ETHNQHTSTORY AND CEREMONIAL REPRESENTATION OF CARRIER SOCIAL STRUCTURE by VERNON KOBRINSKY M.A., University of British Columbia, 1968 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August, 1973 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of thirtiethJij /mJ ^iff/rzjij The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date ABSTRACT The dissertation is in two parts. The first part develops a largely conjectural reconstruction of the social history of the Carrier Indians of north-central B.C. in three stages. The history commences with the Carrier in what is believed to be their original setting amid fellow Athapaskan-speakers of the Yukon-Mackenzie wood• lands. A hypothetical system of composite bands is ascribed to the Carrier at this stage, as the underlying social form out of which more recent forms have arisen. Following their move to their present loca• tion in the salmon-spawning headwaters of the Skeena and Fraser sys• tems, a salmon-promoted segmentary elaboration of the bands (termed the sept system) is envisioned. The sept stage is then succeeded by a system involving the overlaying of the sept structure, to a consid• erable extent under the impetus of the burgeoning fur-trade at the turn of the 18th Century, by a system of coast-derived, territory- claiming, matrilineal crest-divisions, classes, ranks, and a potlatch cycle which ceremonially articulate these various categories of social structure. This last stage, designated the sept/phratry stage, rep• resents the Carrier social structure described by a number of research scholars who have worked among the Carrier from the turn of the 19th Century (the Oblate missionary-scholar Father A.G. Morice) to the pre• sent (notably Jenness, Goldman, Hackler and myself). The second part of the essay is a close analysis of the seat• ing and prestation-distribution orders of the protocols of the Carrier 11 potlatch. The central thesis of Part II is that the ceremonial seat• ing and distribution arrangement of the major parameters of Carrier society (chiefs, nobles, commons, clans, phratries, septs) is motivated in consideration of the epi-ceremonial connotations of these categories; especially by connotations proper to the diachronic perspective, i.e., by both ideologies of continuity, and folk-historic aspects of social structure. The spatial/temporal arrangements of the potlatch are treated, following the linguistic model, as "surface" structures which manifest meanings out of principles of motivated syntax operating at "deep" (i.e., unconscious) levels of structure. The "deep" level prin• ciples of space/time syntax are expressed as simple analogies, and it is suggested that the motivation behind these patterns may derive from certain givens of perceptual experience. Thus, inasmuch as seating and prestation distributions ren• der a symbolic expression of both historic and synchronic aspects of epi-ceremonial social structure, Part I of the essay provides a foun• dation for Part II by representing current Carrier social structure in light of its reconstructed historic sources. The conclusion discusses some of the mechanisms, elucidated by the dissertation, which contribute to the cybernetic relations be• tween ritual and social structure. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract i Introduction 1 PART I: AN HISTORIC AND ECOLOGICAL VIEW OF CARRIER SOCIAL STRUCTURE Chapter 1 Ethnohistory and Ecology of the Septs 8 Chapter 2 Further Ethnohistory and Ecology of the Septs, UC6-0.-UC6 the Phratries and Clans 50 Chapter 3 Background to the Carrier Status System, Crests, and the Potlatch 101 PART II: ANALYSIS OF POTLATCH PROTOCOL Chapter 4 The Representation of the Phratries: Nobles vs. Commoners 126 Chapter 5 The Centripetal Orientation of Chiefs 159 Chapter 6 The Dialectic of Phratry and Clan 198 Chapter 7 The Dialectic of Phratry and Sept 219 Chapter 8 Conclusions 249 Bibliography 261 1 INTRODUCTION This essay is about the social and ceremonial life of the Carrier Indians of north-central B.C. The Carrier peoples numbered about 4,000 a decade ago (Duff 1964: 33-4), and are thought to have moved to their present location in the salmon-spawning headwaters of the Skeena and Fraser systems from a previous home amid other Atha• paskan-speakers somewhere in the basin of the Yukon or Mackenzie River. This move not only would have wrought profound alterations in their ecology (with access to salmon), it would have brought them, on their western frontier, into contact with the contagious cultures of the northern Pacific coast. The first part (of two parts) of the essay develops a largely conjectural reconstruction of Carrier social history. The history begins with a hypothetical system of so-called composite bands in the Yukon-Mackenzie woodlands, and continues, following their move to the present setting, as a stage of salmon-promoted segmentary elab• oration of the bands, termed the sept system (Chapters 1 and 2). The sept stage is succeeded by what I term a sept/phratry stage, represent• ing the Carrier social structure described by a number of research scholars who have worked among the Carrier from the turn of the 19th Century (the Oblate missionary-scholar A.G. Morice) to the present (notably Jenness, Goldman, Hackler and myself). The sept/phratry stage arose with an overlaying of the septs, to a considerable extent under the impetus of the fur-trade, by a system of coast-derived, territory- 2 claiming, matrilineal crest-divisions, classes, ranks, and a potlatch cycle which effects a ceremonial articulation of these various cate• gories of Carrier society (Chapters 2 and 3). The second part of the essay is a detailed analysis which ascribes unconscious symbolic significance to the seating and to the prestation-distribution orders of the Carrier potlatch. Of course, I am aware that the legitimacy of predicating to actors any patterns of cognition which do not correspond directly to their own utterances (i.e., the unconscious), a fortiori unconscious symbolic patterns, is a matter of continuing dispute among students of human behaviour. I shall not consider that debate, as such, in this essay. Rather, let me assert at the outset, not only that I regard such an assumption as legitimate, but that I consider sociological explanation to be impossible (at least, forever incomplete) without it. We are profoundly indebted to Diamond Jenness for his pre• cise data on the seating structure of the Bulkley River potlatches (Chapter 4). The information concerning prestation-distribution pro• cedures is contributed by my own fieldnotes, also obtained in this instance from interviews with Bulkley River (Moricetown) informants. There is always a risk in combining data obtained at different times (there is a thirty year span between Jenness1 record and my own) as aspects of a single phenomenon. I have taken that risk in a number of contexts, but not without secondary support, or without acknowledg• ing the uncertainty to the reader. In this case, for example, my own data on seating, although not nearly as rich as Jenness', solidly 3 confirm in outline what Jenness1 statements and his "Tables of Peerage" (1943: 491-495) convey in wonderful detail. That fact substantially diminishes the risk of concatenating the information on spatial pattern• ing with my own data on distributional order. I should note, in this context, that my greatest wish, while among the Carrier, was to acquire first-hand observational data on a well-attended and well-structured potlatch. I had initiated fieldwork, in the first instance, with a view to producing an analysis of gift- symbolism, primarily in the potlatch context; such a study called, of course, for a detailed account of kinds and amounts of prestational relations of donors/recipients in the potlatch and in satellite set• tings. My interest in that problem arose out of casual observations made in connection with wedding and Bar-Mitzvah gifts in my home com• munity of Winnipeg, and became focused upon the potlatch, specifically, during fieldwork among the Coast Tsimshian (in the summer of 1968, pre• ceding my first stay at Fort Babine) of Kitkatla and Prince Rupert. During a total field period of something over a year among the Carrier (mostly at Fort Babine, plus three summer months at Moricetown) I attended one small funeral potlatch (of an untitled person), and two small para-potlatch events at Fort Babine (a woman's public repayment of personal debts incurred by her to persons of her father's phratry, and a ceremony known as "returning the feathers" held several months following the funeral potlatch mentioned above), and I witnessed some potlatch proceedings through the community hall doorway during a brief 4 visit, as a stranger, to Moricetown (I was still stationed at Fort Babine). The funeral potlatch that I witnessed at Fort Babine was poorly attended, probably because the deceased was untitled and, as I later discovered, because the great majority of titled personnel of the Babine sept now reside at Burns Lake. To the great chagrin of one old man who beat the floor with his stick and railed at the assem• bly (and to mine), formalities of seating were being largely ignored. Valuable as these experiences have ultimately proved to be, they fail to furnish the first-hand observational detail that I sought pursuant to my original problem, and they also failed to supply a confirmation and updating of Jenness' details on seating.