Two men sit down on a large skin, after having stripped the upper part of their bodies, and each tries to stretch out the bent arm of the other. These games are sometimes dangerous, as the victor has the right to kill his adversary; but generally the feast ends peaceably. The ceremonies of the western tribes in greeting a stranger are much feared by their eastern neighbors and therefore intercourse is somewhat restricted. The meaning of the duel, according to the natives themselves, is "that the two men meeting wish to know which of them is the better man. The similarity of these ceremonies with those of Greenland, where the game of hook and crook and wrestling matches have been customary, is quite striking, as is that of the explanation of these ceremonies.

The word for greeting on Davis Strait and Hudson Strait, is Assojutidlin? (Are you quite well?) and the answer, Tabaujuradlu (Very well). The word Taima! which is used in Hudson Strait, and Manetaima! of the Netchillirmiut seem to be similar to our Halloo! The Ukusiksalirmiut say Ilaga! (My friend!).

33. MARRIAGE AND SOCIETY AMONG THE CROW INDIANS1

By ROBERT H. LOWIE

MARRIAGE

A man had a preëmptive right to the younger sisters of a woman he had bought in marriage. Some men married a brother's widow; this was called "keeping a brother's wife."

As explained in my previous paper, there was abundant opportunity for philandering on such occasions as berry-picking and it happened that young people would form a permanent attachment on such occasions without further ceremony. This type of union was called ́taking each Sometimes a young man used a go-between to make an offer to a young woman, and this was designated as "talking towards a

other."

The most honorable form of marriage was buying a wife, "paying for her." That is, a man would give horses to her male relatives and meat to her mother. It was usually a young, good-looking and virtuous woman who was purchased but it did not matter whether she had been previously married. "Men," said Gray-bull, "would buy a woman who was not crazy. The Lumpwoods never came to the door of my tipi to take away my last wife. That is the sort of wife we paid for." This is an allusion to the custom by which a member of the Lumpwood or rival Fox organization might carry off the wife of a member of the other society provided he had ever been on terms of intimacy with her.

Women stolen in this fashion were not usually kept for any length of time. Shell-necklace abducted three women in this manner but did not live with any of them longer than twenty days. He let them stay in a lodge other than his real wife's. There were some men who would keep these stolen women but the majority sent them away with such words as, "I have done marrying you, go away!" After this any man might marry her without being disgraced, except the husband from whose lodge she

had been stolen.

When a woman abandoned a man she disliked, this was called

disliking a man. Shell-necklace said, contrary to Gray-bull's earlier statement,

1 From pages 74-82 of Robert H. Lowie, "Notes on the Social Organization and Customs of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow Indians," Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, volume 21, part 1, New York, 1917.

that in such a case the husband recovered the property he had paid for her. A woman's relatives sometimes tried to dissuade her from running away from her husband.

The attitude of divorced spouses towards each other in later life naturally differed with different individuals. One interpreter told me that his father and mother hated each other and never had any social intercourse. Correspondingly, Young-crane informed me that she at first refused to be adopted into the Tobacco society by her former husband, Hunts-the-enemy, but was finally persuaded by her then husband, Crazydog. On the other hand, there are cases of divorced mates who converse on amicable terms.

....

Some concrete data as to married life are of considerable interest. Young-crane married. . . . a chief . . . . He had already married her elder sister and at the time of his death had two other wives,-one of them a relative. . . . The three related women inhabited the same lodge, while the fourth wife lived in a separate tipi; but sometimes all the wives of a man, even if unrelated, lived together. This first husband had been married to a wife whom he divorced and by whom he had four children. When he took to wife Young-crane, he gave her elder brother two horses and other presents. She had no children by him, but her eldest sister had three, of whom Packs-hat is the oldest. He has always called Young-crane "mother"; when she later married Hunts-the-enemy, Packs-hat called him "father," as he also did his own mother's second husband; he continued to address Hunts-the-enemy in this way even after Young-crane's divorce from him, and later when she married Crazy-head called him “father" also. Young-crane's first husband was killed and after awhile she had Hunts-the-enemy for a lover and accordingly married him without purchase. However, he also took to wife a relative of Youngcrane's whom she designated as her grandchild and who called her husband "father." This angered her. All the people thought Hunts-theenemy had done something wrong in marrying a girl who called him "father" and said he was crazy. Accordingly, Young-crane separated from him. Later Crazy-head wished to marry her, and since he was a chief her brothers advised her to take him, and so she did without being purchased.

When Gray-bull was about twenty-two, he married for the first time. He had been out on a war party and when he came back he found a young woman who had come to his home, so he married her. She had a son by him, but the boy died. After about four years of marriage, she discovered that her husband had been out berry-picking with another young woman, so she got angry and told him to marry her rival. Accordingly, Gray-bull threw all her belongings out of the tent, and she left him. Then Graybull went to where his sweetheart was and married her without purchase.

She was stolen by the Lumpwoods and Gray-bull never went near her for a year, and even then he did not seek her but she came to him. However, he did not keep her permanently. It was only for his last wife that property was paid. She was a virtuous woman, the widow of a brother of Gray-bull's, who had been killed. When Gray-bull's mother urged him to marry this woman, he at first declined, but at last consented. Then another brother of his took a horse and some property to the widow's mother, the horse being for the widow's father and the other gifts for her brothers. Some time after this one of the woman's brothers bade him stay in his lodge. Then one of her brothers came, stood outside the tipi, and called Gray-bull. Then he went with them and two of his own brothers to the woman's lodge. She was seated on a fine bed and had a backrest there. Gray-bull's brothers went to the rear and sat down, and all of them received food. When they had eaten, the brothers went home and Gray-bull remained and lay with his wife. He felt bashful because she had not been his mistress before.

POSITION OF WOMEN

The fact that the women certainly perform all the menial household duties and are ordered about by their husbands in regard to bringing water and the like is likely to convey the idea that the position of women was a very inferior one in Crow society. Random references to women in myth and song, and indeed the deliberate bravado with which the ideal Crow man might discard his wife at a dance or allow her to be abducted by a rival organization, tend to confirm this impression.

Nevertheless, as in the case of sexual morality, superficial appearances are in a measure deceptive as to the real native point of view. In the first place, it is worth noting that a woman exercises definite property rights. In buying specimens I noticed repeatedly that husbands did not attempt to influence, let alone force, wives in regard to the sale of their belongings. It is further noteworthy that while women were naturally barred from the distinctively military men's clubs they play an important part in the sacred Tobacco society. Women secured visions, though less frequently than men; and some of them were medical practitioners and exercised supernatural powers. As the Crow had a very definite conception of ideal manhood, so they have a clear notion of what a woman should be,-virtuous, skilled in feminine accomplishments, physically attractive. This complex is summed up in the expression "She is a good woman," which perhaps corresponds to our "perfect lady' with the addition of good looks. A woman of this type was certainly well thought of and might exert considerable influence on her husband.

It is further clear that the bold face put on when a woman was abducted often merely served as a mask for profound grief. Indeed the

stoical decorum so emphatically demanded by tribal etiquette indicates how difficult an achievement this triumphing over one's emotions was considered. When Gray-bull lost his wife in the spring contest of the Foxes and Lumpwoods he bravely bade her go with his rival, but interrupting his narrative at this point he said to me, "If you have ever been married, you know how this felt."

Whether what has been called "romantic love" is less common among the Indians than in our own everyday life, it would be difficult to say. An educated interpreter ridiculed the notion of a man's committing suicide because of unrequited affection, but Werthers are not so common among us as he seems to have inferred from a reading of novels. At all events, Crow literature also comprises narratives of a hero undergoing dangers and achieving arduous tasks "all for the love of a lady," while one story recounts how a young woman braved all the perils and privations of a long overland journey through hostile territory in order to reach her disabled sweetheart.

SEXUAL MORALITY

In his discussion of the social life of the Yukaghir, Mr. Jochelson emphasizes the difference between theory and practice as regards the sexual relations of this people. Exactly the same point may be made with regard to the Crow. In practice there is a great looseness of manners, though the established rules of propriety are strictly observed.2 War and love are described as the old Crow men's principal occupations, and the mythology, the reminiscences of informants, and ancient songs are all surcharged with evidence of the tendency to apparently unlimited philandering. To a superficial observer it would appear as though this masculine license were even today extended to the female sex. Young women of notorious immorality are not only not regarded as outcasts but in some instances are even taken to wife by young men who to all appearances might have made better matches. Their outward treatment, whether they are married or not, seems to differ not one whit from that accorded to other women.

Nevertheless, as already explained, the Crow have very definite ideals of feminine purity. A man certainly prides himself on being married to a woman of irreproachable chastity, and a wife of this type enjoys a very different reputation and social status from that of a "crazy" one, as unchaste women are usually described. On public occasions precedence was yielded to the virtuous women. When Young-jack-rabbit had distinguished himself in battle, his grandmother, who had never done any

2 Thus, my interpreter twitted me with the fact that while whites censured the Indian's immorality a brother would not hesitate to speak freely with his sister, which no decent Crow would do.