Those Nasty White People

If you search for references to potlach you will find gobs of positive portrayals of it as a gift giving festival with great symbolism as the giving or destroying valuables shows how wealthy you are.  Both the Canadian and American governments banned potlaches for many years because of those mean old missionaries.   I had a vague memory of the potlach that was so dark that the laws made sense.  With a little digging, I found it here:

The destruction of goods as a show of wealth could include either the freeing or killing of slaves, who were usually acquired specifically for potlach.

I have since found dozens more accounts of the killing of slaves during potlaches as a way of displaying wealth and in most sources these slaves were acquired strictly for this purpose.  But all the references to potlaches I can find high on the Google search for some reason leave out these unpleasant detail.

I am doing this from my phone in the smallest room in the house.  I will expand these tomorrow.

Here,

  here, 

and this one which I think that I have read somewhere in the last six decades.  A club with a special name: the slave killer. 

  More  and here.  Throwing the scalps of destroyed slaves.

Yes.  I can well believe Christian missionaries disapproved.