l functions, and dancing and singing
were interspersed with the feasting. One of the amusements was a musical
contest in which singers from one tribe or band would contend with
one another as to which could remember the greatest number of songs or
accurately repeat a new song after hearing it for the first time. At the
potlatches the children of chiefs were initiated into secret societies.
They had their noses, ears, and lips pierced for ornaments, and some
of them were tattooed. This great respect for social position which the
Haidas manifested is doubtless far from ideal, but it at least indicates
that a part of the tribe was sufficiently advanced to accumulate
property and to pass it on to its descendants--a custom that is almost
impossible among tribes which move from place to place. The question
suggests itself why these coast barbarians were so much in advance
of their neighbors a few hundred miles away in the pine woods of the
mountains. The climate was probably one reason for this superiority.
Instead of being in a region like the center of the pine forests of
British Columbia where human energy is sapped by six or eight months of
winter, the Haidas enjoyed conditions like those of Scotland. Although
snow fell occasionally, severe cold was unknown. Nor was there great
heat in summer. The Haidas dwelt where both bodily strength and mental
activity were stimulated. In addition to this advantage of a favorable
climate these Indians had a large and steady supply of food close at
hand. Most of their sustenance was obtained from the sea and from the
rivers, in which the runs of salmon furnished abundant provisions, which
rarely failed. In Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte Islands and
the mainland, there were wonderfully productive halibut fisheries, from
which a supply of fish was dried and packed away for the winter, so that
there was always a store of provisions on hand. The forests in their
turn furnished berries and seeds, as well as bears, mountain goats, and
other game.

Moreover the people of the northwest coast had the advantage of not
being forced to move from place to place in order to follow the fish.
They lived on a drowned shore where bays, straits, and sounds are
extraordinarily numerous. The great waves of the Pacific are shut out
by the islands so that the waterways are almost always safe for canoes.
Instead of moving their dwellings in order to follow the food supply,
as the Eskimo and the pe