The Nomadic Alternative – Page 141

had learned to store food to last through the lean season, to smoke and dry fish, to preserve fish oil in tubs, to build houses of split yellow cedar planks, to rear totem poles to the sky, to weave fine blankets and baskets, and carve their treasured food bowls, musical instruments and other possessions with a fantastic animal ornament. The sound of the burin, the adze and the chisel grated through the long winter as the people waited in their houses for the return of spring. And in this ambiance of surplus and settlement, there were nobles and commoners, rich and poor, free men and slaves, wars and raiding parties. These men, it is true, knew the debilitating effects of wealth and that the management of surplus demanded extravagant displays of generosity. In the famous potlatch feasts the chiefs ritually "killed" or sacrificed their wealth, each warring with the other in a battle of nerves to see how much they could give away.

HE WAS HONEST
& WELL DISPOSED

IN MEMORY OF
CHIEF CLELAMEN

& RESPECTED BY
BOTH WHITES & INDIANS

WHO DIED 1893 AGED 50 YEARS

IN DEC 92 HE GAVE AWAY WITH THE HELP OF HIS SONS ALEXANDER & JOHNNY PROPERTY IN BLANKETS CANOES SO VALUED AT 4000 DOLLARS THIS BEING HIS EIGHTH LARGE POTLATCH & FEAST THAT HE HAD HELD.

Thus the idea persists even among settled hunters and gatherers that surplus property is for ostentatious disposal. But the supreme disregard a man could show for property was to dispense with his slaves. On occasions he had them clubbed to death with a ritual slave-killer - a club carved from the antler of a caribou and adorned with animal ornament.

The problem of the settled or even the semi-settled hunter introduces us to the paradox of prehistoric archaeology. The archaeologist has pieced together evidence of the slow but inexorable progress of our ancestors in perfecting their hunting gear, from the roughest of chipped stone hand axes to the sophisticated bow and arrow. But owing to the nature of archaeological evidence this information comes largely from settlement sites - caves, rock shelters,