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In this well-documented monograph we find the whole history and psychology of the famous potlatch of the Kwakiutl. What the author has to say about warfare and gifts deserves the attention of all who are interested in the mainsprings of actions and attitudes.
Warfare was waged because of feelings of grief, shame, the desire to retaliate and to maintain or acquire prestige; moreover, it was ceremonialized and confined to a season. Whatever violence occurred was outrageously dramatized and exaggerated (p. 98); thus we see again a timorous people who try hard to appear as reckless warriors: warfare serves to ward off reproaches from the superego.1
'It is impossible to discover in Kwakiutl warfare an underlying economic motivation' (p. 105). Most of the wars were waged on passers-by who were not plundered.
The potlatch is a dramatic distribution of property by the holder of a fixed social rank and its aim is to maintain this social prestige or to enhance it. With the ending of warfare, the potlatch took over the fulfilment of those same functions it had shared with warfare in prewhite days. The Kwakiutl name for potlatch is 'fighting with property', Sagari [mwadare] gidemusa sai-ja—i.e., 'a feast is like fighting' in Normanby Island.2
However, the potlatch is more anal and more self-destructive than its Melanesian counterpart, and its characteristic feature is