Potlatch
Throughout native North America, gift giving is a central feature of social life. In the Pacific Northwest of the United States and British Columbia in Canada, this tradition is known as the potlatch. Within the tribal groups of these areas, individuals hosting a potlatch give away most, if not all, of their wealth and material goods to show goodwill to the rest of the tribal members and to maintain their social status. Tribes that traditionally practice the potlatch include the Haidas, Kwakiutls, Makahs, Nootkas, Tlingits, and Tsimshians. Gifts often included blankets, pelts, furs, weapons, and slaves during the nineteenth century, and jewelry, money, and appliances in the twentieth.
The potlatch was central to the maintenance of tribal hierarchy, even as it allowed a certain social fluidity for individuals who could amass enough material wealth to take part in the ritual. The potlatch probably originated in marriage gift exchanges, inheritance rites, and death rituals and grew into a system of redistribution that maintained social harmony within and between tribes.
When Canadian law prohibited the potlatch in 1884, tribes in British Columbia lost a central and unifying ceremony. Their despair was mirrored by the tribes of the Pacific Northwest when the U.S. government outlawed the potlatch in the early part of the twentieth century. With the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 in the United States and the Canadian Indian Act of 1951, the potlatch was resumed legally. It remains a central feature of Pacific Northwest Indian life today.
Purpose
A ranking Kwakiutl was concerned that others should recognize his claims and status. This concern was expressed in the potlatch, which provided a channel for claims of status to be made publicly, privileges to be displayed, and ceremonial hospitality to be offered. By accepting suitable gifts, guests in effect received payment as witnesses. The claims thus established by the host would be accepted at future potlatches.
Procedure
The basic procedure of the potlatch was always the same. The lineage chief would consult with the older members of his household group, for the potlatch involved the entire household or kin group. When it was agreed that a potlatch should be held, a date was set, and preparations began.
Enough food to feed the expected guests was gathered, prepared and stored. Gifts for all were produced, and the needed goods bearing the family crest were amassed. The carver of the chief often lived in the chief's household, and since he knew all of the inheritances he cold carve any item with appropriate designs.
Often loans had to be called in in order to make enough gifts available. A system of loans and interest was an elaborate aspect of Kwakiutl life. Most public actions were financed by loans of white wool blankets, valued at one dollar each, which had been brought in by the Hudson's Bay Company early in the nineteenth century.
Emissaries of the chief set off to invite the guests, and when it came time for the event, these same emissaries, wearing formal costumes, went back to act as guides for the visitors. The family of the host with the song leader and speaker, in their finest robes and headdresses, stood upon the beach singing and dancing to greet the visitors as they approached by canoe.
Since the potlatch was tied in with many social occasions great and small, it varied in length. Food dishes were brought in, as the herald explained the ancestral names of the dishes and their history. One or more major events would be offered as a feature of each day. Family dances and dramas were enacted, and sometimes members of the family were initiated into dancing societies.
If the potlatch was successful, all of the family shared in the glory and pleasure of the social effort.
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Kwakiutl
