Coast Salish Status Ranking and Intergroup Ties

Abstract

Status relations within aboriginal Coast Salish villages are found to have been in part functionally dependent on a network of intervillage relations. This network involved kinship ties (from customary village exogamy), serial economic exchanges between affines, and a series of ceremonialized status-asserting activities. Analysis shows intervillage kinship ties to have been basic and functionally prerequisite to other behaviors in network relations. It is hypothesized that social ranking within Coast Salish villages depended on the total set of intercommunity relations within a network specific to each community; such a set is designated a social field. This hypothesis is applied to, and appears to accord with, specific aspects of status differentiation within the aboriginal non-slave class. These include verbally a sharp high/low dichotomy, behaviorally a graded status continuum, and formally a limited number of rank-designating criteria applied to small numbers of persons. Social field analysis further indicates a probable sequence of development of status features in historic Coast Salish culture.