LOCATION AND ENVIRONMENT 17

opened out on to a wooden platform, which served as sidewalk and extended from one end of the settlement to the other.

The outer side of this structure was always supported on piles; in fact, in many cases, the houses as well as the whole sidewalk were thus raised from the ground. This type of construction was necessitated by the sloping sites of the villages, but had the added advantage of being a protection against attack. The villages differed in size from insignificant settlements of three to four houses, to ones with twenty or thirty, each con- taining several families. The ease with which the red cedar could be split and worked into large planks made possible the construction of these large, rectangular houses which, with their horizontally laid walls and sloping roofs, presented a picture of stability and relative comfort superior to that of most Indian habitations.

Each village was practically an independent political unit. Neighbouring settlements had many common interests which threw them into contact with one another, but there was no organized cohesion between the towns of the Bella Coola valley, or between those of T4/-io and Kimsquit. There was still less to draw these three groups together. There was no supreme chief and no governmental meeting of the tribe as a whole. Not only were the three divisions not bound to sup- port one another in war, they were often at loggerheads among themselves. Indeed, bloodshed between towns of the Bella Coola valley itself was not uncommon. Moreover, each group tended to merge with its neighbours. The Ta/-io people fre- quently married with the Rivers Inlet and the Bella Bella; the Kimsquit with the ustémx'* of Dean Channel and the Kitlobe of Gardner Canal; and the Bella Coola of the upper valley with the Carriers.

In spite of these inconsistencies, the application of the word tribe is justifiable for the following reasons:

A. Lincuistic. All spoke the same language. There were dialectical differences among the people of Bella Coola, T4l-io, and Kimsquit, but each group could understand the

%To avoid unnecessary symbols, capital « has not been used.