Note 59 — Chapter IV

This is one of the earliest—if not the first—account of these periodical givings away of property so characteristic of the North-Western coast Indians, and known to the whites as "Potlatches." An Indian accumulates blankets and other portable property simply to give away at such feasts. Then if a poor, he becomes a great man, and even a kind of minor chief—a Life Peer, as it were. But those who have received much are expected to return the compliment by also giving a "potlatch," to which guests come from far and near. I have described one of these in The Races of Mankind (the first edition of The Peoples of the World), vol. i. pp. 75-90.