ogs of cedar and were often
very large. Houses which were sometimes 40 by 100 feet were built of
huge cedar beams and planks, which were first worked with stone and
were then put together at great feasts. These correspond to the "raising
bees" at which the neighbors gathered to erect the frames of houses in
early New England. Each Haida house ordinarily had a single carved totem
pole in the middle of the gable end which faced toward the beach. Often
the end posts in front were also carved and the whole house was painted.
Another evidence of the fairly advanced state of the Haidas was their
active commercial intercourse with regions hundreds of miles away.
At their "potlatches," as the raising bees were called by the whites,
trading went on vigorously. Carved copper plates were among the articles
which they esteemed of highest value. Standing in the tribe depended
on the possession of property rather than on ability in war, in which
respect the Haidas were more like the people of today than were any of
the other Indian tribes.

* 11th Edition, vol. XXII, p. 730.

Slavery was common among the Haidas. Even as late as 1861, 7800 Tlingits
held 828 slaves. Slavery may not be a good institution in itself, but
it indicates that people are well-to-do, that they dwell in permanent
abodes, and that they have a well-established social order. Among the
more backward Iroquois, captives rarely became genuine slaves, for the
social and economic organization was not sufficiently developed to admit
of this. The few captives who were retained after a fight were adopted
into the tribe of the captors or else were allowed to live with them and
shift for themselves--a practice very different from that of the Haidas.

Another feature of the Haidas' life which showed comparative progress
was the social distinctions which existed among them. One of the ways
in which individuals maintained their social position was by giving away
quantities of goods of all kinds at the potlatches which they organized.
A man sometimes went so far as to strip himself of nearly every
possession except his house. In return for this, however, he obtained
what seemed to him an abundant reward in the respect with which his
fellow-tribesmen afterward regarded him. At subsequent potlatches he
received in his turn a measure of their goods in proportion to his own
gifts, so that he was sometimes richer than before. These potlatches
were social as well as industria