346 ACCULTURATION IN SEVEN AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES

tion for wealth; utilization of trade with the Whites and the in-
terior Indians as a means of adding to their wealth from outside
sources; and war for the purposes of defending property rights
and for the capture of slaves to be held for ransom, traded, used
as labor or as commodities in potlatches.

On the Coast, in spite of great abundance of sea-food, making
possible the accumulation of food surpluses within a relatively
short time and permitting much time for the production of other
commodities, such as boxes, canoes, dishes, houses, blankets, totem
poles, etc., the potlatch-rank complex was a great economic strain.*®
But with the Carrier operating on a subsistence economy, obviously
either the potlatch-rank system had to be markedly altered or the
social and economic base, or both.

Carrier trade with the coast resulted in increased economic pro-
ductivity. Not only did the introduction of guns, steel traps, steel
axes, and later, in 1870, horses create an expanding food supply,
but the spread of trade eastward into the interior opened up new
opportunities for acquiring wealth. Just as the Bella Coola were
the middlemen between the Alkatcho Carrier and the Whites, so
the former were now the middlemen between the Bella Coola and
the surrounding Carrier and Chilcotin villages. As the Carrier be-
came wealthy through trade, they were able to adopt the potlatch-
rank system. And once they began to potlatch rivalrously their
economic activities were all the more stimulated. ‘This increase in
wealth, a result largely of technological improvements and the
profit derived from trade, though making possible the occasional
feasts at which as many as 150 or more people were fed, still left
the Alkatcho Carrier poor as compared with their Coast neigh-
bors. No amount of technological improvement could alter the
essential ecological differences between the two regions.

The discussion of the potlatch-rank complex as it functioned
in Alkatcho Carrier society will be taken up later. At this point it
will suffice to consider merely the more general aspects of North-
west Coast, specifically Bella Coola influence. By and large, the
general motives behind the potlatch were the same both at AI-
katcho and at Bella Coola, though among the latter the potlatch-

16 An analysis of the relationship between potlatching and the necessity for
an expanding economy is in preparation as a separate paper. I. G.