settlement could implicitly count upon the services of every male Indian able to bear arms; and although these savages are fearless and brave, yet they know no open, fair fight—taught to get his living by stratagem when fishing or hunting, so the Kolosh advances in capturing his human enemies, just as all other Indians have done and do. Each village has a well-recognized head man, or chief, who, though possessing much influence, still never has had, and does not now enjoy, that absolute rule which is attributed to such Indians. He is really a presiding elder over the several families in the hamlet, and, without their consent, his decisions are futile or carry no weight. He has no power to compel other members of the tribe to work, hunt, or fish for him, and if he builds a house, or a canoe, he has to hire them to labor by making the customary “potlatch,” just as any other man of the tribe would do—only he must give a little more. The social rules which exist among these savages show many strange features, for though every rancherie has its freely-acknowledged chief, yet they are divided into as many or more families than there are houses, each one of which has its own regulations, and a subordinate authority of its own governing it, and it alone.[22] The Sitkan Indians trouble themselves very little about the interior country; but the coast line, and especially the margins of rivers and streams, are duly divided up among the different families. These tracts are regarded as strictly private property, just as we would regard them if fenced in as farms and cattle ranches—and they are passed from one generation to the other in the line of savage inheritance; they may be sold, or even rented by one family desiring to fish, to gather berries, to cut timber, or to hunt on the domain of another. So settled and so strict are these ideas of proprietary and vested rights in the soil, that, on some parts of the coast, corner-stones and stakes may be seen to-day set up there to define the limits of such properties between savages, by savages; and furthermore, woe to the disreputable trespassing Siwash who steps over these boundaries and appropriates anything of value, such, for instance, as a stranded whale, shark, seal, or otter—berries, wreckage, or shell-fish.