360 ACCULTURATION IN SEVEN AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES

that tended to lapse during potlatch interims suddenly leaped
into prominence as soon as a potlatch approached.

The formal occasions for potlatches were birth, marriage,
death, elevation of a child or kin, and the assumption of full
shamanistic power. A year or two after the death of some im-
portant person, the sadeku, led by the heir, codperated in a pot-
latch to mark the cessation of mourning and the assumption of
titles by the heir. The funeral potlatch was the most common
form, and very often all other festivities such as naming and
elevating children, payment of affinal exchanges, the assumption
of new names and crest prerogatives, the giving of property to a
rival, the construction of a potlatch house, etc., took place at that
time. Very great chiefs potlatched on a number of separate oc-
casions, but most nobles waited for a funeral potlatch in their
village.

THE BUILDING OF RANK

As compared with the Kwakiutl, Alkatcho society was rela-
tively democratic. The formal vestments of nobility could be ob-
tained easily enough if a man had enough wealth, and in a
number of cases individuals from poor families seem to have
become nobles. On the whole, though, the structure of the family
tended to further class distinctions.

It was assumed that all individuals desired to become a meotih,
“chief.” Most meotih’s were created by their families, and rela-
tively few individuals in practice became nobles through their
own unaided efforts. An important noble at the birth of a child
distributed property to the members of his own village and so
validated the child’s first name. At this time, too, a song-maker
was employed to make a song for the child. About eight or ten
years later, a second and larger potlatch was given in the name
of the child, either by the parents, by an uncle or a grandfather.
Again the child assumed a new name and acquired a new song.
Over a period of years, the times depending upon the affluence
of the family, two more such potlatches were given in the name
of the child. At the conclusion of the fourth potlatch the individ-
ual became a full-fledged noble.

At the second or third of these elevating potlatches the child