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78 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST  . _[N. s., 30, 1928

foreigners, not the Déné, that borrowed, let me choose for further
elucidation the chief point of Tsimshian sociology, potlatching,
found also among Babine and Carriers, but unknown to all the
other Déné tribes not coterminous with the maritime aborigines.

When, on the occasion of one of those feasts, a new nobleman
was to be installed in the place of his predecessor, young Carriers
holding up in a line the dressed skins he was going to distribute
would cry out: ‘‘These he will give away as a fee for his enthroniza-
tion.” Whereupon the whole exogentile crowd would break out
into loud acclamations: Samédtgét! Semdtgét! Now what is this
word? A Carrier expression? Not by any means. It is the
Sema’yit of the Tsimshians said by Dr. Boas to be used by those
Indians when they address the sun. It is the equivalent of “‘chief,”’
or “chief by wealth.”

After the new notable had made his grand distribution of skins,
he would give the assembly a repast in trough-like carved vessels
called tsak, a word which is evidently the same as the ‘sékh whereby
the Kitksan, or Skeena river Indians, designate a like vessel.

Then, to honor the new nobleman, the hereditary song of his
predecessor was struck up and repeatedly executed by the as-
sistants. What was that song? Merely a Tsimshian tune with
badly pronounced Tsimshian words!

As to the Eskimo and Loucheux, among whom we have also
seen several technological points possessed in common, the ex-
plorer, Sir John Richardson, explicitly states that “the Eskimos
.... have borrowed nothing whatever either from the Europeans
or *Tinné, the conterminous people.”®

This, it seems, ought to suffice. Useless to waste time in an

_ endeavor to break in an open door.

Reverting to Mr. McLeod’s strictures, we are confronted with
these novel pieces of information:

The greater part of the Sikanni, did not, as Morice implies, live east of the
Carriers; they lived rather north of the Carriers. Nor were they all salmon-
less wanderers, as Morice states. Nor, as the same ethnologist will have it,
verane dependent only on the Carriers for contact with the Coast civiliza-
ion.
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4 Arctic Searching Expedition, 1: 342.

*° AMER. ANTHR., 28: 367-68.

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