Kinship, Family, and Social Organization

The social structures of the Interior and Coast Salish peoples in the mid-nineteenth century were somewhat different, with more emphasis on hierarchy on the coast. Among the Interior peoples, society was held together by ties of kinship and friendship over a large area. These ties were cemented by regular gift-giving. Prohibitions on marriage between blood relatives linked villages by marriage and helped in the development of systems of alliance. Village chiefs exercised influence based on their reputations for spiritual qualities and pragmatic abilities, as did task group leaders, shamans, war leaders, and salmon chiefs. Interior Salish people practised gender equality, although there was a clear-cut division of labor by sex. Class differences did not emerge, and emphasis was placed on the autonomy of the individual. Slaves, often war captives, were held, but they were adopted into families without prejudice, except in those communities with strong ties to the more hierarchical coastal communities. Among all Salish, cousins were equated with siblings and the levirate (the custom by which a male member of a deceased husband’s family marries his widow) and sororate (the counterpart of the levirate for women) were practised, a system that contributed to the maintenance of relations between groups connected by marriage.

Among the Coast Salish, as with the Interior peoples, kinship was reckoned bilaterally, and marriage was prohibited with blood relatives, leading to the formation of broad networks of affinal relatives which sometimes cut across linguistic boundaries. Residential groups were the family, household, local group, and winter village. The family, consisting of a married couple, children, possibly wives and spouses of young adult children, dependants, and slaves, occupied one section of the winter house. The household included several related and cooperative families. Groups of blood relatives formed “houses” and shared putative common descent from a notable ancestor and rights to resources. Society was highly stratified, with communities divided into wealthy elite, common people, and slaves. Marriage was generally within one’s class. Slavery was hereditary and slaves were the property of the master, but they lived within the longhouse and could obtain spirit powers. There were chiefs of local groups, generally men, and house chiefs of both sexes. Leadership was dependent on the acquisition of spirit power and on personal ability, and task group leadership was circumscribed. There was no formal centralized political authority. Women were secluded at the time of menarche and stayed out of public life while unmarried; some assumed political influence after menopause.

Today, Salish people continue to rely on their network of relatives, and in many communities the extended families still serve as economic groupings. Families are no longer co-resident in winter houses, but the political life of communities continues to be carried out within the context of family solidarity.