potlatch

• Finally the resourceful egg produces a hermit who shuttles Marvin's reeling mind to Celsus V, which might have been called the potlatch planet if the compulsory gifts weren't apt to be booby-trapped. —  Analog October, 1966
• Kate told her about the potlatch, and the picture, the original of which she had had Jim bring to the hospital Ruthe wept at the sight of it. —  A Fine and Bitter Snow
• I was loath to let him go until we were actually at the road-house described, but he wanted to go back to the lake for the potlatch then preparing, and said that two days' delay would bar him from the best of the festivities So I settled with him, giving him fifty dollars of the sixty dollars covenanted to the Iditarod, and grub enough to take him back to the lake, and a rifle, for he was unprovided with firearms, and he went his way back, richly content, to the gorging of unlimited moose meat that awaited him, and the boy and I went ours. —  Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska
• There is little difference as regards thrift between wasting one's substance in a "potlatch," which is a feast for all comers, and wasting it in drunkenness, which is a feast for the liquor sellers, save that one is barbarous and the other civilised, as the terms go It would seem that the general timidity of the native character is the reason for a very general untruthfulness, though there one must speak with qualification and exception. —  Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska
• A potlatch is given at the outset, or during the progress of some important event, such as the building of a new house, confirming of a sub-chief, or celebrating any good fortune, either of peace or war. —  Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist

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