Tlingit potlatch

• Main Author: Unknown
• Format: Still Image
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Drawing; Native American: Tlingit; Canadian; potlatches; ceremonies; ceremony; performance; performances; gift; gifts; gift-giving festival; festivals; textiles; textile; northwest coast; tlingit
• Online Access: http://digital.libraries.psu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/arthist2/id/69553

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.