f f i l i a t i o n ( G a r f i e l d , 1966 [1951]: 4). In contrast, the present generation of anthropologists studying the Northwest Coast are concerned with discovering b a s i c s t r u c t u r a l and cognitive features of these cultures. The most s i g n i f i c a n t published r e s u l t of the a p p l i c a t i o n of s t r u c t u r a l anthropology to the Northwest Coast i s Abraham Rosman and Paula Rubel's Feasting with Mine Enemy (1971), i n which they investigate the r e l a t i o n s h i p s between the s t r u c -ture of the p o t l a t c h and aspects of s o c i a l structure f or s i x Northwest Coast s o c i e t i e s . They conclude that s i g n i f i c a n t s o c i a l s t r u c t u r a l d i f -ferences i n the Northern Province are that "the Tsimshian have matri-l a t e r a l cross-cousin marriage while the T l i n g i t and Haida have p a t r i -l a t e r a l cross-cousin marriage" ( i b i d . : 7) and "the Tsimshian exhibit a complex ranking of groups i n r e l a t i o n to one another while the Haida and T l i n g i t do not" ( i b i d . : 194). They then examine and explain p o t l a t c h v a r i a t i o n s i n the s o c i e t i e s i n terms of a model developed from these v a r i a b l e s . 9 This study i s another attempt to penetrate the patent oneness of the Northern Province and to discover s t r u c t u r a l v a r i a b l e s underlying differences i n r i t u a l and a r t . I t does not look at the T l i n g i t and Haida, except i n passing, but focusses rather on differences between the three d i v i s i o n s of the Tsimshian — the Coast Tsimshian, the Niska, and the Gitksan. While the reader can be r e f e r r e d to the published l i t e r a t u r e f o r general summaries of Tsimshian culture ( G a r f i e l d , 1939, 1966; Boas, 1916) , some of i t s basic patterns are reviewed here. The Tsimshian include both coastal and inland peoples, and oppositions of land and sea, coast and i n t e r i o r , and the animals and plants c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of each, provided a major symbolic theme running throughout t h e i r expressive c u l t u r e . This co a s t a l : i n t e r i o r opposition was mediated by the two great r i v e r s — the Nass and Skeena — which united them and provided t h e i r main food resource: salmon. Every family owned salmon f i s h i n g t e r r i t o r i e s along the r i v e r banks, where they spent the summer months catching the running salmon and smoking and drying them f o r winter. Another river-spawning f i s h whose p e r i o d i c i t y had great influence on Tsimshian l i f e was the eulachon, which ascended the Nass River i n prodigious numbers i n the early spring. This was s a i d to be a time of famine or near-famine f o r the Tsimshian, and they a l l moved eagerly to the mouth of the Nass to intercept the eulachon, whose a r r i v a l heralded the plenty of summer. Eulachon grease was a much p r i z e d commodity and condiment on the Northwest Coast, and the Tsimshian gained great wealth from trading i t to the T l i n g i t and 10 Haida, who owned no eulachon f i s h i n g grounds and who came to the Nass i n the spring to trade f o r i t . Nass River eulachon grease was famous a l l over the Northwest Coast f o r i t s s p e c i a l f l a v o u r . Winter brought the "time of taboos" and the people moved back into t h e i r great cedar plank houses i n permanent "totem pole" or winter v i l l a g e s to wait again f o r spring. This was the r i t u a l season, the time when the s p i r i t s came down from the mountains to l u r k i n the f o r -ests surrounding the v i l l a g e s . Certain houses were s a n c t i f i e d f o r the season by p l a c i n g sacred rings of red cedar bark on the doors; in s i d e the members of dancing s o c i e t i e s i n i t i a t e d new members and people pos-sessed by the Cannibal and Dog Eater s p i r i t s roamed the woods. I t was also a time f o r f e a s t i n g . People traveled from a l l over the Tsimshian country to attend the potlatches of the great c h i e f s , which l a s t e d f o r days, were staged with great pomp and ceremony, and were remembered f o r generations. Guests at potlatches were i n v i t e d to witness the r i t u a l t r a n s f e r of names and p r i v i l e g e s from t h e i r custo-dians i n one generation to the successors i n the next. Succession was m a t r i l i n e a l , and the most elaborate potlatches were those held to mark the assumption of a ch i e f ' s name — perhaps "name-title" i s more des-c r i p t i v e — by h i s successor, i d e a l l y h i s s i s t e r ' s son. These were the occasions at which the new chief erected a totem pole as a memorial to his predecessor. Before the p o t l a t c h , the Tsimshian often held s p e c i a l dramatic 4 performances in v o l v i n g another kind of name: s p i r i t (naxno'x) names. 4. Among the Gitksan e s p e c i a l l y , the c h i e f ' s name I t s e l f was often a naxio x name. 11 These were events of pure theatre, involving humour, suspense, and de-nouement; song and dance; masks, costumes, and props. The audience i t s e l f was often brought i n t o the a c t i o n and, as w e l l as we can deter-mine from the fragmentary record, everyone present seems to have thor-oughly enjoyed these occasions. The p l o t , as i t were, of the dramatic presentation was the ac t i n g out of the meaning of a name. I t was usu-a l l y done i n the manner of a charade, the audience being presented with various clues as to the meaning of the name being dramatized. A l l of these r i t u a l events — dancing society i n i t i a t i o n s , potlatches, and s p i r i t name dramatizations — required wealth to stage, and some of them required i n h e r i t e d p r i v i l e g e or r i g h t , so that they were normally a f f a i r s of the c h i e f l y f a m i l i e s . Except f o r the dancing society i n i t i a t i o n s , however, the e n t i r e community was often involved, at l e a s t i n the capacity of audience i f not minor p a r t i c i p a n t s . To be a high-ranking Tsimshian man was to be Tsimshian i n the f u l l e s t sense the culture afforded. I t was to be highborn and pure i n descent, to have assumed important names at potlatches of proper pomp, to speak w e l l and observe, most c a r e f u l l y , the rules of r i g h t behaviour and e t i q u e t t e , to have been w e l l - r a i s e d by one's parents and c a r e f u l l y taught by one's uncle. I t was to have r i t u a l l y encountered and c o n t r o l l e d dangerous supernatural powers, and to demonstrate t h i s control several times more at considerable expense. I t was to assume the noblesse oblige of one's rank and, above a l l , i t was to accept the great respon-s i b i l i t i e s of one's name and the moral imperative to expend one's l i f e and one's wealth i n e f f o r t s to elevate i t . 12 As were t h e i r neighbours i n the Northern Province, the Tsim-shian were masters of the northern s t y l e of Northwest Coast a r t , the s t y l e characterized by Haida a r t i s t B i l l Reid as one of " c l a s s i c a l c o n t r o l " (Duff, et a l , 1967: n.p.). I t i s the meaning or iconography of t h i s a r t , i t s r i t u a l context, and i t s s o c i a l motivations that concern t h i s study. We w i l l also look at some outstanding examples of i t s form. * * * * * There i s confusion and inconsistency i n the l i t e r a t u r e regard-ing l i n g u i s t i c , c u l t u r a l , and geographic d i v i s i o n s of Tsimshian-speaking peoples. The following c l a s s i f i c a t i o n i s proposed and used herein to avoid ambiguity and c l e a r l y d i s t i n g u i s h l i n g u i s t i c (e.g., Tsimshian) and major (e.g., Coast Tsimshian) and minor (e.g., Lower Skeena Tsimshian) cultural-geographic units or d i v i s i o n s : 5 Tsimshian i s a l i n g u i s t i c designation f o r people speaking two r e l a t e d languages (RIgsby, 1969): 6 1. Coast Tsimshian 2. Nass-Gitksan. These two language groups are divided into three broad c u l -t u r a l and geographic d i v i s i o n s : 6 I. Coast Tsimshian, l i v i n g along the lower Skeena River up to and inc l u d i n g i t s canyon, and the coasts and islands from the mouth of the Nass south to Milbanke Sound; 5. Native speakers use "Tsimshian" to r e f e r to the Coast Tsimshian language only, and normally d i s t i n g u i s h between Niska and Gitksan d i a l e c t s . 6. Although the c l a s s i f i c a t i o n uses "Coast Tsimshian" to r e f e r to both a language and a c u l t u r a l group, the two are coterminous. 13 I I . Niska, l i v i n g along the Nass River and Portland Canal. I I I . Gitksan, l i v i n g along the upper Skeena River or i t s t r i b u -t a r i e s . The Coast Tsimshian and Niska are further subdivided: I. Coast Tsimshian A. Southern Tsimshian B. Lower Skeena Tsimshian C. Canyon Tsimshian I I . Niska A. Lower Nass B. Upper Nass. The Gitksan are often r e f e r r e d to i n the l i t e r a t u r e as the people of the Upper Skeena. T r i b e s : The Tsimshian l i v e d i n some twenty^six l o c a l groups usually r e f e r r e d to as t r i b e s . Each t r i b e customarily occupied a s i n g l e winter v i l l a g e , often of the same name. The t r i b e s are l i s t e d below according to the preceding geo-cultural d i v i s i o n s . The numbers of the t r i b e s (1-26) are sometimes used i n t h i s study and i n Appendix I I as a short-hand designation f o r the t r i b a l name. The s p e l l i n g of t r i b a l names i s based upon 'Marius Barbeau's f i e l d orthography and English t r a n s l a t i o n s are approximations derived from h i s f i e l d notes, except where another source i s given. The accepted names and s p e l l i n g s of present Tsimshian bands are given i n brackets (from Duff, 1964: 18-20). Minimal discus-sion of population movements i s included, p r i m a r i l y to a i d i n provenience designations of museum specimens. 14 I. Coast Tsimshian A. Southern Tsimshian The three southernmost t r i b e s had t e r r i t o r i e s on the outer coasts and i s l a n d s , although the t r a d i t i o n a l narratives of the g'id^stsu 7 and g'itg.a 7 i >atg t e l l of migrations from the Skeena River. The g'idgstsu' now l i v e i n the modern v i l l a g e of Klemtu with the HaiHais Kwakiutl. 1. g ' i d a s t s u / (meaning?) [Kitasoo] 2. g ' i t g . a ^ a t a ("people of the [ceremonial] cane") [Hartley Bay] 3. g ' i t x a ' i a ("people of the channel" [ G a r f i e l d , 1939: 176]) [ K i t k a t l a ] . B. Lower Skeena Tsimshian These ten t r i b e s had winter v i l l a g e s on the lower Skeena River u n t i l l a t e p r e h i s t o r i c times when they extended t h e i r t e r r i t o r i e s coastward, at the expense of the T l i n g i t , and b u i l t winter v i l l a g e s on the i s l a n d s of Metiakatla Pass, where the weather was milder. They continued to return to t h e i r t e r r i t o r i e s on the Skeena i n the summers. Af t e r the Hudson's Bay Company b u i l t Fort Simpson i n 1834, nine of the t r i b e s (the g'itwilksabE' became ext i n c t as a t r i b e ) moved t h e i r winter houses and r e b u i l t them on separate v i l l a g e sections near the Fort. These t r i b e s now comprise the Port Simpson and Metiakatla bands i n B r i t i s h Columbia, and there i s an offshoot population at New 7 Metiakatla on Annette Island In Alaska. 7. New Metiakatla was founded i n 1887 by the Anglican missionary William Duncan and some 800 C h r i s t i a n Tsimshian from the e a r l i e r C h r i s t i a n v i l l a g e of Metiakatla, which was b u i l t on the precontact s i t e of the winter v i l l a g e s of the ten Lower Skeena Tsimshian t r i b e s (see Duff, 1964: 92-94; Arctander, 1909). 15 4. g ' i t w i l g V t s ("people of the kelp" [ G a r f i e l d , 1939: 176]) 5 ' g ' l t z a x l E ^ ("people of the ," an e l d e r b e r r y - l i k e shrub, sp. unknown) g ' i t s K s ("people of the salmon trap") 7. g ,iriax''ang ,i'k ("people of the mosquitos") 8. g ,ina ,dJ. /iks ("people of the swift water") 9. g'It*and?.' ("people of the weirs") 10. g'ispaxl:/* ts ("people of the elderberries") 11. g'itwjlksabE' (meaning?) 12. g'ilodza'ua ("people of the way i n s i d e , " r e f e r r i n g to a canoe route through a slough i n the Skeena) 13. g'itlE.'n ("people of two passing canoes," r e f e r r i n g to the shape of two mountains). C. Canyon Tsimshian The g ' i t s g l a 'st l i v e d i n two winter v i l l a g e s on e i t h e r side of K i t s e l a s Canyon on the Skeena. These v i l l a g e s were abandoned between 1870 and 1890, the people moving to New K i t s e l a s and Port Essington. The g'itsamg.E/lam l i v e d below them near the mouth of the Kitsumkalum River. 14. g'itsamg.E^lam ("people of the plateau") [Kitsumkalum] 15. g ' i t s a l a ' s a ("people of the canyon") [Ki t s e l a s ] a. g'itlaxdzg'ks ("people at the foot of the s l i d e " or "peo-p l e at the edge of a precipice") b. g'itxtsE'x ("people at the edge of the la k e " ) . 16 II. Niska Generally speaking, the four Niska t r i b e s have not retained c l e a r and separate i d e n t i t i e s to the same degree as have t h e i r Coast Tsimshian and Gitksan neighbours. There was considerable population movement i n t h i s area, and the people who comprised the t r i b e s and l i v e d i n the d i f f e r e n t v i l l a g e s are not always c l e a r l y d i s t i n g u i s h a b l e on the basis of present data. A. Lower Nass The people of the lower Nass c a l l e d themselves the g' i t x a t ' i a i and were divided into two t r i b e s : the g'itxat^iTn (proper) and the g*itg*ig'E.'nix, who were a small offshoot population that moved a short distance upriver to the v i l l a g e of antegwalE y. The g'itxat* i fn did not conform to the usual pattern of l i v -ing i n a s i n g l e winter v i l l a g e , and they and the g'itg'ig'E.'nix exper-ienced a number of population s h i f t s so that t h e i r h i s t o r y of s e t t l e -ment i s complicated. Since the l a t e decades of the 19th century they have been l i v i n g at the two modern v i l l a g e s of K i n c o l i t h ("place of scalps") and G r e e n v i l l e or laxg.aldzap ("on deserted v i l l a g e s i t e " ) . The four v i l l a g e s l i s t e d below f o r the g' i t x a t 1 i.'n were 19th century "totem pole" v i l l a g e s . 16. g * i t x a t 7 i . n ("people using f i s h traps") [ K i n c o l i t h and Green-v i l l e ] a. g* i t ' i k s ("people of i k s ! " an exclamation) b. kwunwj'q ("where people sleep" when t r a v e l l i n g ) c. ang'edE' ("where they catch eulachon with rakes") d. g'itlax^a'us ("people on the sandbar") 17 17. g'itg'ig'E/nix ("people of up the r i v e r " ) [ K l n c o l i t h and Green-v i l l e ] a. antegwalE' ("place of happiness"). B. Upper Nass The people of the upper Nass were the g* i t g n w i l i k s ("people staying temporarily," r e f e r r i n g to t h e i r movement down the r i v e r at eulachon f i s h i n g time). They were divided into two t r i b e s : the g* itwgnksi' Ik, who l i v e d at the canyon, and the dominant g* itlaxda. xmks, who l i v e d a few miles above them. Around the turn of the century the o l d v i l l a g e of g'itwanksi ^ k burned down and the people s e t t l e d at Gwinaha. They have since moved to Canyon C i t y . The C h r i s t i a n s of g'itlaxdaCmks moved to the missionary v i l l a g e a i ^ y a ^ c ("early leaves") and, when i t was flooded ca. 1918, they returned to g*itlaxda f m k s , which was then given the name a i , y a / n c . Recently, the g* i t l a x d a IImks have moved to the modern v i l l a g e of New Aiyansh. 18. g'itwanksi^k ("people of the place of l i z a r d s " ) [Canyon City] 19. g'itlaxda^rnks ("people on the place of springs") [Gitlakadamix] III. Gitksan The seven Gitksan t r i b e s each occupied a s i n g l e winter v i l l a g e , s i x of them on or near the Skeena and one, k'itw^nlku^l, to the north on the "grease t r a i l " to the Nass. About 1880 another small t r i b e , the anlag.asgmdE'x, joined the k'isg.ag.a's. 18 Three C h r i s t i a n communities were founded between 1890 and 1910. Glen Vowell, the only one s t i l l i n existence, drew i t s converts from k'ispayaks, k'isg.ag.a's, and qaid a ?; Andimaul ("where they f i s h with hand l i n e s " ) mostly from k'itsgigu^kla; and Meanskinisht ("at the base of the big mountain") from k'itwang.E / and k'itw^ntku^l. g'it''anma /ks, at the s i t e of the white settlement of Skeena Forks or Hazelton (founded i n the l a t e 1860s), attracted people from neighbouring v i l l a g e s and i t s o r i g i n a l l y small population now exceeds a l l of the others; the k*isg.ag.a^s have now completely amalgamated with them. The people of qald •> have amalgamated with k* ispayaks, and many of the k' i tWj}niku / ? 1 moved to the Nass i n the l a t e 19th cen-tury to l i v e at Aiyansh and K i n c o l i t h . The t r i b e s i n t h e i r order upriver are: 20. k'itwpng.E' ("people of the place of rabbits") [Kitwanga] 21. k'itwaniku ' J l ("people of the l i t t l e place" or "people of the narrow v a l l e y " ) [Kitwancool] 22. k'itsagu'kla ("people of sggu'kla," a mountain) [Kltsegukla] 23. g'it*anma'ks ("people where they f i s h by torch l i g h t " ) [Hazelton] 24. k'ispayaks ("people of the hiding place") [Kispiox] 25. k'isg.ag.a's ("people of the sea-gulls"?) [Kisgegas] 26. qald:> ("wilderness") [Kuldo]. 19 CHAPTER TWO 1 "ETHNOLOGY UNDER GLASS" Mary Douglas, an outsider to Northwest Coast studies, reviewed 2 the published ethnographic l i t e r a t u r e on the Tsimshian and concluded that, " a l a s , very l i t t l e i s known about t h i s t r i b e , " and that one wish-ing to study them "has to make do with very poor ethnographic materials" (Douglas, 1967: 66). In the pages to follow, I s h a l l have occasion to evaluate the adequacy of such published ethnography as there i s ; here I am more concerned to e s t a b l i s h i t s s c a r c i t y . For Mary Douglas was quite r i g h t ; the student who wishes to understand the t r a d i t i o n a l Tsim-shian way of l i f e must work with spotty and incomplete ethnographic reportage. There are only three published monographic sources on the Tsimshian: one on Coast Tsimshian s o c i a l organization ( G a r f i e l d , 1939) , one on Coast Tsimshian myths (Boas, 1916), and one on Gitksan totem poles (Barbeau, 1929). There are also two c o l l e c t i o n s of Nass River texts (Boas, 1902, 1912), important early a r t i c l e s on s o c i a l organiza-t i o n (Sapir, 1915; Barbeau, 1917a) and kinship terms (Sapir, 1920) , a missionary's biography (Arctander, 1909), a lengthy book review (Barbeau, 1917b, on Boas, 1916), a short d e s c r i p t i o n of language (Boas, 1910), c o l l e c t i o n s of myths (Barbeau, 1953, 1961), some o r i g i n a l data on totem 1. The chapter t i t l e was taken from Harrison (1937). 2. In order to assess Levi-Strauss' (1967a) s t r u c t u r a l analysis of the Tsimshian myth of Asdiwal. 20 poles, dancing s o c i e t i e s , and shamanism i n larger works (Barbeau, 1950; Boas, 1897; Drucker, 1940; Barbeau, 1958), and a b r i e f h i s t o r y of Kitwancool (Duff, 1959). There are two popular summaries ( G a r f i e l d , 1966; Drucker, 1965, Chapter 7), and four recent doctoral theses: one on contemporary Coast Tsimshian reserve l i f e ( I n g l i s , 1970), one on Coast Tsimshian phonology (Dunn, 1970), and two on the contemporary 3 Gitksan ( J . and A. Adams, Harvard). There are a few more published a r t i c l e s , plus some unpublished papers i n c i r c u l a t i o n (notably, Rigsby, 1967 and 1969) , but the sources c i t e d here constitute the basic l i t e r a -ture on which ethnological understanding of Tsimshian culture and society must be based. Hence, the existence of Marius Barbeau's s o - c a l l e d "Tsim-shian F i l e " i n the D i v i s i o n of F o l k l o r e at the National Museum of Man assumes considerable importance. I t consists of the f i e l d records of Barbeau and William Beynon, h i s Tsimshian i n t e r p r e t e r and co l l a b o r a t o r , and an ethnographer i n h i s own r i g h t , and spans a period of 43 years, from Barbeau's a r r i v a l i n Port Simpson i n December, 1914, u n t i l Beynon's death i n 1957 (Barbeau died i n 1969). The range of data i n the F i l e has been described by Wilson Duff (1964b), who spent the pre-xerox year 1958-59 i n Ottawa, copying i t s contents and working on i t with Barbeau. B r i e f l y , the F i l e contains extensive l i s t s of names, c r e s t s , houses (lineages and branch l i n e a g e s ) , and t e r r i t o r i e s , plus several hundred house-owned narratives and variants of the t r a d i t i o n a l h i s t o r i e s of 3. I was denied access to J . Adams' thesis by the author, and have therefore w ritten t h i s study without the benefit of eit h e r t h e s i s . 21 the Tsimshian people. Scattered throughout are b r i e f ethnographic ob-servations, but there i s only one systematic observer's account i n the F i l e — a valuable d e s c r i p t i o n by Beynon of f i v e days of potlatches, dances, and totem pole r a i s i n g s at Kitsegukla i n 1945. Some 407 of the narratives and variants were compiled by Barbeau into four typed manu-s c r i p t s , one f o r each c l a n , which he hoped to have published. He t i t l e d them The Gwenhoot of Alaska i n Search of a Bounteous Land ( l a x s k ' i ^ k ) , Temlarh'am; The Land of Plenty on the North P a c i f i c Coast (g'ispgwudwa /dg), The Larhkibu Migrate South ( l a x k * i b u / ) , and The Kanhada Outlaws (g.anha /dg) . The r e s t of the data now i n Duff's copy of the F i l e are i n the form of h i s handwritten abstracts of Barbeau's and Beynon's notes. The time period the f i e l d notes r e f e r to cannot be f i r m l y es-tablished. Barbeau worked with Indian people between 1914 and 1929 who were i n t h e i r 60s and 70s, and who were reaching back i n memory to per-iods when t r a d i t i o n a l systems of Tsimshian culture were s t i l l f unction-ing. This would suggest the period ca. 1860 to 1880, although dated h i s t o r i c a l events which occurred both before and a f t e r that time are mentioned i n t r a d i t i o n a l contexts. As i s probably true i n most cases of memory ethnography, the people were attempting to describe what they perceived as the e s s e n t i a l l y timeless c u l t u r a l patterns of, or p e r s i s t i n g from, an immediately preceding t r a d i t i o n a l age. In the case of two of the primary classes of the f i e l d data used i n the present study — crests and names — i t does not matter whether the Indian people were r e f e r r i n g to the pre-1860 period or l a t e r . These were i n h e r i t e d names and e n t i t i e s which were, to the Tsimshian, t h e o r e t i c a l l y constant. 22 The data i n the F i l e form the basis of a long seri e s of pub-l i c a t i o n s by Barbeau, one matched and exceeded i n Northwest Coast eth-nography only by Franz Boas (Duff, 1964b; see the bibliography f o r a 4 p a r t i a l l i s t c f Barbeau's p u b l i c a t i o n s ) . The r e l a t i o n s h i p between the f i e l d data and the publications based on them make an indisputable case f o r the a r c h i v a l preservation of anthropological f i e l d notes. For the data were c o l l e c t e d and recorded c o n s i s t e n t l y and d i l i g e n t l y by men who knew and understood the people they were working with (and Bey-non was f l u e n t i n the two Tsimshian languages), whereas Barbeau's pub-l i c a t i o n s are contaminated by outmoded and ecce n t r i c t h e o r e t i c a l pre-occupations and poor, even sloppy, scholarship. Duff (1964b) has ex-amined and refuted or modified a number of Barbeau's most misleading conclusions, which need not be re-examined here, and anyone who has attempted to use h i s exhaustive survey of Northwest Coast totem poles 5 (Barbeau, 1950) has endured h i s awkward orthography and suffered from his inconsistency, inadequate documentation, and the generally poor organization of the book. Yet, the f i e l d records remain, preserved unaltered and un-excelled as primary documents on Tsimshian t r a d i t i o n a l h i s t o r y . In 1969, when I was attempting to formulate a research project to inves-t i g a t e Northwest Coast a r t , Wilson Duff made his copy of the Tsimshian 4. To date, no anthropological obituary and l i s t of publications has appeared for Barbeau and, to the best of my knowledge, none i s i n preparation. There i s a short popular biography of Barbeau i n Swayze, 1960. 5. I am r e f e r r i n g here to h i s published or popular orthography only; Barbeau's f i e l d orthography seems quite adequate. 23 F i l e a v a i l a b l e to me. The data i t contains provide information on Tsimshian iconography which was not, and could not now be, matched or exceeded f o r any other Northwest Coast society. While I was f i r s t f a m i l i a r i z i n g myself with the content of the F i l e , I re-read L e v i -Strauss' The Savage Mind (1966) and r e a l i z e d that the data on crests could be used to tes t h i s model of totemism, and, combined with the study of museum specimens, could extend i t by adding another dimension: the v i s u a l symbols (art) by which totemic messages (crests) were com-municated. I therefore formulated a research design to explore the r e -la t i o n s h i p s between Tsimshian cognitive systems, as these are r e f l e c t e d i n the Barbeau/Beynon notes, and t h e i r v i s u a l expressions, as these are preserved i n museums. These are r e l a t i o n s h i p s which can no longer be tested i n the f i e l d , and I hope that t h e i r e x p l i c a t i o n w i l l demonstrate the usefulness of museum documentation and c o l l e c t i o n s i n anthropological research. I do not, i n t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n , investigate the en t i r e range of Tsimshian material c u l t u r e , but focus on crest a r t , or totemic a r t , which i s the v i s u a l expression of a complicated c l a s s i f i c a t i o n system and one, moreover, f o r which the f i e l d data are e s p e c i a l l y com-p l e t e . In the process of de f i n i n g crests and d i s t i n g u i s h i n g t h e i r representations from other a r t i s t i c representations, however, I deal to a considerable extent with c e r t a i n categories of non^crest a r t , notably masks. The f i r s t stage i n the research was to master the contents of the F i l e and transf e r what emerged as data s i g n i f i c a n t to the problem 24 at hand to 5 x 8" cards, so that i t would be r e t r i e v a b l e as needed. As I worked through the data, another category of information which had v i s u a l or a r t i s t i c expression became incr e a s i n g l y s i g n i f i c a n t : the masked dramatisations of s p i r i t (naxno 'x) names. These comprised a separate and uniquely Tsimshian r i t u a l expression previously unre-ported i n the l i t e r a t u r e (although noted by Duff, 1964b: 68-69). Not only d i d t h i s system warrant d e s c r i p t i o n , i t also provides an a n a l y t i -c a l l y u s e f u l contrast to the totemic system already being investigated. The contrast between these two systems — totemic and s p i r i t name — i n turn suggested a new way of conceptualizing Tsimshian s o c i a l organization. I began to see i t i n terms of two d i s t i n c t s t r u c t u r a l orders — which I c a l l the p o t l a t c h order and the h a l a * i t order — that employ d i s t i n c t kinds of material culture and.distinct forms of r i t u a l expression. This l e d , again, to a broadening of the scope of the study to include a long chapter (Chapter Three) on Tsimshian s o c i a l organization. Three categories of data, then, i n a d d i t i o n to ethnographic observations, were extracted from the Barbeau Tsimshian F i l e to form the basis of the present study. They are 1) l i s t s and descriptions of c r e s t s , 2) ranked l i s t s of houses or lineages, and 3) l i s t s of s p i r i t names, plus some data as to how these were dramatized. Each of these categories of data w i l l be discussed separately. The master l i s t of crests (Appendix II) was compiled from hundreds of p a r t i a l l i s t s and references i n crest myths (ada/ox) r e -corded by Barbeau and Beynon from dozens of Tsimshian people between 25 1914 and Beynon's death i n 1957. While the l i s t s recorded from d i f -ferent people were seldom i n complete agreement, they overlapped and complemented each other i n numerous ways so as to make possible a master l i s t which i s more complete and more balanced than could have been known or remembered by any s i n g l e person. In order to appreciate the necessity of working from a composite l i s t , and to better appreciate the completeness of the Barbeau/Beynon data, i t i s h e l p f u l to r e f e r to the much shorter Tsimshian crest l i s t recorded by Henry Tate and published by Boas (1916: 503-506). Tate said at the time that "there were only a few old women who remember the crests" ( i b i d . : 503), which was demon-strated to be untrue by Barbeau's l a t e r work i n the same area, and Boas pointed out discrepancies i n the published l i s t with "a l i s t w ritten about seven years ago," apparently also by Tate. Not only does the second l i s t omit some of the important animal crests of the Coast Tsimshian (e.g., mountain goat, shark, mosquito), the crests l i s t e d "are, i n many cases, inaccurate, and never i n d i c a t e t h e i r owner" (Barbeau, 1917b: 561). Sapir's (1915) published l i s t of Niska crests i s also i n -accurate and incomplete (Wilson Duff was given a copy of t h i s a r t i c l e with extensive c o r r e c t i o n a l marginal notes by Barbeau). I t i s , how-ever, a f a r more useful l i s t than Tate's. Discrepancies i n the various recorded l i s t s of crests are due to more than f a u l t y memory and f a u l t y recording. Crest ownership . was enormously important to the Tsimshian. Crests were a measure of prestige to a people who competed f i e r c e l y f or p r e s t i g e , and i t i s to 26 be expected that someone would l i s t the crests owned by h i s or her own house i n considerably more d e t a i l than he would l i s t the crests of others. Each person, then, reported on t h i s highly complex system from the perspective of h i s own p a r t i c i p a t i o n i n i t , and some used the occasion of reporting to enhance t h e i r own po s i t i o n s . Another source of discrepancy i n the l i s t s was the tendency of people to over-look the more general or widely owned crests i n favour of the more highly s p e c i a l i z e d and prestigious crests associated with high rank. Those which were commonly owned tended to be taken f o r granted. Undoubtedly, some crests were simply forgotten, e s p e c i a l l y by the Coast Tsimshian l i v i n g around Port Simpson. The population of 6 these t r i b e s dropped from an estimated 3,000 i n 1835 to 632 i n 1924 (G a r f i e l d , 1939: 332-333). The crest system as i t survived i n the memory of th i s remnant population must have been mutilated. Fortu-nately, disease, trader, and missionary a c t i v i t y were les s a c t i v e i n the other, more remote Tsimshian settlements. The Coast Tsimshian also retained fewer of the tangible expressions of t h e i r crests into the twentieth century than did the Niska and Gitksan, both of whom used totem poles as memory aids when working on crest l i s t s with Barbeau. In 1862, James Deans (1899: 7) v i s i t e d Fort Simpson and "was astonished at the amount of carvings and paintings on the houses and t a l l columns, to be seen everywhere." But by 1878, George Dawson (1880: 115B) reported that "among the 6. This drop would include the 823 people who moved to New Metlakatla with Duncan ( G a r f i e l d , 1939: 333). 27 Tshimsians at Port Simpson, most of the o r i g i n a l carved posts have been cut down as missionary influence spread among the people." In con-t r a s t , the totem poles at Gitlakdamiks on the upper Nass were not des-troyed out of C h r i s t i a n zeal u n t i l 1917 or 1918 (Barbeau, 1929: 1, footnote) and those of the Gitksan never were. S i m i l a r l y , i f the records of such industrious c o l l e c t o r s as the Newcombes, Emmons, and Barbeau himself are accurate r e f l e c t i o n s of what there was s t i l l to be c o l l e c t e d , the people of Port Simpson had very l i t t l e movable material culture l e f t to s e l l (or, by inference, to use as memory aids) by the turn of the century. Crest data extracted from the Barbeau f i l e have been c l a s s i -f i e d and are included herein as Appendix I I . These data include the names of the crests i n Coast Tsimshian and Nass-Gitksan, English trans-l a t i o n s , such descriptions of the material representations of the crests as were reported, rules of use, and the houses (lineages) claim-ing each crest. Certain a d d i t i o n a l data, such as important crest con-f l i c t s and notes on the transf e r of crests from one house to another by capture or i n compensation for murder, are included as footnotes. The crests are l i s t e d by clans — laxk* i b u / , g* isp^wudwa 7dg, g.anha'da, laxak*i'k — and by d i v i s i o n s — Coast Tsimshian, Niska, Gitksan — within each clan. They are c l a s s i f i e d into the following categories, which are discussed i n Chapter Fiv e : primary animal, secondary animal, human, monster, plant, natural phenomenon, and a r t i f a c t . Ranked l i s t s of Tsimshian houses arranged by clan and t r i b e are included i n Appendix I. These l i s t s were synthesized by myself and 28 Wilson Duff from a number of l i s t s Barbeau recorded from Tsimshian people (Duff prepared the Coast Tsimshian l i s t s , which have been mini-mally expanded by Halpin, and Halpin prepared the others from data which had been p a r t i a l l y ordered by Duff). These l i s t s must not be taken as i n f a l l i b l e or "true" i n any absolute sense. They do represent a consensus of the data provided by Barbeau's Tsimshian teachers and, as such, probably correspond c l o s e l y to ranking arrangements as they existed i n the minds of the Tsimshian generally — at the time Barbeau recorded them (between 1914 and 1929). There i s no reason to question the clan assignments, since these did not change (except under extreme conditions, such as incestuous mar-riages) , and the Coast Tsimshian d i v i s i o n of houses into two status 7 l e v e l s was probably r e l a t i v e l y s t a t i c and unchanging. But the rankings, expressed i n the l i s t s by Roman numerals, were i n constant f l u x , and could have, t h e o r e t i c a l l y , changed each time a potlatch occurred (see Rosman and Rubel, 1971, Chs. II and V I I I ) , although such changes, i f they had been recorded, would probably have shown a very slow and v a r i -able r i s e and f a l l of houses i n rank. I t was a system not meant to be written down and frozen i n time. The implications of rank order among the Tsimshian, and the differences between the three d i v i s i o n s , are further discussed i n Chapter Three. 7. I am using the term "status l e v e l s " i n t h i s study i n place of the more t r a d i t i o n a l term " c l a s s " ; the difference i s discussed i n Chap-ter Three. 29 The p a r t i c u l a r value of the l i s t s here i s that they permit the arrangement of crests according to the houses which owned them i n order to give a v i s u a l p i c ture of Tsimshian s o c i a l organization. The arrangements reveal s u f f i c i e n t patterning to suggest some rules f o r the generation of crests as material expressions of s o c i a l p o s i t i o n . The l i s t s also provide a guide to clan and v i l l a g e a f f i l i a t i o n s of names and houses, which can be very confusing when encountered i n the l i t e r a t u r e . The Coast Tsimshian and Gitksan l i s t s of houses are probably very close to complete, and the i n t e r n a l evidence of the l i s t s provided by d i f f e r e n t people suggests that the s o c i a l organizations of these two d i v i s i o n s were f a i r l y s table. The s i t u a t i o n on the Nass was another story, and there was s i g n i f i c a n t disagreement among those who gave l i s t s to Barbeau. Part of t h i s was undoubtedly due to the movements of population from v i l l a g e to v i l l a g e during the h i s t o r i c period (see Chapter One), but i t i s also l i k e l y that the s o c i a l organization of the Niska had never s t a b i l i z e d to the same extent as i n the other two d i v i -sions due to the i r constant warring, marrying, and trading with Haida, T l i n g i t , and other Tsimshian who came to the Nass River f i s h i n g grounds during eulachon season. I t should also be pointed out that Barbeau spent less time on the Nass than he did among the Gitksan and Coast Tsimshian, and that there i s very l i t t l e published or unpublished data from the Nass which can be used to amplify h i s notes. I have, there-fore, not attempted to reco n c i l e the d i f f e r e n t versions of rank order f o r the Niska, but have included i n Appendix II each s i g n i f i c a n t version recorded. 30 Barbeau and Beynon recorded 662 s p i r i t (naxn? 7x) names from s p e c i f i e d houses of the three d i v i s i o n s of the Tsimshian (when the same name was claimed by more than one house, I counted i t separately each time i t was recorded). Each name was recorded i n Coast Tsimshian or Nass-Gitksan, with English t r a n s l a t i o n s , and f o r w e l l over h a l f of the names he also recorded b r i e f , usually one-line, descriptions of the manner i n which the name was dramatized. While these descriptions are s i g n i f i c a n t , they are too truncated to permit understanding of s p i r i t name enactments as a dramatic form. Fortunately, however, the Baynon account of the potlatch se r i e s at Kitsegukla i n 1945 contains h i s eye-witness record of some two dozen naxnj'x performances. These permit construction of a model f or the dramatic form, by means of which the other 662 naxn^ /x names recorded by Barbeau can be interpreted. While the naxnp'x system must s t i l l await a f u l l d e s c r i p t i o n and analy-s i s , I have described i t s major features i n Chapter Four and i l l u s t r a -ted some of the masks, with t h e i r attendant documentation, i n Chapter Six. In the early spring of 1971, having worked through the Barbeau/Beynon notes, I turned to museums to search out Tsimshian a r t i -f a c t s which would add a palpable three-dimensional r e a l i t y to the data on Tsimshian s o c i a l organization, cres t s , and s p i r i t names. From clues i n the l i t e r a t u r e , notably John E. Hunter's Inventory of Ethnological C o l l e c t i o n s i n Museums of the United States and Canada (1967), I chose to v i s i t the following museums which were l i k e l y to have s i g n i f i c a n t 31 8 Tsimshian c o l l e c t i o n s (hereinafter abbreviated as i n d i c a t e d ) : B r i t i s h Columbia P r o v i n c i a l Museum, V i c t o r i a (PM) Unive r s i t y of B r i t i s h Columbia Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver (UBC) National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada, Ottawa (NMC) Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (ROM) Museum of the American Indian, New York (MAI) F i e l d Museum, Chicago (FM). Other p o t e n t i a l l y s i g n i f i c a n t Tsimshian c o l l e c t i o n s are i n the American Museum of Natural History (Emmons, Boas), the Univ e r s i t y Museum of Ph i l a d e l p h i a (Louis Shotridge), the Museum of Ethnic Arts and Technology, UCLA (items c o l l e c t e d by Beynon f o r S i r Henry Wellcome), and the National Museum of Natural H i s t o r y , Smithsonian I n s t i t u t i o n (Swan). , Museum research has i t s own kinds of t r i b u l a t i o n s (see Sturtevant, 1973, for an expert's i n t r o d u c t i o n ) . In the f i r s t place, the objects preserved i n museum c o l l e c t i o n s are <->but a sampling, c o l -l e c t e d by others and normally according to aesthetic rather than s c i e n -t i f i c c r i t e r i a , of the t o t a l universe of objects they represent. Again, 8. I also v i s i t e d the Thomas Burke Memorial Museum, University of Wash-ington, S e a t t l e , where there are some dozen, poorly documented Tsim-shian pieces c o l l e c t e d by Emmons and Walter C. Waters. They are not included i n th i s study. I had also intended to v i s i t the American Museum of Natural H i s t o r y , New York, but i n s p i t e of two l e t t e r s from me and one from my advi-sor (none of which were answered), they had made no provisions f o r me to view objects i n t h e i r c o l l e c t i o n . Rather than press my case there, I used the time I had l e f t i n New York f o r further work at the MAI where Vincent Wilcox, Curator of Research, was e s p e c i a l l y h e l p f u l . 32 of the a r t i f a c t s one believes to be i n a c o l l e c t i o n , because they are l i s t e d i n the museum's catalogue, there w i l l be a s i g n i f i c a n t proportion unavailable to the v i s i t i n g researcher because 1) they are i n s p e c i a l storage, 2) they are on exhibit and cannot or w i l l not be removed, and 9 3) no one can f i n d them. Then, as i n most kinds of anthropological i n v e s t i g a t i o n , the researcher i s an outsider to a closed system, one i n which people per-form customary duties within a seemingly (at f i r s t ) i n e x p l i c a b l e con-text of values and s o c i a l h i e r a r c h i e s , and one i n which there are no 10 i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d roles or f a c i l i t i e s f o r the stranger or outsider. Inexcusably, to me, one's an t i c i p a t e d colleague and counterpart, the resident museum ethnologist, a l l too often does not share the v i s i t i n g researcher's enthusiasm for and i n t e r e s t i n the c o l l e c t i o n s under h i s or her care, and the v i s i t o r must seek out a photographer, r e g i s t r a r , or technician f o r sympathetic and knowledgeable assistance. 9. Fortunately, I did not have any experiences quite as f r u s t r a t i n g as the one reported by Sturtevant (1969: 635) when 83 percent of the specimens he selected from the catalogue of an unnamed European museum could not be found. 10. In s p i t e of claims to the contrary; Sturtevant (1973: 14) believes that t h i s i s because research v i s i t o r s are so infrequent and notes that museum " i d e a l s support research." I would q u a l i f y t h i s and say that museum i d e a l s , as revealed by museum s t a f f behaviour, sup-port research by in-house researchers. I am basing t h i s observation not only on my experiences as a graduate student doing museum research f o r t h i s study ( i n which case my low status can be expected to have accorded me d i f f e r e n t receptions from those accorded Dr. Sturtevant), but also upon some seven years' experience on the s t a f f s of a na-t i o n a l museum and a u n i v e r s i t y museum. However, I am sympathetic, as i s Sturtevant ( i b i d . : 14), with the chronic museum problems of "low s t a f f i n g , lack of space, l o s t specimens, m i s l a i d records, and the demands of ex h i b i t programs" which are normally offered i n apology. 33 The rewards of museum research are simple enough. F i r s t , f i n d i n g a r t i f a c t s of the kinds one has predicted or hoped would be there, and, second, f i n d i n g , a l l too r a r e l y , that the f i e l d c o l l e c t o r had c o l l e c t e d supporting documentation pertinent to one's problem. Of the c o l l e c t o r s responsible f o r the Tsimshian pieces upon which t h i s study i s based, only one — and i t was Marius Barbeau himself — c o l -l e c t e d supporting documentation adequate to my purposes. The others, and they include some of the best-known and respected c o l l e c t o r s who have worked on the Northwest Coast, were p r i m a r i l y c o l l e c t o r s of ob-je c t s only, and to judge from the records they made, had l i t t l e i n -te r e s t i n the people and cultures these objects represented. This i s , i n i t s e l f , an h i s t o r i c a l problem worth i n v e s t i g a t i o n : "the h i s t o r y of c o l l e c t i n g and of museums i s part of Euroamerican c u l t u r a l and i n t e l l e c -t u a l h i s t o r y that ought to be examined as evidence on the changing i n t e r e s t s i i n exotic peoples and ideas about them" (Sturtevant, 1973: 13). The only published examination of c o l l e c t o r s ' a t t i t u d e s toward 11 donor populations on the Northwest Coast i s Macnair (1971), although current opinions about c o l l e c t i n g p ractices of the past are shared f r e e l y i n pri v a t e conversations. Someefifteen c o l l e c t o r s were responsible for most of the Tsim-12 shian pieces i n the museums I v i s i t e d . They f a l l i nto two groups, 11. Macnair's references to "Mr. C o l l e c t o r " i n t h i s a r t i c l e are t h i n l y v e i l e d references to C F . Newcombe. 12. This includes p r i n c i p a l c o l l e c t o r s only; pieces acquired by auc-t i o n , from dealers, or s i n g l e and i n small l o t s (e.g., there i s one item at the NMC [VII-C-19] c o l l e c t e d by Franz Boas) are not included. 34 separated on the basis of t h e i r c o l l e c t i n g purposes, which have s i g -n i f i c a n t implications f o r the q u a l i t y of supporting documentation associated with t h e i r c o l l e c t i o n s . The f i r s t group, who might be c a l l e d f i e l d c o l l e c t o r s , are those persons, resident outside of Tsimshian t e r r i t o r y , who made t r i p s to that area f o r the express purpose of c o l l e c t i n g a r t i f a c t s from the Tsimshian, or, i f resident i n the area, were commissioned by persons from outside to make such c o l l e c t i o n s . With two exceptions, which are i n themselves i n s t r u c t i v e , the q u a l i t y of supporting documentation f o r the c o l l e c t i o n s made by t h i s group i s superior to the documentation of the other group. The second group of c o l l e c t o r s , who might be c a l l e d resident c o l l e c t o r s , are those non-Tsimshian who were resident i n the Tsimshian area f o r purposes other than c o l l e c t i n g , and whose c o l l e c t i o n s were therefore made i n c i d e n t a l to these other and p r i o r purposes. These are e s s e n t i a l l y " c u r i o " c o l l e c t i o n s : the objects being acquired more as mementos of the period of residence than i n and f o r themselves. I t i s therefore understandable that the c o l l e c t o r usually had l i t t l e or no in t e r e s t i n documentation. Regrettably, these tend to be e a r l i e r c o l -l e c t i o n s than those more purposefully made. Paradoxically, the resident c o l l e c t o r s were i n a better p o s i -t i o n to acquire the more complete documentation, due to prolonged con-tact with the donor population, had he but seen t h i s as a desirable end. The two exceptions to t h i s c l a s s i f i c a t i o n are the I.W. Powell and C.V. Smith c o l l e c t i o n s . Powell's primary purpose f o r v i s i t i n g 35 Tsimshian t e r r i t o r y was h i s r o l e as Superintendent of Indian A f f a i r s , although he c o l l e c t e d a r t i f a c t s from them i n 1879 on commission from the Geological Survey i n Ottawa (the forerunner of the National Museums). Hence, i n terms of t h i s c l a s s i f i c a t i o n , h i s dual purpose might be sa i d to have d i l u t e d or worked at cross-purposes with the f i e l d c o l l e c t o r ' s purpose and, therefore, to account at le a s t i n part for h i s poor documen-ta t i o n . G.V. Smith was a Hazelton resident who amassed a c o l l e c t i o n which he sold to the National Museum i n 1925. As a resident c o l l e c t o r , he predictably provided no documentation. However, Barbeau, a f i e l d c o l l e c t o r , was able to secure good documentation f o r the c o l l e c t i o n from other informed persons. Hence, a resident c o l l e c t o r ' s c o l l e c t i o n has the l e v e l of documentation normally provided by a f i e l d c o l l e c t o r . These p r i n c i p a l c o l l e c t o r s and t h e i r c o l l e c t i o n s are l i s t e d below, together with dates, pertinent ranges of museum catalogue numbers (not n e c e s s a r i l y continuously Tsimshian; other pieces are often i n t e r -spersed) , proveniences, some i n d i c a t i o n of the range of items i n the c o l l e c t i o n , and notes as to the q u a l i t y of the supporting documentation. F i e l d C o l l e c t o r s : CM. Barbeau, anthropologist and f o l k l o r i s t , National Museum of Canada 1915 (Jan. - Mar.). Coast Tsimshian. NMC. VII-C-491 - VII-C-728. Well-balanced ethnographic c o l -l e c t i o n . Documentation includes t r i b e , owner, native name f o r specimens, notes on use and iconography. 36 1920-21 (Aug. - Jan.). Gitksan. NMC. VTI-C-739 - VII-C-1047. Well-balanced ethnographic c o l -l e c t i o n . Documentation more de t a i l e d than f o r 1915 c o l l e c t i o n . Includes t r i b e , owner, maker, native name, notes on use and iconography. 13 1923 (summer). Gitksan. NMC. VII-C-1048 - VII-C-1099. Large c o l l e c t i o n of masks, other items. Documentation s i m i l a r to 1920-21 c o l l e c t i o n . Includes t r i b e , owner, maker, native name, notes on use and iconography. 1924. Gitksan and Niska. NMC. VII-C-1103 - VII-C-1182. Ethnographic c o l l e c t i o n . Documentation includes t r i b e , owner, maker, native name, notes on use and iconography. ROMti HN-613 - HN-654. Coast Tsimshian, K i t l o p e , Nass River (some pieces c o l l e c t e d by Beynon; some purchased from Pat P h i l l i p s o n , Prince Rupert dealer). Includes well-documented serie s of chief's paraphernalia from sqat^i'n (laxk*ibu) and mynEsk (laxsk* i'k) of g* itlaxda?mks. Documentation poor f o r Beynon and P h i l l i p s o n pieces. TT. Duff (1964b: 65) does not l i s t a f i e l d t r i p f o r Barbeau i n 1923; however, Barbeau's typed f i e l d notes f o r t h i s c o l l e c t i o n are under the heading " L i s t of specimens c o l l e c t e d i n summer of 1923 by CM. Barbeau i n the Upper Skeena Country, B.C. (mostly Gitksan specimens)." 37 1927 (summer). Kispayaks, Kisgegas, and Gitlaxdamiks. ROM. HN-680 - HN-826. Ethnographic c o l l e c t i o n . Documenta-ti o n includes t r i b e , native name, owner, and excellent notes on use and iconography. (July-Sept.). Gitksan and Niska. NMC. VTI-C-1364 - VII-C-1426. Ethnographic c o l l e c t i o n , i n -cludes some items purchased from Pat P h i l l i p s o n , Prince Ru-pert dealer. Documentation includes t r i b e , owner, native name, and notes on use and iconography. 1929 (summer). Gitksan and Niska. NMC. VII-C-1441 - VII-C-1476. Ethnographic c o l l e c t i o n . Doc-umentation s i m i l a r to above. (June). Gitksan. ROM. HN-1214 - HN-1263. C o l l e c t i o n of shamans' paraphernalia from Kispiox made for Dr. Harold M. T o v e l l , who presented i t to the Academy of Medicine, Toronto, i n 1930. Now i n the ROM. . Coast Tsimshian, Nass River. ROM. HN-867-HN-926. P r i m a r i l y headdresses and masks. Docu-mentation not as complete as usual. George A. Dorsey, anthropologist. 1897. Gitksan. FM. Accession No. 537 (accessioned October 30, 1897). Cata-logue Numbers 53051-53142. This c o l l e c t i o n resulted from a 38 f i e l d t r i p to Hazelton i n August, 1897, and includes some items purchased from Cunningham & Son, Port Essington. Docu-mentation i s disappointing; provenience given as "Port Essing-ton" or "Hazelton" only, although the c o l l e c t o r did t r y to get the names of the masks (e.g., "Peace Maker" or "represent-ing Sicanee Indians"). G.T. Emmons, r e t i r e d U.S. naval o f f i c e r , p r o f e s s i o n a l c o l l e c t o r . MAI. Specimens from a l l three d i v i s i o n s of the Tsimshian, although p r i m a r i l y Niska and Gitksan. Between 1905 and 1936, the MAI accessioned between 200 and 300 Tsimshian pieces (that I was able to locate) received from Emmons. This museum does not maintain an accession record or other catalogue r e t r i e v a l system to f a c i l i t a t e searching i t s holdings. I t i s necessary to go one by one through some one m i l l i o n catalogue cards or to work d i r e c t l y from the specimens i n storage. Hence, i t i s l i k e l y that some Tsimshian c o l l e c t i o n s were missed. Catalogue numbers f o r Emmons' c o l l e c t i o n s which include Tsimshian pieces are l i s t e d below, together with the approximate dates they were received i n the museum (accession dates are not entered on the catalogue cards; these dates were taken from a cata-logue number/date key maintained i n the Research Annex): 39 1905 4316 1919 9/6730-9/6742 1907 1/4165-1/4368 1920 9/7843-9/8152 1909 2/4318-2/4335 9/8010 1910-12 2/6934-2/6998 1921 10/4576-10/4585 1914 3/5008-3/5037 1922 11/1741-11/1825 1915 4/508-4/534 11/3843-11/3929 1916 5/5017-5/5071 11/5400-11/5464 5/5424-5/5425 1924 12/6628 5/6896^5/6906 13/3955-13/4049 5/8805-5/8823 1926 15/1321-15/1367 1917 6/524-6/549 1928 15/8947-15/8998 6/6279-6/6326 1936 19/765-19/812 1918 7/4411-7/4437 8/2606-8/2609 8/7996-8/8016 8/8466-8/8470 The above c o l l e c t i o n s include a wide range of a r t i f a c t types, inc l u d i n g an e s p e c i a l l y good s e l e c t i o n of masks and four com-ple t e Gitksan shamans' bundles. The documentation i s v a r i a b l e , ranging from provenience given as "Tsimshian," to v i l l a g e a t -t r i b u t i o n s , to occasional pieces with the name of the owner and notes on use and iconography. I was able to locate Emmons' o r i g i n a l catalogue notes only f o r the 1914 (3/5008-3/5037), 1915 (4/508-4/534), 1918 (8/7996-8/8016), and 1920 (9/7843-9/8152) c o l l e c t i o n s . There i s also a catalogue dated 1932, 40 "Lt. G.T. Emmons Northwest Coast C o l l e c t i o n (1-193)" but MAI catalogue numbers are not included, so that c o r r e l a t i o n of the notes with s p e c i f i c pieces i s d i f f i c u l t . S i r A l f r e d Bossom, 1881-1965, English a r c h i t e c t . NMC. VII-C-1710 - VII-C-1797. Coast Tsimshian, Niska, Kispiox. Accessioned 1955, 1960. This c o l l e c t i o n was quite c e r t a i n l y made for Bossom by Emmons, probably between 1903 and 1916. Bossom wrote as follows i n "Some personal notes on the cre-ating of t h i s c o l l e c t i o n of the works of the North West Coast Indians" (n.d., ms. i n Ethnology D i v i s i o n , NMC): "to help me gathering t h i s large assortment of the Arts and Crafts of these people f o r about f i f t y years I was most fortunate i n e n l i s t i n g the a i d of an old and highly respected American f r i e n d , Captain Emmons, who knew these Indians w e l l . " Bar-beau wrote i n a memorandum regarding the c o l l e c t i o n (n.d., Ethnology D i v i s i o n , NMC): "the c o l l e c t i o n was made, I be-l i e v e , from 1900 to 1910. How d i d S i r A l f r e d Bossom acquire t h i s c o l l e c t i o n ? Solely through L i e u t . G.T. Emmons of the U.S. Navy i n Alaska .... I met L t . Emmons i n V i c t o r i a i n the spring of 1916; he was then an old man." The c o l l e c t i o n includes some 95 pieces i d e n t i f i e d as Tsim-shian. Some of them are among the f i n e s t known examples of Tsimshian a r t . A r t i f a c t types include masks, r a t t l e s , spoons, gambling s t i c k s , and a few other pieces. Many of them were included i n an exhibit at the Imperial I n s t i t u t e , London, November, 1954 - January, 1955. 41 The NMC received with the c o l l e c t i o n a typed catalogue pre-pared by someone with the i n i t i a l s E.H.S. I t makes several references to an " o r i g i n a l " catalogue which cannot now be located, but which must have been made by Emmons. The s t y l e i n which entries i n the second catalogue were written i s s t i l l unmistakably Emmons' s t y l e . Compare the following entries from the Emmons catalogue notes at the MAI with the Bossom c o l l e c t i o n catalogue at the NMC: 14 MAI 7/8044. Shaman's mask of maple, representing the face of a very old woman of high caste, the wrinkles and the grey h a i r representing the age, and while t h i s i s also represented by the s i z e of the l a b r e t , yet i t s s i z e and i n l a y i n g of h a l i o -t i s s h e l l also show the rank. The labret i s a very large and b e a u t i f u l specimen, and was o r i g i n a l l y worn by a woman, and l a t e r the mask was made i n order to use i t . From the Nishka v i l l a g e of Aiyansh on the upper Nass River. I t was worn by the shaman i n h i s p r a c t i c e about the s i c k and represented a p a r t i c u l a r s p i r i t ( i t a l i c s added). NMC VII-C-1759. Wood mask representing the face of a land o t t e r woman. The mask i s painted with a black face, red ( n o s t r i l s ) , ears, and l i p s . The mouth i s open and the wood teeth unpainted. The forehead i s ornamented with black bear f u r . The old b e l i e f throughout the Northwest Coast from the Skeena River to the Copper Delta was that the drowned turned into h a l f land o t t e r and h a l f human beings. The T l i n g i t c a l l e d them "Koushta" (land otter) "KA" (man) and believed when peo-pl e were drowning t h e i r beings assumed a human form and came o f f e r i n g to save them. The mask was worn by the Shaman i n hi s p r a c t i c e about the s i c k and bewitched. Niska ( i t a l i c s added). MAI 9/7879. Headdress ornament of wood that can be attached to a head piece or wooden hat. I t i s carved to represent a double-headed sea animal of the snake v a r i e t y , a wholly imag-inary animal .... Used i n the winter dances which are t h e a t r i -Tsimshian shamans did not wear masks i n t h e i r r o l e as shamans. Emmons i s obviously extrapolating here from h i s knowledge of the T l i n g i t , whose shamans did wear masks while curing. 42 c a l i n character, each one t r y i n g to surpass i n grotesqueness and o r i g i n a l i t y everyone e l s e , i n masks and dress. From the Nishka ( i t a l i c s added). NMC VTI-C-1713, Dance implement used i n the more t h e a t r i c a l winter dances. I t represents the crest of the dancer, a beaver. I t i s a wood head, carved as a beaver with copper teeth holding a s t i c k of wood that i s divided on each side i n three parts that can be opened and closed by the dancer. I t i s held by the c a r r i e r between the teeth by means of a s t i c k , p r o j e c t i n g out of the rear of the beaver head. Painted red and black. Niska ( i t a l i c s added). Mrs. 0. Morison, Tsimshian c o l l e c t o r . 1892. Nass and Skeena Rivers. FM. Accession 60, Catalogue Numbers 14609, 17826, 18001-18646. Mrs. Morison was a Tsimshian, described by James Deans (1899, quoted i n Barbeau, 1950: 460) as "an exceedingly i n t e l l i g e n t h a l f caste, her mother being a native Simshian." She made t h i s c o l l e c t i o n of some 50 pieces i n 1892, commissioned by Franz Boas for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposi-t i o n . The c o l l e c t i o n includes a wide range of a r t i f a c t types, including three house models which can no longer be found (Nos. 17826, 18001, 18003). FM catalogue notes i n d i c a t e that the f i r s t two were sent to the Brooklyn Museum, which has no record of them. This i s a r e a l l o s s , f o r her records describe housefront paintings and totem pole models which could be ex-15 ceedingly important. 15. I have recently heard that the housefronts (only) were seen at the F i e l d Museum within the l a s t few years, but have no d e t a i l s . 43 She provided r i c h documentation i n English and Tsimshian (although the orthography i s somewhat i d i o s y n c r a t i c ) . Her notes (13 typed pages) are u s e f u l primary documents i n them-selves, f o r they go beyond describing and naming the specimens and include some observations on c h i e f s , secret s o c i e t i e s , and the r e l a t i o n s h i p of iconography to myths. Regrettably, she did not provide provenience data other than, and i n only some cases, "Nass River," or "Skeena River." C.F. Newcombe, medical doctor and pr o f e s s i o n a l c o l l e c t o r , also associa- ted with the B.C. P r o v i n c i a l Museum. 1913. Niska, some Coast Tsimshian and Gitksan pieces. PM. 1499 - 1663. Niska ethnographic c o l l e c t i o n , good s e r i e s of masks, shamans' charms. 9534 - 9548. Niska c o l l e c t i o n , more charms. 9715 - 10067. Niska, Gitksan; seems to f i t into the 1499-1663 s e r i e s . The Newcombe c o l l e c t i o n was accessioned by himself f o r the P r o v i n c i a l Museum; he did not d i s t i n g u i s h between c o l l e c t i n g and accession dates. His most s i g n i f i c a n t Tsimshian c o l l e c t -ing t r i p seems to have been i n 1913, although he dates other pieces 1911, 1912, and 1914. The Newcombe papers have not yet been sorted and analyzed by the Ethnology D i v i s i o n (they are i n the B.C. P r o v i n c i a l Archives); when t h i s i s done the docu-mentation should be improved. E x i s t i n g documentation on these pieces i s p r i n c i p a l l y v i l l a g e provenience, although some 44 masks are more f u l l y documented (e.g., "potlatch mask, blue grouse, owner's c r e s t " ) . W.A. Newcombe, pro f e s s i o n a l c o l l e c t o r and associate of h i s father (above). 1905 (Nov. - D e c ) . Niska. NMC. VII-C-105 - VII-C-294. Ethnographic c o l l e c t i o n . Ac-cessioned with this c o l l e c t i o n are some few pieces from K i t -k a t l a which were c o l l e c t e d by C F . Newcombe between 1895-1901. V i l l a g e provenience only as documentation. Dr. I s r a e l Wood Powell (1837-1915), V i c t o r i a medical doctor and f i r s t Superintendent of Indian A f f a i r s f o r B r i t i s h Columbia, 1872. 1879. Coast Tsimshian and Niska. NMC. VII-C-2 - VII-C-104; VII-C-329 - VII-C-350; VII-C-434 -VII-C-435; VII-C-483. In 1873, Powell made a t r i p on the H.M.S. Boxer to the Queen Charlotte Islands, which seems to have awakened h i s i n t e r e s t i n Indian art (Robinson, 1942). In 1879, he was commissioned by the Director of the Geological Survey i n Ottawa to c o l l e c t Indian a r t i f a c t s ; some 350 pieces were sent to Ottawa i n De-cember of that year to become the nucleus of the c o l l e c t i o n i n the present National Museum of Man. The pieces were p r i -marily Haida, Nootka, Coast Tsimshian, and Niska. The Tsim-shian pieces include horn spoons, dishes, c h i l k a t s , ambelans, amhalaits, a house model, masks (including one of stone), boxes, charms, and r a t t l e s . The c o l l e c t i o n i s p r a c t i c a l l y 45 undocumented, excepting f o r loose provenience a t t r i b u t i o n s (e.g., "Tsimshian," "Fort Simpson," "Nass R i v e r " ) , some of which are questionable. For example, mask VII-C-2, i d e n t i -f i e d as "Skeena River," i s almost c e r t a i n l y Nootka. There i s a small notebook i n the B.C. P r o v i n c i a l Archives (No. AE, P87, 2) with some s c r i b b l e d p e n c i l notations by Powell which could, with considerable detective work, be used to amplify the records at the NMC. I t contains such c r y p t i c notes as " K i n c o l i t h , 20 Ju l y , a d d i t i o n a l curios purchased; war club, $20.00; 2 masks, $20.00." Some pieces c o l l e c t e d by Powell on thi s or another t r i p were sold by Emmons to the MAI. MAI 3/5010, a canoe figure head, MAI 3/5011, a s t a f f , and MAI 3/5013, a headdress, were s a i d by Emmons to have been " c o l -l e c t e d i n the 70s by the B r i t i s h Columbia Commissioner of Indian A f f a i r s . " Harlan I. Smith, archeologist, National Museum of Canada. 1925. Gitksan. NMC. VII-C-1276 - VII-C-1345. V i l l a g e provenience only. 1926. Gitksan. NMC. VII-C-1347 - VII-C-1354. Some dozen well-documented pieces purchased from Chief samedi^ks, Kitwanga. 1927. Gitksan. NMC. VII-C-1427 - VII-C-1436. Masks, other r i t u a l pieces, "bought of a Gitksan woman at Hazelton." No other documen-t a t i o n . 46 Resident C o l l e c t o r s : Thomas Crosby (1840-1914), Methodist missionary at Fort Simpson, 1870s and 1880s. 1870s, 1880s? Coast Tsimshian. MAI. 1/8900 - 1/8957, 1/8020 - 1/8199. Purchased by the MAI i n 1908. Pr i m a r i l y items from Port Simpson and Kitimat; i n -cludes r a t t l e s , masks, chests, dishes. Some pieces s a i d to have been c o l l e c t e d from the Tsimshian i n 1874. Documentation poor, p r i n c i p a l l y provenience data ssuch as "Kitamat," "Port Simpson," and "Tsimshian." NMC. VII-C-68, VII-C-84, VII-C-93. Crosby pieces purchased i n 1886. Charles C l i f t o n Perry, Indian Agent, Metiakatla. (1880s?) P r i m a r i l y Niska. NMC. VII-C-311 - VII-C-325, VII-C-331 - VII-C-336, VII-C-354 -VII-C-355, VTI-C-360 - VII-C-391, VII-C-407 - VII-C-408, VII-C-414 - VII-C-423, VII-C-451 - VII-C-453, VII-C-474 - VII-C-477. C o l l e c t i o n sold to the NMC i n 1911. Includes an e s p e c i a l l y f i n e c o l l e c t i o n of about a dozen Niska masks. Documentation i s u s e f u l , though spotty. Provenience ranges from "Aiyansh" to "Nass"; some notes on use (e.g., "Neishga Indian Dancing Mask, Halaid Dance, up to 1890"). There are no i n d i c a t i o n s as to when the c o l l e c t i o n was made. P r i e s t l y (no data on c o l l e c t o r ) . Nass River. PM. 9619 - 9696. Accessioned 1909. A t y p i c a l curio c o l l e c -t i o n : charms, horn spoons, soul catchers, etc. Four masks, 47 one f r o n t l e t , and a kerfed box. Documentation "Nass River" only. Dr. George H. Raley, Methodist minister to Kitamaat, 1893; Port Simpson, 1906; P r i n c i p a l of Coqualeetza R e s i d e n t i a l School, Sardis, 1914. (ca. 1893-1914). Coast Tsimshian, Niska, Gitksan. UBC. A-1482 - A-6568 (i n t e r m i t t e n t ) . The Raley c o l l e c t i o n covers the e n t i r e coast, and includes some 30 good Tsimshian pieces. I t i s e s s e n t i a l l y a connoisseur's c o l l e c t i o n , ac-quired piecemeal over the years. Documentation includes provenience data only, ranging from such a t t r i b u t i o n s as "Skeena River" and "Nass River" to s p e c i f i c l o c a l i t i e s , e.g., "Port Essington," "Metlakatla," and " K i t k a t l a . " Dr. Raley sold the c o l l e c t i o n to UBC i n 1948. C.V. Smith, Hazelton. Gitksan. NMC. VII-C-1183 - VTI-C-1275. A well-balanced Gitksan c o l -l e c t i o n . The pieces were purchased by the NMC i n 1925 and documented by Barbeau, apparently i n the f i e l d and probably before they were shipped to Ottawa (rather than from photo-graphs) . V i l l a g e s and oftentimes owners' names for many pieces, plus some a d d i t i o n a l information, though not of the c a l i b r e of Barbeau's documentation f o r pieces he himself c o l l e c t e d . Dr. Wv.F. Tolmie (1812-1886), medical doctor and Hudson's Bay Company fur trader. (ca. 1852). Coast Tsimshian. 48 PM. 4102 - 4123. A small c o l l e c t i o n of dishes, r a t t l e , f r o n t -l e t , masks, charms purchased i n 1927. No documentation. Mus-eum i d e n t i f i c a t i o n s "Tsimshian" or "Tsimshian or Haida," pos-s i b l y made by Newcombe. We know from Tolmie's diary (Tolmie, 1963) that he was at Fort McLoughlin ( B e l l a Bella) from 1833 to 1836, and that he v i s i -ted Fort Simpson i n 1834. He mentions i n a l e t t e r dated 1838 that he had made a l i s t of ethnological specimens f o r the In-verness Museum (which has no record of having received a c o l l e c t i o n from Tolmie), so we know he was c o l l e c t i n g by t h i s time, alghough no Tsimshian pieces are s p e c i f i c a l l y mentioned. Dr. H.C. Wrinch, Methodist medical missionary. Gitksan. NMC. VII-C-1483 - VII-C-1700. Wide range of a r t i f a c t types, inc l u d i n g s i l v e r jewelry, gambling s t i c k sets, masks. Wrinch a r r i v e d i n Kispiox i n 1901 and opened a h o s p i t a l i n Hazelton i n 1904. This c o l l e c t i o n was purchased by the NMC i n 1937, short l y before h i s death i n 1939. Documentation i s "Skeena River" only. * * * * Of the Tsimshian-made and Tsimshian-used a r t i f a c t s i n these c o l l e c t i o n s , I selected a working sample of some 1645 pieces, which I judged to have p o t e n t i a l ( i . e . , discoverable) iconographic and symbolic meanings (excluding basketry and native-made t e x t i l e s other than Chil k a t 49 16 blankets). Most of these are items decorated i n the Northwest Coast art s t y l e , but some, such as abalone earrings and l a b r e t s , are not. Of these pieces, I was able to photograph or purchase photographs of somewhat more than 1,000, some i n color, some i n black and white, some i n both. In addition to the museum specimens, I studied f i e l d photo-graphs taken by Barbeau, H.I. Smith, Emmons, C.F. Newcombe, and others, i n the PM and the NMC. I also studied the photographs of Tsimshian t o -tem poles published by Barbeau (1929, 1950), and a c o l l e c t i o n of photo-graphs taken by Wilson Duff i n 1952 of totem poles at Gitanmaks, Kispiox, 17 Kitsegukla, Kitwanga, and Kitwancool, now i n the PM (see Duff, 1952). To conclude t h i s chapter, i t i s important to consider the re l a t i o n s h i p s between the two classes of data used i n the study: the Barbeau/Beynon notes and the museum specimens. Sturtevant (1973: 9-10) distinguishes between two types of museum studies: contextual studies, which " t r e a t the r e l a t i o n between the objects and some n o n - a r t i f a c t u a l aspect such as s o c i a l structure, r i t u a l , psychology, or the character and l i f e h i s t o r y of i n d i v i d u a l a r t i s t s , " and formal studies, which " t r e a t the context as given and analyse the objects themselves." This study i s of the f i r s t or contex-t u a l type. By analyzing the Barbeau/Beynon f i e l d data, i t seeks to erect a contextual framework, or g r i d , within which items of Tsimshian material culture can be interpreted or made meaningful. While the f i e l d data, 16. The horn spoons i n t h i s sample include only those for which some s p e c i f i c data were c o l l e c t e d . There are hundreds more i n the c o l -l e c t i o n . 17. The Ethnology D i v i s i o n of the PM graciously supplied me with p r i n t s of most of these photographs free of charge. 50 notably the l i s t s of crests and s p i r i t names, c e r t a i n l y cannot be con-sidered complete, they are an adequate sample of the idea systems they represent f o r the purpose at hand. Further, because of acc u l t u r a t i v e loss of these idea systems by the contemporary Tsimshian, they are data which cannot be s i g n i f i c a n t l y increased. The sample of material representations or embodiments of these idea systems — the museum specimens used i n the research — i s not an adequate sample of the larger universe i t represents. Fortu-nately, i t can be increased as more of the Tsimshian a r t i f a c t s i n the world's museums are i d e n t i f i e d and interpreted i n the context developed here. The museum sample used i s , however, adequate to e s t a b l i s h the r e l i a b i l i t y of the i n t e r p r e t i v e framework, i n that crest representa-tions with the s p e c i f i c a t t r i b u t e s described i n the crest l i s t s were found i n museums. But a great many more museum specimens must be brought into t h i s framework before the goal of a reasonably complete material culture re-presentation of the Tsimshian crest and s p i r i t name systems w i l l be accomplished. Then, i t w i l l be possible i n Sturtevant's words, to " t r e a t the context as given and analyze the objects themselves." For the present, the sample of a r t i f a c t s i s only adequate to be used as i l l u s t r a t i o n s of a larger universe we now know was created, and can only hope has been preserved. 51 CHAPTER THREE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The following o u t l i n e of Tsimshian s o c i a l organization i s included as background f o r the analysis which follows i n l a t e r chapters. I t i s not a complete statement, i n that i t does not develop a formal model and systematically follow i t s implications f o r Tsimshian s o c i a l behaviour. However, i t does amplify the discussions of Tsimshian s o c i a l organization i n the published l i t e r a t u r e , and therefore makes an o r i g i n a l contribution. The focus of the chapter i s the development of an a n a l y t i c a l d i s t i n c t i o n between two s t r u c t u r a l orders i n Tsimshian so c i e t y : the 1 one r i t u a l l y expressed i n the potlatch, the other i n h a l a f i t ' s . The potlatch r e f l e c t s and celebrates the order of descent groups and a f f i -n a l t i e s , of clanship and exogamy. Conceptually opposed and based upon a d i f f e r e n t s t r u c t u r a l p r i n c i p l e — that of c o n t r o l l i n g supernatural power — i s the hala.'it order, which r e s u l t s i n s o d a l i t i e s c u t t i n g across the clan structure. Tsimshian c h i e f t a i n s h i p was o r i g i n a l l y a p o s i t i o n a l locus i n the potlatch order; that i s , chiefs were clan chiefs and sub-clan c h i e f s . 2 Among the Coast Tsimshian, however, an o f f i c e of t r i b a l chief had dev-eloped which extended the chief's hegemony to include the l o c a l lineages 1. See page 74 for a d e f i n i t i o n of h a l a / i t . 2. " T r i b e " i s used herein to r e f e r to the 26 l o c a l groups of the Tsim-shian ( g ' i t x a ^ a , g ' i s p a x l ? " ts , g* i t x a t * i.'n, k* itwang.E', e t c . ) . Since each group usually occupied a s i n g l e winter v i l l a g e , " t r i b e " i s e s s e n t i a l l y synonomous with " v i l l a g e . " See p. 13 f f . above. 52 of other clans. Concomitantly, the chief was extending the s t r u c t u r a l basis of h i s power v i s - a - v i s the h a l a ' i t order. The same process, a l -though l e s s developed, can also be seen among the Niska and Gitksan. I i n t e r p r e t t h i s intermeshing of the two orders i n the p o s i t i o n of chief as evidence of a development i n Tsimshian s o c i a l organization from a t r i b a l l e v e l of i n t e g r a t i o n to a chiefdom l e v e l . Rather than attempting to account for the changing power of the chief by reference to economic or other f a c t o r s , I w i l l discuss the way i n which the tr a n -s i t i o n i s mirrored i n r i t u a l and i n the metaphors, both material and non-material, with which the Tsimshian expressed the r o l e and functions of the chief. Other aspects of s o c i a l organization are discussed as they bear upon the above d i s t i n c t i o n or, as i n the problems of post-marital residence and status l e v e l s , i n order to c l a r i f y what I see as issues l e f t unclear or unresolved i n the e x i s t i n g l i t e r a t u r e . The chapter i s organized as follows: descent and succession, marriage, descent groups, chiefs and s o d a l i t i e s , rank, status l e v e l s , and trading r e l a t i o n s h i p s . Appendix I i s a synoptic presentation of t r i b a l and descent group or-ganization, prepared i n support and a m p l i f i c a t i o n of the present chapter. In what follows, c u l t u r a l d e t a i l s , i n the sense that these constitute the idiom of s o c i a l r e l a t i o n s h i p s , have been kept to a min-imum. This follows a conception of the r e l a t i o n s h i p of society and culture which has been s u c c i n c t l y expressed by Geertz (1967: 233-234): "one of the most useful ways ... of d i s t i n g u i s h i n g between culture and s o c i a l system i s to see the former as an ordered system of meaning and 53 symbols, i n terms of which s o c i a l i n t e r a c t i o n takes place; and to see the l a t t e r as the pattern of s o c i a l i n t e r a c t i o n i t s e l f . " The purpose of the present chapter i s to present an out l i n e of those enduring or r e p e t i t i v e t i e s which bind the Tsimshian together and define t h e i r constituent parts. They are the r e l a t i o n s h i p s celebrated i n r i t u a l (see Leach, 1965: 15-16) and expressed i n a r t . The goal of the chapter, then, i s to express these r e l a t i o n s h i p s i n anthropological terms; the goal of the next three chapters w i l l be to show how the Tsimshian ex-press some of these same re l a t i o n s h i p s with t h e i r a r t . Descent and Succession Descent was reckoned m a t r i l i n e a l l y , with succession to names and positions going i n general to the eldest man most c l o s e l y r e l a t e d to an incumbent. G a r f i e l d (1939: 179) ranks succession i n the following order, one that i s obviously predicated on an avunculocal residence pat-tern i n which the successor would have been resident with and trained by h i s predecessor: 1. own next younger brother (same mother) 2. own eldest s i s t e r ' s eldest son 3. next younger p a r a l l e l cousin (man having same maternal grand-mother as holder) 4. eldest house nephew (son of a woman of the same house and gen-3 eration as holder) 3. This was probably the son of one of Ego's m a t r i l a t e r a l p a r a l l e l cousins. 54 5. eldest man of a r e l a t e d house, i n own or another t r i b e 6. adopted man. While t h i s may r e f l e c t an i d e a l order, actual succession involved a num-ber of s i t u a t i o n a l f a c t o r s , and there was often controversy among po-t e n t i a l successors. Rosman and Rubel (1971: 32-33) argue convincingly that "the lack of f i x e d rules of succession makes the a b i l i t y to pot-l a t c h f i r s t an important requirement for succession." Marriage The Tsimshian are s a i d to have a rule of preference f o r mar-riage with mother's brother's daughter (Boas> 1916: 440; G a r f i e l d , 1939: 231; 1966: 23). This was probably the case, but the evidence i s exceeding slim. Boas (1916: 440) says that t h i s was the "normal type of marriage, as described i n the t r a d i t i o n s , " but has no evidence other than myths to o f f e r . G a r f i e l d also bases her statement regard-ing marriage preference on myths, with a footnote reference to the same statement by Boas: "the normal marriage, according to the myths, i s with a cross-cousin" (1939: 231). In her l a t e r popular summary of Tsimshian cul t u r e , she again r e l i e s on the evidence from myths: "the i d e a l marriage, indicated time and again i n Tsimshian mythology, was between a man and the daughter of h i s mother's brother" ( G a r f i e l d , 1966: 23) . The only corroborative statement regarding cross-cousin mar-riage contained i n the Barbeau/Beynon f i e l d notes i s the following from Robert Stewart of the Niska to Beynon i n 1948-49: "the matches most sought were with f i r s t cousins ( l g u t 7 x a > ? / ) to r e t a i n the wealth of two 55 c l o s e l y r e l a t e d f a m i l i e s , e.g., brother and s i s t e r . " According to Sapir (1920: 263), the k i n term kwutxa' w*y" 'i denotes "my cross cousin, i.e.,. father's s i s t e r ' s c h i l d , mother's brother's c h i l d . " There are almost no data at a l l as to how frequent such marriages were. G a r f i e l d says only that " i n the genealogies obtained a very small number have been cousin marriages, even with the r e l a -tionships further removed than f i r s t cousins. Three f i r s t cousin mar-riages are known i n Port Simpson now" (1939: 232). Both myths and descriptions of marriage ceremonies recorded by Barbeau r e f e r to the bride accompanying her husband to h i s home. The problem with a m a t r i l i n e a l society such as the Tsimshian i s to determine where the husband's home was — with h i s parents or h i s maternal uncle. In 1916, Boas decided i t was with h i s parents: "the evidence of Tsimshian mythology shows that c h i l d r e n grew up i n the houses of t h e i r parents, and that the newly married couple l i v e d with the young husband's parents" (Boas, 1916: 499). However, by 1935 he had evidently reconsidered and chosen to avoid the issue altogether, although he hinted at an avunculocal s o l u t i o n : "cross-cousin marriage i s favored. The young couple l i v e i n the husband's home. There are many references to the r e l a t i o n between a man and h i s s i s t e r ' s son" 4 (Boas, 1966, 1935: 303). 4. Apparently, avunculocal post-marital residence patterns were often confusing to e a r l i e r generations of anthropologists. Referring to Birket-Smith and De Laguna's 1938 work on the Eyak, Murdock (1949: 220) wrote: "the authors, being unfamiliar with the category of avun-cu l o c a l residence, devote considerable space to the c o n f l i c t i n g s t a t e -ments of d i f f e r e n t informants as to whether the residence r u l e i s mat-r i l o c a l or p a t r i l o c a l . Since a s i m i l a r confusion i s usual for demon-st r a b l y avunculocal s o c i e t i e s , and since avunculocal residence i s common i n the region, being found for example among the T l i n g i t , i t seemed l i k e l y that the Eyak follow the same r u l e . " 56 Levi-Strauss also considered the problem of Tsimshian post-m a r i t a l residence i n h i s s t r u c t u r a l analysis of the myth of Asdiwal (1967a). Here he faced the s i t u a t i o n sometimes found i n the myths where residence following marriage with supernatural beings i s sometimes p a t r i l o c a l , and sometimes m a t r i l o c a l . He concluded that "mythical speculation about types of residence which are e x c l u s i v e l y p a t r i l o c a l or m a t r i l o c a l do not ... have anything to do with the r e a l i t y of the structure of Tsimshian society, but rather with i t s inherent p o s s i b i l -i t i e s and i t s latent p o t e n t i a l i t i e s " (1967a: 30). Reasonable enough. However, his further conclusions as to what the Tsimshian pattern actu-a l l y was seems unnecessarily complicated: In r e a l l i f e , the [male] children grew up i n the p a t r i -l o c a l home. Then they went to f i n i s h t h e i r education at t h e i r maternal uncle's home; a f t e r marrying, they returned to l i v e with t h e i r parents, bringing t h e i r wives with them, and they s e t t l e d i n t h e i r uncle's v i l l a g e only when they were c a l l e d upon to succeed him. Such, at any rate, was the case among the n o b i l i t y , whose mythology formed a r e a l "court l i t e r a t u r e " (Levi-Strauss, 1967a: 30). Although there are no e x p l i c i t ethnographic statements of Tsimshian post-marital residence preference, i t seems preferable to me to p o s i t a straightforward avunculocal residence pattern i n which the boy went to l i v e with h i s mother's brother as a c h i l d and continued to l i v e there, l a t e r bringing h i s wife to j o i n him, and eventually suc-ceeded to h i s uncle's p o s i t i o n while already resident with him and under h i s continued tutelage. In the case of preferred cross-cousin marriage, h i s wife, being h i s mother's brother's daughter, would a l -ready be resident i n the same household, and i t seems u n l i k e l y that the newly married couple would leave to l i v e with h i s parents, and then re-turn a f t e r h i s uncle (her father) had died. 57 This i s supported by Garfield's (1939: 277) d e s c r i p t i o n of the normal composition of the household: In the winter dwelling l i v e d the head, his mother i f she were a widow, h i s wife and small c h i l d r e n , h i s widowed or divorced s i s t e r s and t h e i r small c h i l d r e n , also h i s younger brothers and cousins (mother's s i s t e r ' s sons) and h i s grown nephews with t h e i r wives and chi l d r e n . There would also be other r e l a t i v e s , according to circumstances, but these were the usual ones represented. Avunculocal post-marital residence, as suggested above, pro-bably should, however, be considered a preferred rather than an absolute pattern or r u l e , leaving open the p o s s i b i l i t y that younger sons, i . e . , those not l i k e l y to succeed to an uncle's p o s i t i o n , perhaps did reside a f t e r marriage with t h e i r parents. This would mean, of course, that they would be l i v i n g i n dwellings owned and c o n t r o l l e d by men not of t h e i r clan. There i s some comparative data from the T l i n g i t which sup-5 ports an avunculocal post-marital residence pattern. Olson (1967: 5) says that T l i n g i t post-marital residence was p a t r i l o c a l , but also that since i t was customary to send boys of seven or eight years to l i v e with mother's brother, " a l l males of the household above that age be-longed to the clan 'owning' the house." He also describes the male composition of the household as co n s i s t i n g of "various combinations of brothers, married nephews of these, or men considered as 'children of s i s t e r s ' [men "who would normally go to l i v e with t h e i r mother's 5. The data for the Haida are not as c l e a r ; although Murdock (1949: 72) believes t h e i r residence pattern to be avunculocal. The Haida case was complicated by a period of m a t r i l o c a l bride service not shared by the T l i n g i t and Tsimshian (Swanton, 1905: 50). 58 brothers, who would often be members of the same household"] ( l o c . c i t . ) . F i n a l l y , he reports that "when a house chief died, h i s suc-cessor was chosen from among h i s housemates on the basis of wealth and wisdom. But the nephew was usually the h e i r designate" ( i b i d . ; 6). More e x p l i c i t and repeatedly-confirmed by Tsimshian people's statements to Barbeau and Beynon was the rule among the Coast Tsimshian that marriages of the upper or c h i e f l y status l e v e l be endogamous. Among the Gitksan and Niska, who did not have as c l e a r l y defined status l e v e l s (see discussion below), i t was s p e c i f i e d that the ch i l d r e n of a chief marry into other c h i e f l y f a m i l i e s : " i t i s a very s t r i c t law that a chief i s not allowed to marry a common woman, h i s children could never become c h i e f s " (people of Kitwancool, i n Duff, 1959: 38). Accord-ing to one of Beynon's Coast Tsimshian teachers, " i f a r o y a l prince marries a woman of the common class-against the w i l l of h i s people, h i s c h i l d r e n are looked upon as wa ?ayin (lower class) children and he loses h i s chief standing." G a r f i e l d , however, says that the ch i l d r e n of such unions could be elevated to high rank: "a c h i l d who had one parent of c h i e f l y rank and one of common rank could not hope to secure recognition as a member of the higher class except through the most l a v i s h g iving of potlatches by h i s parent and himself" (Garfield,1939: 232) . One r e s u l t of the rule to marry within the upper status l e v e l was that marriages were continually contracted between the c h i e f l y houses of d i f f e r e n t t r i b e s , serving to a l l y them. Important chiefs were sa i d to 59 6 have married many women, often coming from several d i f f e r e n t t r i b e s . Descent Groups Houses; The basic s o c i a l unit i n a l l three d i v i s i o n s of the Tsimshian was a corporate matrilineage c a l l e d a "house" (wglp) and named a f t e r i t s highest-ranking c h i e f ' s name. Larger lineages f i s s i o n e d i n -to branch lineages, each named a f t e r i t s own house c h i e f , but subor-dinate to the highest-ranking chief of i t s major branch or segment. The house as a m a t r i l i n e a l descent group was not coterminous with the household, discussed above, i n which l i v e d members of the matrilineage plus t h e i r a f f i n e s and c h i l d r e n belonging to other lineages. The l a r g e r matrilineages often occupied more than one dwelling, which were named according to a d i f f e r e n t system: dwelling names were i n h e r i t e d as crests (ayuks), of which high-ranking lineages usually owned sev-e r a l . Branch lineages could draw upon the stock of house names owned by the parent house. The house was the p r i n c i p a l resource-owning corporation i n Tsimshian society. I t s resources included f i s h i n g , hunting, and gather-ing t e r r i t o r i e s or l o c a l i t i e s , which were exploited under the d i r e c t i o n of the house chief. The house also owned a stock of ceremonial p r i v i -leges: names (of several types), c r e s t s , myths, songs, and feast pre-rogatives, which were also under the control or stewardship of i t s c h i e f . We knowwthat houses f l u c t u r a t e d widely i n s i z e , at times r e -s o r t i n g to adoption to prevent e x t i n c t i o n , at other times growing so 6. The sections below on rank and status l e v e l s contain a d d i t i o n a l i n -formation on c h i e f l y marriages. 60 large that they f i s s i o n e d into two or more separate houses. But there are no descriptions i n the Barbeau notes, or i n the published l i t e r a -ture, of intra-house composition and dynamics. The l i n e s of f i s s i o n mentioned i n t r a d i t i o n a l narratives were between brothers. Clans: Each house and i n d i v i d u a l belonged to a l a r g e r , exo-gamic, s t i p u l a t e d , m a t r i l i n e a l k i n group which i s usually c a l l e d a 7 phratry i n the l i t e r a t u r e , but which I am c a l l i n g a clan. There were four, each represented i n a l l three d i v i s i o n s (the names of two of them change with the Gitksan), although not a l l four clans were to be found i n a l l t r i b e s . The names and p r i n c i p a l crests of each clan are as f o l -lows : 7. Boas v a c i l l a t e d on descent group terminology. He usually trans-l a t e d the Tsimshian word ptEx as " c l a n " but he also used " c l a n " to r e f e r to what I am c a l l i n g a "sub-clan" (see Boas, 1916: 488, 500 footnote). When he wished to avoid a l l ambiguity, he c a l l e d the l a r g e r groups simply "exogamic groups" ( i b i d . : 488). G a r f i e l d , whose f i e l d work was done under Boas' d i r e c t i o n , c a l l e d the l a r g e r groups "clans" i n her d i s s e r t a t i o n (1939), but l a t e r switched to "phratry" (1966). Barbeau con s i s t e n t l y used "phratry" i n h i s pub-l i c a t i o n s , and can probably be c r e d i t e d with i t s general popularity. I have abandoned the term "phratry" because of i t s misleading connotations. A phratry, by d e f i n i t i o n , i s a group of clans, c f . Bohanan (1963: 142): "a phratry i s a c o l l e c t i o n of clans (whatever that may mean) joined, usually on nonkinship p r i n c i p l e s . " The use of the term i s therefore inappropriate i n the Tsimshian instance, f o r the larger exogamic groups sometimes c a l l e d phratries are not, i n f a c t , groups of smaller u n i l i n e a l s t i p u l a t e d groups or clans. They do contain some c l e a r l y defined a l l i a n c e s of lineages which I am c a l l i n g sub-clans. These are not, however, uniformly d i s c e r n i b l e (see discussion of sub-clans i n the t e x t ) . 61 Clans Coast Tsimshian , anha'da* (?) laxk* i b u v ("on the wolf") g * isp^wudwa'da (?) laxsk* i ' k ("on the eagle") Niska " II II II ** Gitksan l a x s e . l (g.anha'da i n Kitsegukla) II g ' i s t . a / s t ("people of the fireweed") II Raven Frog Crests Wolf Bear Killerwhale G r i z z l y Eagle Beaver * g.anha'da may be derived from the T l i n g i t Raven clan name ganaxadi ("people of ganax") ( G a r f i e l d , 1966: 19). •** l a x s e / l may be derived from the Tsimshian word for the T l i n g i t v i l -lage at Cape Fox: l a x s e l j . Table I. Tsimshian Clans and Their P r i n c i p a l Crest Animals Clan exogamy was extended to the corresponding clans (moieties) of the neighbouring T l i n g i t and Haida, f or which the four Tsimshian clans were grouped i n two p a i r s , as follows: Haida Ravens T l i n g i t Wolves T l i n g i t Ravens Haida Eagles crests Tsimshian g r i z z l y raven g"ispjwudwa'&3 g' i s g . a.'st k i l l e r w h a l e frog laxk'ibu' wolf eagle bear beaver Tsimshian g.anha'dp laxse.'l l a x s k " i ' k Table I I . Tsimshian, Haida, and T l i n g i t Clans and Crests 62 In the preceding table (II) , which includes the correspondences of the eight major crest animals of the Tsimshian with those of the Haida and T l i n g i t , the Tsimshian g*ispawudwa7dd and laxk'ibu' are paired with the Haida Ravens and T l i n g i t Wolves, and the Tsimshian g.anhavda and laxsk*i?k with the Haida Eagles and T l i n g i t Ravens. This two-pair grouping of Tsimshian clans corresponding to Haida/ T l i n g i t moieties i s s i g n i f i c a n t , f or i t may r e f l e c t an o r i g i n a l moiety d i -v i s i o n shared by the Tsimshian with t h e i r two neighbours i n the Northern Province. In other words, the Tsimshian four-clan system may have developed from an e a r l i e r two-clan system. The av a i l a b l e evidence, i n addition to the crest correspondences themselves, i s f a r from conclusive. I t i s c e r t a i n l y suggestive, however, that the two largest and, on the basis of the t r a d i t i o n -a l n a r r a t i v e s , o r i g i n a l or indigenous Tsimshian clans are the untranslatable g.anha/dg and g'ispawudwa'da, and that most houses of the laxsk*I'.k ("on the eagle") and laxk*ibu/ ("on the wolf") consider themselves immigrants from the Haida, T l i n g i t , and Tahltan. A l s o , there i s the evidence of a sub=clan within the Niska la x s k * i . k whose members c a l l e d themselves the laxsgmE.*]_ix ("on the beaver"). The laxsjmE/lix could not use the dominant eagle crest of t h e i r c l a n , but used the beaver instead, and seem to have considered themselves quite d i s t i n c t from the other laxsk*I'.k. This case might be a recent example of the same process whereby the laxsk*i'.k and laxk*ibu^ separated from t h e i r two parent clans. S t i l l another pertinent example from the Niska i s the l a x t i y j q i : sub-clan which was laxk'ibu' at g' i t w i n k s i l k , g * ispg wudwa 'dp at g* i t l a x d a /inks, and c a l l e d themselves laxkibumg* i s g . a f s t ("wolf of fireweed") among the g* i t x a t * i.'n. One of the members of t h i s 63 group (Lazarus Moody, wihjn) described them as "more l a x k * i b u / than they are g* ispawudwa'dg. A man of t h i s family may marry a g* ispawudwa'd<9. From the beginning t h i s family could not marry a laxk*ibu ' . They are not r e a l g* ispgwudwa'd^." What seems to be happening here i s that a g* ispawudwa/d<9 sub-clan i s i n the process of redefining i t s e l f as laxk* i b u y . I t i s pro-bable that a d e t a i l e d analysis of the Tsimshian narratives might shed addi-t i o n a l l i g h t on t h i s postulated e a r l i e r two-clan system. Clan members shared a f e e l i n g of kinship and expected h o s p i t a l -i t y from each other. Among the Coast Tsimshian, they c a l l e d each other wulE^isk ( " r e l a t i v e s " ) . According to one person, clan l o y a l t i e s overrode t r i b a l ones: " i n case of warfare between the Tsimshian and the Haida, a Tsimshian would help one of the same crest among the Haida, and vice-versa. In times of peace, i t i s a law that one i n one crest w i l l help another i n the same crest. There i s a bond of r e l a t i o n s h i p between them a l l i n one 8 crest" (Herbert Wallace). Notice that the English word " c r e s t " i s used above to re f e r to the clan. The Tsimshian word i n the same context would have been ptEx. This i s usually translated as "clan" or "exogamic group," but i t i s also used to re f e r to the primary crest animal of a clan, which I beli e v e to be i t s p r i n c i p a l or o r i g i n a l referent (see discussion of t h i s point on page 113 below). The importance of a f f i n a l r e l a t i o n s h i p s between clans, and t h e i r continued renewal by new generations, was c l e a r l y recognized. On the 8. Dir e c t quotations from the Barbeau/Beynon notes are i d e n t i f i e d herein, wherever possible, by the name of the person supplying the information. 64 Nass, for example,"the l a x s k ' i f k chose t h e i r women from the kwaxcu (laxk* ibu/) group and the laxk* i b u x always married into the laxsk* i ' k group. So though at times there was open s t r i f e , they often l i v e d together i n peace; always the two groups were united by marriage" (Peter Calder) . Many crest and migration myths (ada.'ox) begin with two intermarrying clans l i v -ing i n separate v i l l a g e s , usually across a r i v e r from each other. Since a m a t r i l a t e r a l cross-cousin marriage system requires at l e a s t three i n t e r -marrying groups, i t i s probable that the other clan was divided into two groups, one of which included father's lineage and the other of which i n -cluded wife's lineage. A f f i n a l r e l a t i o n s h i p s were "honoured" i n potlatches by non-returnable contributions from in-marrying lineages to the host lineage's potlatch fund. A f f i n a l r e l a t i o n s h i p s between clans were also expressed i n a r e l a t i o n a l naming system unique to the Tsimshian on the Northwest Coast. This i s a system of children's names which were owned by the matrilineage but r e f e r r e d to p h y s i c a l and behavioural c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s ("various-ways and manners," according to one person) of the major crest animal or animals of the father's clan. The names have both a short or abbreviated form and a long form. Some examples owned by g* itxa'-fca houses are as follows: I. House of h E . l , g"ispgwudwa'dg (short form): g.amaya.m (long form): g.amhaiyaim g.Ex (only mocking) (raven) ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) : "mocking raven" (father's c l a n ) : g.anha'dj 65 I I . House of h E . l , g'ispjwudwa'dJ (short form): g.ayE' (long form): 'wat'i gayE.m g i p a i k j l x s k i f k (never) (zigzag) ( f l y i n g of) (eagle) ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) : "the eagle never f l i e s crooked (but f l i e s s t r a i g h t ) " (father's c l a n ) : laxsk'iCk I I I . House of 'ExiEwE.ls, g.anha'da (short form): dzag.am txE nE Ex (long form): dzag.am txE nE'Exl 'nE.xl (towards shore) ( f l a t ) ( f i n of) (killerwhale) ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) : "the k i l l e r w h a l e swims towards shore with f l a t f i n " (father's c l a n ) : g*isp3wudwa/da IV. House of 'wgkafs, g.anha'd^ (short form): ^ni.s'a'yin (long form): 'ayinl'na g.a'p^t xski'k (no) (of) (food) (eagle) ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) : "the eagle has nothing to eat" (father's c l a n ) : l a x s k ' i ' k V. House of 'aya'ig. ansk. g.anha'da (short form): lag.alEmdz^x (long form): lag.axlEmdzal ' n a k l k j l gibEo (at each end entering) ( o f f s p r i n g of) (wolf) ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) : "the o f f s p r i n g of the wolf enters from each end" (father's c l a n ) : laxk'ibu' Sapir (1915: 26) seems to have f i r s t understood and named these names, c a l l -ing them " c r o s s - p h r a t r i c " names; i n the context of t h i s paper, they would be properly c a l l e d "cross-clan" names. 66 Duff (1964b: 67-68) believes that the short form of the name could be completed by adding an appropriate reference to any of the other three clans to which the father might belong. He gives the example of a g.anha'dg name from Kitsegukla, ni.gamks ("on sunshine") which, i f father was of the g*isg.a/st clan, might be completed as "sunshine g l i n t i n g on the wet dorsal f i n of the emerging K i l l e r Whale"; i f father belonged to the lax s k * i ^ k , the same name might be completed as "sunshine g l i n t i n g on the white head of the Eagle" (loc. c i t . ) . This may have been true i n some cases, but does not accord with native theory, nor with my own reading of the evidence presented by the names themselves. According to several people, the names were o r i g i n a l l y bestowed by the father, a f t e r which they remained permanently i n the possession of the matrilineage, to be bestowed on successive children born to them from a father of the same clan: "the children's names were given by the father, according to the d i f f e r e n t crests of h i s house. And these names remain i n the children's family (mother's side) and are reapplied i n t h e i r own family. In t h i s manner the children's names spread i n a l l d i r e c t i o n s " (H. Wallace). This and s i m i l a r statements suggest to me that the e n t i r e name was formula-ted by the father with reference to h i s own crest. Given the assumption that marriages continued to unite the same two lineages or clans, there would be no d i f f i c u l t y i n reapplying them to l a t e r children. There are no ind i c a t i o n s i n the f i e l d notes as to what circumstances would e l i c i t the creation of a new name by the father, as opposed to giving the c h i l d a name already owned by the mother's house. 67 The above i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s borne out by examination of the names themselves. There are simply too many short forms of the names on record that have d i r e c t and unmistakable reference to s p e c i f i c crest animals to have been applied equally w e l l to bears, frogs, eagles, wolves, f i r e -weeds, and ravens. The following short forms of Kispiox names r e f e r r i n g to frogs (major crest animals of the l a x s e ^ l clan) seem to me to bear t h i s out: "out from shore jumps" (the small f r o g ) , "on d r i f t l og" (on which s i t s the small f r o g ) , "to wrinkle up" (the hips of the small f r o g ) , "among grass" (the f r o g ) , " e n t i r e l y covered with green" (the f r o g ) , "drink throat" (the small frog; the small frog drinks water with the s o f t parts under the chin), "across flabby" (the b e l l y of the large f r o g ) , " i n t o water jumps" (the small f r o g ) , ( l i k e ) "red salmon" (the small frog; the o f f s p r i n g of the frog has a red b e l l y l i k e the salmon). S i m i l a r l y , the following short forms des-cribe wolves too w e l l to have been also applied, f o r example, to frogs: "together hunt" (the small wolves), "together attacking" (the wolves), " f a r away moving" (the wolf, whenever anybody comes to l i v e nearby), "taking away dog" (the large wolf), "prowl around" (the o f f s p r i n g of wolf), "under between i t s legs" (the wolf places i t s t a i l ) . D etailed l i n g u i s t i c and semantic analysis i s needed before the cross-clan naming system i s completely understood. I t would also be i n s t r u c -t i v e to analyze the names with reference to the past marriage preferences they record, i . e . , do c e r t a i n lineages own a preponderance of cross-clan names which r e f e r to t h e i r continually marrying i n t o one clan rather than the other two from which t h e i r marriage partners might also have been s e l -ected. 68 Sub-clans: Lineages which shared the same myth and crests con-sidered themselves to be more c l o s e l y r e l a t e d than other clan members, and form a d i s t i n c t intermediate category of Tsimshian descent groups. These are not, however, uniformly d i s t r i b u t e d or d i s c e r n i b l e , and seem to have been emerging only at c e r t a i n nodes i n the clan structure, probably as a r e s u l t of greater population growth at these points. Barbeau (1917a), Sapir (1915), and the l a t e r G a r f i e l d (1966: 18-22) c a l l e d these groups of lineages "clans"; Boas (1916: 488) considered them not " s u f f i c i e n t l y w e l l marked to be c a l l e d 'clans' i n contrast to the larger exogamic d i v i s i o n s " ; and I am c a l l i n g them sub-clans. A Coast Tsimshian c a l l e d other sub-clan members "my brothers" (wE /kyEyot) and "my s i s t e r s " (t^m'kti/tkw) and was s a i d to stand i n a "brother" (wE^kgt, sing.) r e l a t i o n s h i p to them or to "be wEkgt." That the sub-clans were r i t u a l l y , though not economically, corporate was explained i n a myth as follows: "at Temlaham l i v e d three brothers, tsibasE x, a l i m l a . x E / , and ni.shaiwaxs. Each was a chief, each had h i s own group, hi s own house, and h i s own hunting t e r r i t o r i e s . But a l l had the same myths, dirges, nur-sery songs, and crests i n common. Each had h i s own i n d i v i d u a l naxnj'x's [ s p i r i t names]" (Prevost and Aukland). Other people explained the d i f f e r e n t degrees of relatedness between sub-clan and clan members thus: "when many people have the same myth of o r i g i n they term each other wE'k^t ("brother"); i n other cases they term each other wulE.'isk ( " r e l a t i v e s , but not blood r e l a -t i v e s " ) " (Wallace and Ryan). The sub-clans stand out most c l e a r l y among the Coast Tsimshian g*ispgwudwa^da and the Niska laxsk*if.k and laxk* i b u / . Among the Coast 69 g* ispawudwa /dg > the houses which claimed the Temlaham myth of o r i g i n i n the i n t e r i o r , and those whose ancestors went to the undersea house of the mon-s t e r nagunaks, c a l l e d themselves g*itamlax'am and g*itnagunaks, r e s p e c t i v e l y . Among the Niska l a x s k ' i ' k , there were important sub-clans named sgmlaxsk'i'k ("real on the eagle") and laxs-jmE'lix ("on the beaver") . Important laxk' i b u 7 sub-clans were the g* isg.ansna.t ("people of the saskatoon bushes") and g*itwilnagE^el ("people by themselves"). Another Nass River sub-clan, the l a x t i y j q l ("on the tiy? /q i , " s a i d to be a place near Rivers I n l e t ) , has a l -ready been described as being laxk*ibu" i n one t r i b e , g* ispgwudwa'da i n ano-ther, and intermediate between the two clans i n a t h i r d . Only f o r the Niska did people consistently l i s t houses by sub-clans which, i n turn, were ranked within clans (see Appendix I and Barbeau, 1917a, f o r the names of other sub-clans of the Niska and Coast Tsimshian). The names of "clans" (my sub-clans) Barbeau reports for the Gitksan (see 1929: 18-22) are, i n f a c t , names he coined himself from myths shared by re l a t e d houses (hence, h i s "Frog-Woman," "Tongue-Licked," "Water-L i l y , " "Wild-Rice," etc., clans are not c a l l e d such by the people them-selves) . Gitksan people did spec i f y that c e r t a i n houses were more c l o s e l y r e l a t e d than others, notably those that shared the same myth and c r e s t s , but there are no ind i c a t i o n s i n the Barbeau/Beynon notes that they formed d i s t i n c t named sub-clans such as were reported f o r the Coast Tsimshian and Niska. The s t r u c t u r a l l y most s i g n i f i c a n t c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of the sub-clans named above i s that they potlatched jto rather than with each other. "When one of the l a x k * i b u " groups, such as the g*isg.ansna.t, gave a feast they would i n v i t e the other l a x k * i b u ^ groups as guests, but would be as s i s t e d 70-only by t h e i r own groups" (Peter Adams, g*isg.ansna.t ). The ni.yuks group of Coast Tsimshian g* isp-gwudwa'dd " i n feasts ... go together with suhalait [chief of the g ' i s p a x l ? " t s ] . The l a t t e r i s the only one (of the g'ispawudwa/dg) who contributes to h i s yE"jk [potlatch]. Temlaham and Gitnagunaks are i n -v i t e d as guests" (Johnson). "There were now two d i s t i n c t l a x k * i b u x groups. They did not intermarry, but neither did they ... contribute to each other's potlatches. At a funeral feast of the g* isg.ansna.t, only they paid dewgl or death duties; the g* itwilnagE *el came as guests, l i k e the laxsk* i ^ k and g.anha' da" (Matthew Gurney and Emma Wright) . Data such as the above d i r e c t quotations from Tsimshian people are few, but they leave no doubt that sub-clans existed which potlatched to each other i n the same way that clans d i d , i . e . , they stood to each other i n the r e l a t i o n s h i p of hosts to guests. Unlike clans, however, they did not intermarry. While the major premise of Rosman and Rubel's (1971: 204) model of the potlatch type society that "one potlatches to one's a f f i n e s " i s generally c o r r e c t , the potlatching of sub-clans within a clan shows that potlatching and exogamy are not n e c e s s a r i l y l i n k e d i n Tsimshian thought. Group r e l a t i o n s h i p s of opposition and economic exchange can be expressed independently of exogamy and exchange of women. I t may be argued, and i s probably true, that sub-clan potlatching functioned to define groups which were moving towards exogamic r e l a t i o n s h i p s and f u l l clan status. I t might also be argued, i n terms of Rosman and Rubel's model (1971: 26) that sub-clan potlatching "supports the d i s t i n c t i o n between ego's lineage, father's lineage, and spouse's lineage," i f i t could be shown that father's lineage and spouse's 71 lineage belonged to d i f f e r e n t sub-clans. There are not data s u f f i c i e n t to e s t a b l i s h this at present. It i s cl e a r , however, that sub-clan formation i s a co r r e l a t e of population s i z e . Of the houses (lineages and branch l i n e a g e s ) l i s t e d f o r the Coast Tsimshian, 128 are g*ispywudwa/dg, 119 g.anha'dg, 80 l a x s k * i 7 k , and 42 laxk'ibu'. Only among the largest clan, the g'ispgwudwa'dd, are sub-clans c l e a r l y emergent as potlatching groups, although they may have been forming among the g.anha'da. On the Nass, 49 houses are l a x k * i b u 7 , 48 lax s k ' i ' k, 22 g*ispgwudwa'da, and 20 g.anha''da. The two la r g e s t clans, the l a x s k * i ^ k and laxk*ibu', contained sub-clans. People s p e c i f i e d that the laxk* i b u ' sub-clans potlatched to each other; i t can be reasonably i n -ferred that the laxsk*i'k did too. I f the population size/sub-clan c o r r e l a t i o n i s a causal one, i t would suggest that the Tsimshian four-clan system developed from an e a r l i e r two-clan system as a r e s u l t of population growth. Chiefs and S o d a l i t i e s ; The roles of chiefs and t h e i r control over the h a l a ^ i t , or supernatural power r i t u a l s , were d i f f e r e n t i n the three d i v i s i o n s of the Tsimshian, and w i l l be discussed separately f o r each. Coast Tsimshian The Coast Tsimshian t r i b e s were characterized by a higher degree of s o c i a l i n t e g r a t i o n than was to be found elsewhere on the Northwest Coast. This was p r i n c i p a l l y due to a set of in t e g r a t i v e mechanisms which cut across the clan structure and were re l a t e d to the r i t u a l aspects of 72 the r o l e of t r i b a l c h i e f . There were no s u p r a - t r i b a l organizations or con-9 federacies of t r i b e s among the Tsimshian. The t r i b a l c h ief was the chief (headman) of the highest-ranking house i n the t r i b e , and a l l of the houses of a l l four clans were arranged i n a s i n g l e or continuous rank order under h i s . In most contexts, the t r i -b a l chief was c a l l e d sgmo'jig'Et (sgro: " r e a l " ; g'Et: "person"), as were other high-ranking chiefs of h i s and other upper status l e v e l houses. The chief had great prestige and influence i n h i s t r i b e and acted as i t s representative i n i n t e r - t r i b a l a f f a i r s . His family was expected to observe the most exemplary conduct and act as models of r i g h t behaviour f o r the people of the t r i b e . He was advised by a council of house c h i e f s , the lflkag'ig'Et, whose consent was necessary f o r important actions, such as h i s choice of successor. He had no p o l i c e force, but he could threaten supernatural re-t a l i a t i o n for non-participation i n dancing society o b l i g a t i o n s , and he con-t r o l l e d a group of a r t i s t s and stage managers, the g * i t > s ^ / n t k , which had some coercive powers i n h a l a ' i t a f f a i r s (see below). The t r i b a l chief ordered the annual movement to the Nass f o r eulachon f i s h i n g i n the spring, but seems to have had few other d i r e c t and i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d economic functions. legEx on the lower Skeena and sag.u >wE /n (Chief Mountain) on the Nass had middleman monopolies on trade 9. legEx, chief ot the g * i s p a x l j y'ts, was generally acknowledged to be the leading or highest-ranking chief of the Lower Skeena River t r i b e s at Fort Simpson. However, this does not mean that he had any p a n - t r i b a l r o l e other than that which would normally accrue to one of such high p r e s t i g e . 73 with the Gitksan and the Tsetsaut, r e s p e c t i v e l y , but t h i s was not a regular function of t r i b a l c h i e f t a i n s h i p . Chief t s i b a s E f of g* i t x a ' i a was s a i d to have become wealthy from trading sea o t t e r and s e a l furs to white fur t r a -ders. The chief's main duties were r i t u a l i n nature (see G a r f i e l d , 1939: 182-184). He was expected to p o t l a t c h to chiefs of other t r i b e s , i n which he was supported by contributions from a l l of the houses i n h i s t r i b e , r e -gardless of h i s or t h e i r clans. He, i n turn, d i s t r i b u t e d food and wealth he received at potlatches to h i s t r i b e . G a r f i e l d (1939: 182) suggests that the chief had other (non-ritual) economic support from and obligations to the t r i b e , but i s not s p e c i f i c : While a chief can expect constant and l i b e r a l economic sup-port from h i s tribesmen, he does not contribute to potlatches given by them. He i s responsible for t h e i r economic welfare, must feed them when necessary and has to lay aside supplies f o r t h i s purpose. Narratives from g* i t x a ^ a report that chiefs received t r i b u t e i n the form of the f i r s t sea o t t e r and seal caught by each canoe of sea hunters and "other fur animals captured by hunters." S i m i l a r t r i b u t e may have been extracted by the chiefs of other t r i b e s . t s i b a s E y , a tyrant chief despised and feared by h i s t r i b e , was also said to have received wealth i n the form of ransoms from enslaving h i s own headmen. Unfortunately, for neither h i s r e d i s t r i b u t i o n of received pot-l a t c h goods, nor h i s r o l e as general provider for h i s t r i b e , are the data adequate to say to what extent the chief was " t r i b a l banker" or " c e n t r a l d i s t r i b u t i v e agent" i n Tsimshian society (see Sahlins, 1958: 3-5). I f one accepts Sahlin's thesis that "power, p r i v i l e g e , and prestige appear to be 74 generated p r i m a r i l y i n the process of goods d i s t r i b u t i o n " ( i b i d . : 3), one would expect to f i n d that considerable quantities of goods passed through the chief's hands. Perhaps the chief's strongest c o n t r o l over the t r i b e , and a source of considerable wealth, was h i s r o l e as w i h a l a . i t , or "great dancer." 11 When acting t h i s r o l e , he was addressed by a supernatural "power" name. The basic premise of the w i h a l a ^ i t r o l e was that the chief had greater supernatural power than others and could impart t h i s power to h i s people. Such great power was dangerous, and the chief was l i b e r a l l y compensated by xkF/t or "non-returnable" g i f t s for c o n t r o l l i n g i t to the benefit of his people. He was assisted and advised by a group c a l l e d the g * i t > s 3 "ntk ( g ' i t : "person"; son: " i n s e c l u s i o n " ) . This i s the group G a r f i e l d (1939: 304) described as "the p r o f e s s i o n a l group of a r t i s t s , song composers and organizers of the dramatizations [who] were a l l men who had received super-natural powers .... The a b i l i t y to carve, plan and operate novel mechani-c a l masks or other objects, or compose songs was considered a manifestation of the powers which the i n d i v i d u a l had received." According to one person (Heber C l i f t o n ) , they were a powerful group: "the g ' i t > s a / n t k were the 10. wi: "great"; h a l a / i t : "dancer." h a l a ' i t i s a very important word that cannot be e a s i l y translated, but which can be taken as a s i g n a l that supernatural beings or forces are involved. I t i s v a r i o u s l y translated as "dancer," "shaman," "dance," "power," "power dramatiza-t i o n , " and " i n i t i a t i o n . " I t i s also used as an adjective that can be roughly glossed as "sacred." 11. The l i s t of chief's supernatural power names i n Boas (1916: 513) i n -cludes some naxnp'x names, but seems also to include another category of names, those r e f e r r i n g to the heavens (laxha), which might have been s p e c i a l wihala. /it names. 75 song composers, the naxna /x makers, the makers of contrivances used by the i n i t i a t e s on t h e i r return from the sky. They were the advisors of the c h i e f s , h a l a f i t ' s , and were a most powerful group. Their influence was much greater than any other group i n the t r i b a l organization. They had powers of l i f e and death." Although t h e i r sources of wealth were not spe-c i f i e d , the g* i t * sa'ntk were paid handsomely for t h e i r services, n i . s l u ' t of g* i n a ? dp'iks was said to have been a wealthy and i n f l u e n t i a l man, p a r t l y because of h i s p o s i t i o n as a leading a r t i s t of the g* i t ; sj/ntk. He was of the common or c o u n c i l l o r (lflkag*ig'Et) status l e v e l , although there are no statements as to whether a l l of the g ' i ^ s j ' n t k were of t h i s status l e v e l . They probably were. Barbeau (1950: 780-790) describes i n some d e t a i l the r o l e of the g*it* 1 s j 7 n t k among the g * i t g . a ' a t l of the Southern Tsimshian. When young, they were selected from c e r t a i n families and s p e c i a l l y trained f o r t h e i r r o l e . They were " c o n t r o l l e d by various secret s o c i e t i e s with which they associated" as w e l l as being "employed by most of the c h i e f s " and h i r e d out to other t r i b e s ( i b i d . : 790. Barbeau's use of the word "em-ployed" i s probably misleading here. I t i s more probable that they were attached to the chief's household. I n t e r e s t i n g l y , I was t o l d by Norman T a i t , a Niska carver from K i n c o l i t h , that h i s father had s a i d i t was i l l -advised f o r a carver to marry since, i n the o l d days, he would have been continually moving from place to place. There were also said to be g* i t ' s a ''ntk among the B e l l a B e l l a , from whom the Tsimshian were said to have borrowed dancing s o c i e t i e s , strengthening the association between t h i s group and the dancing s o c i e t i e s headed by the c h i e f s . 76 Most s i g n i f i c a n t l y , the g ' i t ' s o 'ntk were c l e a r l y distinguished from the carvers of totem poles and crest a r t , who were c a l l e d the ukgihl9 and were not permitted to carve masks and halafit paraphernalia. They did not work i n secret as did the g ' i t ' s j ' n t k , and t h e i r status was lower ( i b i d . : 790). The g * i t , s ? / n t k ' s "power over l i f e and death" came from t h e i r r i g h t to k i l l or to force to j o i n a dancing s o c i e t y , any n o n - i n i t i a t e who witnessed t h e i r making or operating of h a l a ^ i t contrivances. This could be used to t h e i r advantage, of course, by f o r c i n g r e c a l c i t r a n t r e c r u i t s to buy t h e i r services for an i n i t i a t i o n . There seems to be a paradox here. On the one hand, the great secrecy of the g*it^sa'ntk's operations, and the threat of death to any n o n - i n i t i a t e intruding upon them or witnessing t h e i r malfunction, sug-gests that the supernatural power displays were believed indeed to be the r e s u l t of non-human actions or supernatural intervention i n human a f f a i r s . On the other hand, a l l members of the t r i b e were expected to be i n i t i a t e d into e i t h e r the Dog Eaters or Dancers dancing s o c i e t i e s , and hence to have p a r t i c i p a t e d In the dramatizations by which super-natural events, such as ascent into the heavens, were simulated. The paradox, then, i s that people can b e l i e v e to be true those same events which they knowingly simulate i n order to "deceive" others. This i s the same paradox Levi-Strauss investigates i n an ar-t i c l e on shamanism (1967b) , where he r e f e r s to a Koskimo shaman (des-cribed by Boas [1930, I I : 1-41]) who went mad i n h i s attempts to resolve i t . The shaman, who himself used t r i c k e r y i n h i s p r a c t i c e , t r i e d to get 77 another shaman, who has bested him and subjected him to ridicule, to admit that his healing performances were also trickery. When the sec-ond shaman refused to speak, the f i r s t shaman, unable to face his possible genuineness, went mad and shortly died (Levi-Strauss, 1967b: 169-176). Levi-Strauss sees the paradox related to the participation of the audience in the curing drama. As "actors" the audience can participate in emotional states and beliefs which they would reject in everyday l i f e . He also seems to be suggesting that the shamanistic performance offers the audience a chance to participate in some form of anti-structural exploration: " i t i s this v i t a l experience of a uni-verse of symbolic effusions which the patient, because he i s i l l , and 12 the sorcerer because he i s neurotic — in other words, both having types of experience which cannot otherwise be integrated — allow the public to glimpse as 'fireworks' from a safe distance" (ibid.: 176). It should be noted, in this connection, that the hala'it per-formance and idiom of expression are derived from shamanism. One mean-ing of the word halafit i s "shaman," and there are a number of corres-pondences in the use of cedar bark, red ochre, bearskin robes, songs, etc., used by the shaman and the dancing society i n i t i a t e . naxn?/x or s p i r i t name dramatizations are also called halafit's and include cer-tain performances in which chiefs ex p l i c i t l y act the role of swansk hala'.it or "curing shaman." 12. Levi-Strauss acknowledged in a footnote written later (1967b: 180, footnote #19) that his use. of "neurotic" here was an oversimplifi-cation. 78 The h a l a f i t season, c a l l e d gwEndgsgm h a l a ' i t ( " a r r i v a l [on earth] h a l a ' i t " ) was o f f i c i a l l y declared open at a po t l a t c h by ni.swE'xs of g'inado ' i k s , whose p r i v i l e g e i t was, and observed by a l l of the Lower Skeena River Tsimshian at the same time ( d i f f e r e n t chiefs opened the season f o r the Southern Tsimshian). The season ran f o r the e n t i r e win-ter or time of tabu (haHrE^iks: "tabu") . Quite often i t was not com-pleted by the time the people moved to the Nass i n the early s p r i n g , and novices completed t h e i r i n i t i a t i o n s there. The ceremonies were planned by a council of a l l hala