Il6 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920
right is, no doubt, due to the reduction in the number of members of the tribe. As a matter of fact, the Indians themselves are not by any means clear as to the rights of each individual, and quarrels regarding rank and position are of common occurrence. In these each party tries to defend its rights by facts based on descent. The fundamental principle seems to be that primogeniture, regard- less of sex, entitles the first-born child to the highest rank held by one of its parents. Rank is, on the whole, determined by the order of birth, and the noblest line is the line of the first-born. The lowest in rank that of the youngest born. Hence when a father and mother are of equally high rank, the first-born child may be assigned to one numaym, the following to another numaym. In cases of equal rank of both parents the father's numaym has prefer- ence and to it the first-born child is assigned. I have never been able to learn definitely whether a child that is assigned to another numaym, not his mother's retains, nevertheless, the right to membership in his father's numaym or not. In some cases it seems that way, in others it seems that a person either has no position in the father's numaym, or that he definitely severs his relations with it and gives up his place in it. The Indians emphasize again and again the rule that the "house name" and the attached position and privileges can never go out of the line of primogeniture and may not be given away in marriage. The first-born child must take them no matter whether it is male or female. It is not clear, however, even from the genealogies at my disposal, what was done in former times if the parents did not hold enough seats and names to go around among their children, unless in these cases the children received names from the mother's father. At present and for about seventy years past, this condition has probably never arisen. The inference from the general point of view of the modern Indian is that the younger lines had names of inferior rank and formed the lower classes.
It seems to me that the conditions among the Kwag'ul and the Nootka must have been quite similar in so far as a sharp line be- tween nobility and common people did not exist, that rank was rather determined by the seniority of the .lines of descent. In one
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