| Summary: | No occasion was more important among Northwest Coast Indians than the potlatch, a mammoth feast given by a house of one clan to honor the house of another. Such affairs offered the hosts an opportunity to display their wealth - thus confirming their status - through the lavish dispensation of food and gifts to guests. A potlatch was usually held in the house of the hosts, its nominal purpose to celebrate the marriage of the house chief, to inaugurate a new clan house or to mark the death of an old house chief and the accession of a new one.
|
|---|