  We study the excited baryon states for an arbitrary number of colors Nc from
the perspective of the permutation group S_N of N objects. Classifying the
transformation properties of states and quark-quark interaction operators under
S_N allows a general analysis of the spin-flavor structure of the mass operator
of these states, in terms of a few unknown constants parameterizing the unknown
spatial structure. We explain how to perform the matching calculation of a
general two-body quark-quark interaction onto the operators of the 1/Nc
expansion. The inclusion of core and excited quark operators is shown to be
necessary. Considering the case of the negative parity L=1 states transforming
in the MS of S_N, we discuss the matching of the one-gluon and the
Goldstone-boson exchange interactions.
