Page:The American Indian.djvu/262

214 abundance; the Chilkat, a Tlingit tribe, specialized in the weaving of a blanket of goat hair; there was no true loom, the warp hanging from a bar, and weaving with the fingers, downward (Fig. 70); clothing rather scanty, chiefly of skin, a wide basket hat (only one of the kind on the continent and apparently for rain protection); feet usually bare, but skin moccasins and leggings were occasionally made; for weapons the bow, club, and a peculiar dagger, no lances; slat, rod, and skin armor; wooden helmets, no shields; practically no chipped stone tools, but nephrite or green stone used; wood work highly developed, splitting and dressing of planks, peculiar bending for boxes, joining by securing with concealed stitches, high development of carving technique; work in copper may have been aboriginal, but, if so, very weakly developed; decorative art is conspicuous, tending to realism in carved totem poles, house posts, etc.; some geometric art on baskets, but woven blankets tend to be realistic; each family expresses its mythical origin in a carved or painted crest; the tribe of two exogamic divisions with maternal descent; society organized as chiefs, nobles, common people, and slaves; a kind of barter system expressed in the potlatch ceremony in which the leading units of value are blankets and certain conventional copper plates; a complex ritualistic system by which individuals are initiated into the protection of their family guardian spirits, those so associated with the same spirit forming a kind of society; mythology characterized by the Raven legends.

The central group differs in a few minor points: use a hand stone hammer instead of a hafted one; practically no use of skin clothing, but twisted and loosely woven bark or wool; no coil or twined basketry, all checker work; has a tendency toward paternal descent for its exogamic groups; the crest system less in evidence, but the initiation groups very strong, particularly the cannibal cult, and far less associated with the clans.

Among the southern group appears a strong tendency to use stone arrow-heads in contrast to the North; a peculiar flat club, vaguely similar to the New Zealand type, the