Chipewyan Marriage (Denesuline, Dene) 9781772822205

Table of contents :
Cover
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT/RESUME
LIST OF FIGURES
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: BACKGROUND
The People
The Land
The Ecological Basis of Chipewyan Social Organization
CHAPTER TWO: THE KINSHIP SYSTEM
The Terminological System
Other Terminological Features
The Kindreds
The Hinting Unit
Reciprocity, Magic, and Conflict Between Hunting Units and Kindreds
CHAPTER THREE: THE MARRIAGE SYSTEM
The Aboriginal System
The Pre-Christian Marriage System
The Christian Era
CHAPTER FOUR: MAKING THE SYSTEM WORK
The Terminological System II
Picking a Spouse: The Children's Opinion
The Nature of Marriage
Hunting Units, Marriage and Divorce
APPENDIX I. MAP OF MISSION
APPENDIX II. ADOPTION AS RECIPROCITY
Introduction
Social Structure
Marriage
Reciprocity
Adoption As Reciprocity
Summary
Footnotes
References
APPENDIX III. FUDGING THE SYSTEM
APPENDIX IV. CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS AT DACHEN LAKE
NOTES
REFERENCES

Citation preview

National Museum o f Man National Museums o f Canada

Musée n a t i o n a l de l'Homme Musées nationaux du Canada

Board o f Trustees

C o n s e i l d'Administration Chairman Vice-président Membre Membre Member Member Membre Member Member

Dr. Sean B. Murphy Juge René J . Marin M. Roger B. Hamel Mme Ginette Gadoury Mr. Michael C.D. Hobbs Mr. Gower Markle M. Paul H. Leman Mr. Richard M.H. Alway Mr. Robert G. MacLeod

Secretary General

Mr. Ian C. Clark Secrétaire general

Director N a t i o n a l Museum o f Man

Dr. W i l l i a m E. Taylor, J r . Directeur Musée n a t i o n a l de l'Homme

A. McFadven Clark Chef Chief Service canadien d'Ethnologie Canadian Ethnology Service General e d i t o r Canadian Ethnology Service

Crown Copyright Reserved

Dr. David W. Zimmerly E d i t e u r général Service canadien d'Ethnologie

©

Droits réservés au nom de l a Couronne

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MAN MERCURY SERIES

MUSEE NATIONAL DE L'HOMME COLLECTION MERCURE

CANADIAN

LE SERVICE CANADIEN

ETHNOLOGY SERVICE

PAPER No. 58

DOSSIER No. 58

ISSN

CHIPE WYAN HENRY

0316-1862

MARRIAGE

S. S H A R P

NATIONAL MUSEUMS OF CANADA

MUSEES NATIONAUX DU CANADA OTTAWA

1979

D'ETHNOLOGIE

OBJECT OF THE MERCURY SERIES The Mercury Series i s a publication of the National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada, designed to permit the rapid dissemination of information pertaining to those disciplines for which the National Museum of Man i s responsible. In the interests of making information available quickly, normal production procedures have been abbreviated. As a result, editorial errors may occur. Should that be the case, your i n dulgence i s requested, bearing i n mind the object of the Series. The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the National Museum of Man or the Federal Government of Canada.

BUT DE IA COLLECTION MERCURE La collection Mercure, publiée par l e Musée national de l'Homme, Musées nationaux du Canada, a pour but de diffuser rapidement le résultat de travaux qui ont rapport aux disciplines pour lesquelles le Musée national de l'Homme est responsable. Pour assurer l a prompte distribution des exemplaires imprimés, on a abrégé les étapes de l'édition. En conséquence, certaines erreurs de rédaction peuvent subsister dans les exemplaires iuprimés. S i cela se présentait dans les pages qui suivent, les éditeurs réclament votre indulgence étant donné les objectifs de l a collection. Les opinions exprimées par les auteurs ne reflètent pas nécessairement celles du Musée national de l'Homme ou du gouvernement fédéral du Canada.

ii

ABSTRACT This work i s an examination of the operation of the kinship system of the Mission Chipewyan. I t examines the utilization of kinship terms by this group of Caribou-Eater Chipewyan and the conflict inherent within their system. The sources of conflict are derived from the Chipewyan utilization of both r e l ative age and genealogical position as a means of categorizing kin as well as the overlap i n functions of the kindred and the hunting unit. Analysis of marriage and the role of affines i s included and the non-age-ranked ties between siblings-in-law are shown to be crucial to group formation i n this society.

RESUME Cet ouvrage porte sur l a structure familiale des Tchippewayans chrétiens. I l examine notamment l'utilisation des termes désignant les relations familiales au sein de ce groupe de Tchippewayans mangeurs de caribou, et le conflit inhérent au système même. Le Tchippewayan considère en effet l a différence d'âge tout autant que l a position généalogique pour hiérarchiser les liens familiaux, et comme i l y a chevauchement entre ceux-ci et les liens de l a chasse, i l est presque inévitable qu'il y a i t conflit. Le mariage et le rôle des alliés sont analysés, et i l est montré que les liens entre beaux-frères et belles-soeurs sans considération d'âge sont indispensables à l a formation de groupes au sein de cette culture. Les personnes désireuses de recevoir en français de plus amples renseignements sur cette publication sont priées d'adresser leurs demandes à: Service canadien d'Ethnologie Musée national de l'Homme Musées nationaux du Canada Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0M8

COVER ILLUSTRATION: Floral design depicting the flower of the wild strawberry is traced or sewn directly on a moosehide jacket and then f i l l e d i n with beadwork. Based on a drawing by Tsinjure, a Chipewyan woman.

iii

This publication i s co-sponsored by the MARGARET HESS CANADIAN STUDIES FUND of the National Museum of Man

La publication de cet ouvrage a été coparrainée par LE MARGARET HESS CANADIAN STUDIES FUND du Musée national de l'Homme

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT/RESUME.

iii

LIST OF FIGURES.

vi 1

INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER ONE BACKGROUND The People The Land. The Ecological Basis of Chipewyan Social Organization. CHAPTER TWO

4 5 6

THE KINSHIP SYSTEM

The Terminological System, Other TerminoloGical Features. The Kindreds The Hunting Unit Reciprocity. Magic, and Conflict Between Hunting Units and Kindreds

10 17

19 .21 31

CHAPTER THREE THE MARRIAGE SYSTEM The Aboriginal System. The Pre-Christian Marriage System. The Christian Era.

39 40 .41

CHAPTER FOUR MAKING THE SYSTEM WORK The Terminological System II Picking a Spouse: The Children's Opinion. The Nature of Marriage Hunting Units, Marriage and Divorce. APPENDIX I.

45 52 53 .56 69

MAP OF MISSION

APPENDIX II. ADOPTION AS RECIPROCITY Introduction Social Structure Marriage Reciprocity Adoption As Reciprocity. Summary Footnotes References,

71 71 .72 72

APPENDIX III. FUDGING THE SYSTEM

78

APPENDIX IV.

88

73

74 75 76

CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS AT DACHEN LAKE,

.90

NOTES

94

REFERENCES. v

INTRODUCTION This work i s derived from fieldwork among the Chipewyan of the settlements of Disoha and Mission i n 1969-70, 1972-73, and 1975. The f i r s t two periods of fieldwork were directed towards a general ethnological investigation and specific research icon the Chipewyan kinship system. They resulted in my dissertation (Sharp 1973) which was a general description of the kinship system. During the second period of fieldwork I became reasonably certain that a different form of kinship system was developing among these people. The emerging system i s predicated upon two major changes i n Chipewyan lifestyle: the emergence of permanent residential communities with large populations and the lessening significance of caribou hunting as a means of subsistence. By 1972 the kinship system had changed so greatly that an analysis of the kinship system from the confines of village l i f e was inadequate to determine the method of operation of the 'traditional' system. To understand the operation of what I take to be the traditional system i t i s necessary to spend a considerable period of time i n the bush with some of the more conservative members of the population. The fieldwork i n 1975, which was funded by the National Museums of Canada, National Museum of Man program i n Urgent Ethnology, involved a period of nine months (April 1975 to November 1975) of isolated bush l i f e with Buck Smith and his hunting unit. During this period the Ethnographer spent a total of three hours i n Disoha i n June: the remainder was in the bush. The research conducted during this period of bush l i f e was directed towards the operation of the kinship system as a means of forming and maintaining the primary Chipewyan subsistence group, the hunting unit. The aim of the research was essentially 'salvage ethnology'; i t was attempting to discover the means of operation of a system undergoing rapid change from the practices of a few more conservative persons who were resist­ ing those changes. Research of this type i s subject to errors derived from the size of the sample of the no longer existent system as well as the possibility of unrecognized changes i n response to the emerging system. There i s no guarantee that the more conservative people of the present are typical of the majority of people in the past. The factors that make them atypical now may have made them atypical i n the past, thus giving their deviancy a credibility i t does not deserve. It was also realized during the fieldwork-in 1969-70 and 1972-73 that the operation of the Chipewyan system i s dependent upon magic. An investigation of the Chipewyan magic system was begun during the fieldwork of 1975 but i t did not progress as well as was hoped. Chipewyan magic i s secret and subtle. It i s a d i f f i c u l t topic to investigate and i t cannot be understood apart from myth, which I find most d i f f i c u l t to gather and interpret. Where possible I have indicated how magic underlies the Chipewyan social system i n this work but my understanding of this aspect of the system i s imperfect and the inter­ pretations given must be regarded as tentative. The analysis presented here i s in no way comprehensive or complete. It should be viewed as the working out of a small, but significant, aspect of the kinship system of the Mission Chipewyan. I t i s primarily an exercise i n my understanding of the Chipewyan. This work i s an analysis of marriage and the 1

2 dynamics of relations with affines as a base for further work with the symbolic treatment of the categories male and female and the nature of relations between the sexes i n Chipewyan society. Publication of this work i s more a function of the lack of material on Chipewyan social l i f e than the good qualities of this work. The methodology of the investigation was conventional for anthropological fieldwork: participant observation. The informants were the same group that were primary informants i n 1969-70 (the 1972 fieldwork was based upon a different set of informants). They agreed to spend the spring and summer i n the bush with the Ethnologist - i t took no persuading - and departed for the bush the week of the 7th of April by charter aircraft. The Ethnologist, in the company of John Smith, entered the bush by skidoo and dog team a week later. The trip to the bush camp was 150 a i r miles and more than double that by ground. On the way we visited the Discho Lake settlement which was reduced to three houses (from 15 i n 1972) and unoccupied. We also stopped at two active but unoccupied hunting/trapping camps and one abandoned camp. This t r i p was over the traditional winter t r a i l to Discho Lake and the Smith's t r a i l network past that point. The i n i t i a l camp was on the east shore of Dachen Lake, the location of the winter camp of the previous season. In early May we moved to tents on the west shore of Dachen Lake and remained there u n t i l August when the Ethnologist went with the largest segment of the group to Trout Lake after the group fission described i n the text. This site was a winter camp used i n 1970-71 and 1973-74. The scale of distances - our nearest neighbours from the Mission band were over 150 ground miles away, 50 ground miles during the f a l l of 1975 - and the high cost of charter a i r fare precluded visiting other Chipewyan hunting units in the f a l l of 1975. Given the choice, which we did not have, between intensive work with one group and survey work with several we would have chosen the former. The most significant bias i n this salvage work was the lack of Chipewyan hunting units i n the bush. In 1969-70 there were over 30 active trappers of the Mission band i n the bush i n the N.W.T. with their families. I was unable to find out how many were i n the bush i n 1975 but I know of only seven (6 nu­ clear families) and doubt i f there were more than ten. The low number of trappers eliminated the Discho Lake all-native camp and there was no opportunity to observe the dynamics of such a camp directly. In spite of these limitations there i s much significant material about the traditional system and much can yet be uncovered in the areas of magic, myth, and ecological adjustment by direct observation. Several aspects, such as large group formation, multi-hunting unit task group formation, marriage contracting, etc. are no longer available for direct observation. By representing this analysis as one of the traditional kinship systems of the Mission Chipewyan I am making a number of major assumptions. Fore­ most among these i s that the Chipewyan i n this region have not undergone either massive disruption or social disorganization from the time of contact u n t i l 1950. I have elsewhere (1977b) discussed the reasons for this perspective but in my fieldwork and i n the literature i n print I have found no indication that the Chipewyan of this area were anything other than a viable, functioning, society; one well able to handle the changes i n circumstances brought on by

3 Canadian c i v i l i z a t i o n . There have been changes during this period but there are changes during any three centuries i n the history of any society. Many of these changes have been significant and their cumulative effect has been enormous; a Chipewyan of 1950 would have been most uncomfortable among the Chipewyan of 1650. Neverthe­ less the stream of Chipewyan culture, which i s a remarkably flexible creation, has remained unbroken. The changes that have occurred have done so i n accordance with the 'structural logic' and potentialities of the culture of preceding time periods. I have adopted this position, aside from the fact that I think i t i s accurate, for two reasons: (1) I am concerned with the working of Chipewyan society rather than i t s origin and (2) I see l i t t l e possibility of discovering the nature of these changes beyond the recent period. In time the Ethnohistorians may prove me wrong but at the present time they have not directed enough attention (with the exception of E.S. Burch's forthcoming work) to the Chipewyan to be of use i n a synchronic study. I am also doubtful, i n spite of the obvious exceptions of people such as Hearne and Morice, of the accuracy, honesty, and ability of the early contact white personnel to shed much light upon the inhabitants of this region. In view of the appalling ignorance of the Chipewyan by the contemporary, and presumably better-educated and less biased white population, I shall be hard to convince on this point. The ethnographic present i n this work may be presumed to be the period from 1970 back to at least the 1930s. In spite of the many changes i n Chipewyan society the catimitment to caribou hunting and the basic solutions to the problems i t posed have remained unchanged until the collapse of the Beverly herd i n the 1940s. I also feel that much of the discussion of the dynamics of Chipewyan social l i f e i s applicable for periods of several centuries into the past. I have made a systematic effort to disguise the names of a l l persons and places i n this work with the exception of the names on the map i n Appendix I. Where I have used a Chipewyan word as a place name i t i s a real word but i s not necessarily appropriate to the location (e.g. discha means a river flowing into a lake). Personal and family names are used systematically once given i n the text but were chosen according to no conscious relationship with living persons though some f i r s t names are taken from the Beatles. The orthography of a l l Chipewyan words i s only an approximation. There are too many persons to whom I owe thanks for me to name a l l of them in this work. The National Museum of Man funded the project and Simon Fraser University's President's Research Fund provided additional support. Special thanks go to the secretarial staff of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, especially Norma Bissell, Sylvia Hadwen and Janice MacLellan, for typing the manuscript. June Helm read the manuscript and offered many helpful suggestions as well as encouragement. Special thanks go to James Van Stone, whose advice about changes i n Chipewyan society I did not accept, and Ernest S. Burch J r . whose advice I also did not accept. I thank them for their help but the responsibility for error i s mine alone and I hereby present my neck for truncation. Above a l l thanks must go to my wife, children, andrayinformants for their endurance, tolerance, and assistance. August 1977

CHAPTER ONE BACKGROUND THE PEOPLE The Mission Chipewyan are part of that segment of the Chipewyan known to Westerners as "Caribou-Eaters". This term i s not used by them (The Chipewyan term, Et0en-eldili-dene given by Smith [1975:414] , i s translated at Mission as 'a caribou eating a man') but i t i s a convenient way to separate this particular segment of the linguistically defined tribe from those of the tribe descended from the people that expanded into the boreal forest during the contact period. Separation of the 'caribou-eaters' from the rest of the Chipewyan i s useful, even though the separation corresponds to no significant emic category, because the people i t designates are the most conservative of the Chipewyan. They remained i n their original homeland and continued the pursuit of the barren ground caribou. Their subsistence patterns were least affected by the fur trade and intensive contact with whites came as much as a century later. The conservatism of the Chipewyan of the Mission region has been fostered by two major factors: (1) their geographical location and (2) their aggressive­ ness. The area around and to the north of Mission was not a destination of any major trade routes and only a single trade route (from Wollaston Lake) passed through the area. The transitional zone of the boreal forest was, and i s , a rump area never under any effective administrative control. The Chipewyan value strength, endurance, and fighting ability i n men. The days of warfare are long gone and the myths t e l l of the brutal excesses of the Cree but one does not have to dig deeply to find the fascination with warfare and the counter myths of slaughter visited upon the Cree. Often, indeed, the Cree cerne to the slaughter like caribou i n the f a l l . Hearne's (1971:146-162) account of the 'Bloody Falls' massacre i s not one of a pacific people. His description of the preparation for the massacre; the Chipewyan preparing them­ selves and their weapons, drawing representations of supernatural power sources, i s a description of a familiar i f not disciplined activity. The passive, peace­ f u l , and indeed timid, nature attributed to the Chipewyan by much of our society i s erroneous. Aggressiveness, however, can take many forms. Denied warfare, i t surfaces i n ways less obvious to the outsider. It i s a military dictum that no terrain feature i s an obstacle unless i t i s defended. The Chipewyan know this well and defended their land by social means even as they invited strangers among them. The aggressiveness of the Chipewyan turned upon the white man who i s but an inhuman occupant of the land. An occupant to be used, mocked, and exploited; a dangerous but useful resource for the people. The effectiveness of their aggressiveness i s striking for the Chipewyan have prospered i n their exploitation of the white man. The land they occupy has doubled - perhaps tripled - since contact and their numbers have increased perhaps as much as five times. They have mingled with and displaced other enemies: the Cree to the south, other Athapaskans to the west; they have stopped their depredations upon the Eskimo but i t was by their choice, not the Inuit's. Ironically, Chipewyan aggressiveness i s often unrecognized though Koolage (1975:45-60) has chronicled i t s effect upon anthropologists and other observers. The aggressiveness of the Chipewyan often appears i n forms that 4

5 are regarded with contempt by the outsiders that observe, study, and deal with them. But as the hunter takes l i t t l e notice of the mud through which he passes to slay a caribou, the Chipewyan takes l i t t l e notice of the contempt of the white man as he manoeuvres to exploit him. The Chipewyan are, above a l l , hunters; and for the Caribou-Eater's the only proper occupation for a man i s the hunting of caribou. This commitment to caribou hunting i s the central feature of Chipewyan culture. A l l other activities depend upon the caribou hunt. Caribou were food, shelter, and cloth­ ing for the Chipewyan and when they had enough caribou a l l else was secondary. The commitment to caribou-hunting protected the Caribou-Eater from the changing world around them for the caribou are best hunted i n the transition zone of the boreal forest. The transition zone i s poor i n fur bearers and particularly those desired early i n the fur trade. Whites came there i n numbers only i n the Twentieth century and never established agricultural settlements. The Caribou-Eaters were exposed to them at a rate they could handle. Not until the recent period did the ties of the fur trade and EuroCanadian society challenge the hunting of caribou. As late as the 1970s some Caribou-Eater Chipewyan would u t i l i z e wage labor to gather cash resources to take their families among the caribou; long after there was any chance of economic gain from bush l i f e . Although they spoke of trapping, they trapped disinterestedly and only i f i t was not too wet, or cold, or hot, or dry, and then only when i t did not interfere with caribou hunting. The Chipewyan are not isolated primitives suited only for pictoral display in coffee table books or television specials. They are not innocent 'noble savages', survivors of a simpler day of man's history. The Chipewyan are a competent, complex, and subtle people living their lives as closely to the manner they choose as i s possible. What i s remarkable about them, in this day and age of large governments, i s the extent to which they have managed to retain their autonomy and cultural cohesion. Much of this autonomy i s derived from the unsuitability of their land for agriculture, the limited occurrence of gold, silver, or other precious metals, and the difficulty and cost of transportation. I t i s no discredit to the Chipewyan that their land has had l i t t l e attraction to the Euro-Canadian until recently. I t i s to be hoped that this pattern w i l l continue for the greatest danger to Chipewyan autonomy and successful functioning i s a well meaning but abysmally ignorant Canadian government seeking to draw them into the irrelevancies of a Southern Canadian l i f e style. THE LAND The home of the Mission Chipewyan i s harsh and unyielding but spectacular in i t s isolation and surprising i n i t s variety. The land i s scoured by the departure of the glaciers; writhing to the northeast i n mourning of their passage. Bare rock, sand, and water are so prevalent that the outsider i s soon astonished at the presence of anything else. Even greatly reduced i n i t s abundance by the loss of the musk ox, the grizzley bear and the diminution of other species, the land of the Chipewyan i s rich i n wildlife. Bear, moose, wolf, fox, beaver, caribou - a l l the major surviving post-Pleistocene sub-arctic fauna are present but they are like ghosts, they d r i f t unseen throughout the land, revealing themselves fleetingly and unexpectedly, vanishing i n a moment. The land i s pregnant with emptiness, waiting to explode with l i f e and engulf

6 the intruder. With the coming of the caribou the land f u l f i l l s i t s promise. They come quickly, announced by the song of the wolf and the raucous barrel r o l l s of the raven. The feel of the land changes. To the eye i t i s the same save the movement of the emptiness as the caribou pass but the feel i s different, the smell i s different, l i f e i s present. Only when the caribou are i n numbers does l i f e seem dominant i n this land. The land i s of three types, marked by the vegetation, the small l i f e , and the ground i t s e l f . To the south i s the boreal forest, dry with (relatively) few lakes and rocky limestone and granite outcrops; i t i s a hard land i n which to travel for the forest fires and creeks have created entensive patches of tangled growth and the snow l i e s deep and soft i n winter. At the north of Mission Lake the land undergoes a dramatic change and becomes rough with long jagged ridges. This i s the beginning of the transition zone of the boreal forest. Diminishing north-east the forest begins to open until the sheltered eskers at treeline hide the largest trees in the country, guardians of the tundra. From boreal forest to tundra i s but 160 miles by aircraft but this narrow belt is the homeland of the Chipewyan. The transition zone becomes increasingly parklike i n the direction of the tundra. The trees are more widely spaced on the sand eskers and the thick second growth i s less frequent. Signs of forest fires diminish and the lichen meadows increase i n size and frequency while more and more sand h i l l s are devoid of forest. The third area of Chipewyan land i s the tundra which springs rapidly upon the traveller as he approaches i t : one moment trees predominate, the next they are gone. Only willows remain on the lake shores and a few scraggly patches of spruce, sheltered i n r i f t s , appear as fleeting spots before the eye. The tundra the Mission Chipewyan use i s high rock desert. I t i s crossed every few hundred yards by small ridges that l i e perpendicular to any direction of travel. High sand eskers every six to twelve miles dominate the horizon. By feel this i s a fresh water sea crosshatched by a frozen and fragile net of land clinging precariously against the inevitable thaw. Even to the end of the nineteenth century the Chipewyan roamed the tundra at w i l l but now they have withdrawn from a l l but i t s fringes. The forest, and the security of firewood, have conquered as the Chipewyan need to pursue the caribou diminished. The repeating r i f l e alleviated the need for the tundra fences, pounds, and other hunting methods of the old days as canvas removed the need for suirmer hides for tents. More skilled pens than mine have failed to describe this land, I shall not succeed where they have failed. I have learned that this land i s either hell or as close to paradise as any place may be. The difference i s i n the values of the beholder. The Chipewyan love the land; i t i s their home. A l l who do not share their love w i l l find i n this place h e l l . THE ECOLOGICAL BASIS OF CHIPEWYAN SOCIAL ORGANIZATION The subsistence activities of the Chipewyan are the underpinning of their social system. This i s not to say that the technology or methods used by the Chipewyan determine the form of their social organization; rather technologies and methodologies, as creations of adoptions, find acceptance i n accordance with

7 the symbolic and social systems of the culture. Among the many choices or options that are constantly presented to cultural systems - either from internal or external sources - must be included technological and methodological systems. Subsistence activities are basic because certain decisions or choices are made about subsistence, for the ideological, symbolic, or technological reasons, and around these decisions the cultural system i s structured. This i s not to advocate a simplistic interpretation i n which a single level i s given sole responsibility as a casual factor. There i s a complex interaction between these 'systems' as well as others. Our view (and Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer, [1940] i s an obvious model for our view) i s that the environment in which the Chipewyan live constrains their options as well as presenting partic­ ularly obvious choices. Within the range of possibilities the Chipewyan have made some basic choices about their subsistence and the cultural system then works to implement these choices. This i s not a historical statement about the origin of Chipewyan culture but a metaphor about i t s operation. Nevertheless i t underlies this analysis and should be explicitly stated. The central feature of Chipewyan culture i s i t s decision to pursue caribou as a primary means of subsistence. This decision, which i s ultimately moral and symbolic, i s reinforced by behaviour and practice throughout the cultural system and i s the primary factor that kept the Caribou-Eater from a l l expanding into the boreal forest during the fur trade period as well as underlying their adjustment to the rest of Canadian society. Caribou are nearly ideal objects of prey for the human hunter; this single species i s capable of supplying a l l the Chipewyan nutritional needs at an adequate level and most of their material needs. As a means of subsistence they present only two d i f f i c u l t i e s ; they are not continuously available and are unreliable i n their appearance at any given point of terrain. The Chipewyan solution to the former d i f f i c u l t y i s through the drying and freezing of caribou meat for those periods when live caribou are not available. The solution to the latter problem l i e s in the pattern of distribution of social groups and the reciprocity network provided by the kinship system. A crucial Chipewyan cultural practice i s the use of a fixed point as a base location. At a l l times the Chipewyan are centered icon a point of terrain that serves as base camp. 1 Even when the Chipewyan are travelling this can be seen to be the case i f we recognize that the point i t s e l f i s moving. This does not contradict Chang's (1962:28-41) statement that northern settlements are grouped around persons rather than "locations per se" but simply reflects the fact that persons must be located at geographical positions at a l l times. This i s not surprising in view of the structuring ability of reciprocity and the sexual division of labor i n Chipewyan society but i t i s nonetheless significant as i t means a l l subsistence activities are geared to the bringing of subsistence material to a central point (moving the social group to the subsistence material does not change our analysis) for processing, utilization, and redistribution. This pattern of u t i l i z i n g a location as a central point for a base, a social base as i t were, means that each social group w i l l occupy a definite range within which i t seeks i t s subsistence. This range of utilization i s primarily bounded by the duration and d i f f i c u l t y of travel to and from the base point. The amount of terrain used and the distances travelled depend upon the purpose of the travel (e.g. game pursued), the time of year, the climatic conditions, etc. For each social group in each set of circumstances there i s a limit to the amount of travel that w i l l be undertaken before the subunits of the social 2

8 groups separate to join other social groups, establish new ones, or the social group i t s e l f relocates to avoid unnecessary travel. Utilization of a base point for a camp results i n a system of social groups, each with i t s limited area of utilization, distributed throughout the CaribouEater territory. Here the unreliability of the caribou becomes a c r i t i c a l factor for the cultural system. Barren-ground caribou are not only nomadic, covering great distances north and south each year, but they vary their routes from season to season. Certain features of the migration are relatively constant, such as the time of arrival at treeline i n the f a l l or the arrival at the calving grounds i n the spring, but the caribou cannot be relied upon to arrive at any single geographical point at a specific point i n time. The migration of the caribou and the Chipewyan strategy of exploitation conform to an elementary pattern. In any given area, there i s a certain probability of appearance of caribou during any given time period. If we take this area to be that which a single hunting unit can exploit, i n terms of the restrictions on travel discussed above, then we can see that the probability w i l l be low. Even in those areas that are most productive the probability w i l l be well below 100%. As the area of analysis decreases i n size below the area a hunting unit can exploit the probability of caribou appearing within i t declines. If we consider time as a factor, then the shorter the available time the lower the probability of caribou appearing. There w i l l be certain times, like certain locations, that w i l l be more favourable than others but the probability of caribou appearing w i l l be too low to be safe even at the best places i n the best times. However, as the area of analysis increases either i n size or duration the probability of appearance of caribou i s sufficiently close to 100% for the cultural system to operate with the certainty of caribou appearing. This i s precisely the solution that Chipewyan culture has adopted to the problem of caribou unreliability i n a low density caribou situation and i t has solved the problem through the pattern of distribution of social groups coupled with the kinship based system of receiprocal rights and obligations. 3

Chipewyan social groups are distributed i n a pattern of simultaneous concentration and dispersal. Some form aggregations of hunting units i n areas that are perceived as good places for caribou appearance while other hunting units, independently or i n small multiples, disperse into other areas which they perceive as good locations for caribou. The probability of the caribou appearing at a chosen location i s i n actuality but one among many (most of which are internal to the cultural system as for example ambition, sentiment, famil­ i a r i t y , kinship ties). However, the cultural system appears to operate as i f the appearance of the caribou was the only factor regulating Chipewyan movement. Each hunting unit i s capable of k i l l i n g caribou far i n excess of their immediate needs and this i s normal practice. The pattern of distribution of hunting units insures that there i s at least one social group i n front of any axis of advance of the caribou to support many more people than reside with them. These apparently excess caribou provide a reservoir of food for other Chipewyan groups that placed themselves i n locations where no caribou appeared. (This material i s also discussed i n Sharp 1977b and 1978). The distribution of Chipewyan social groups i n time and space serves as an effective strategy for the exploitation of the caribou and creates a reliable resource out of an unreliable one. However, for this distribution to work, the

9 Chipewyan social groups must have an effective mechanism for the distribution of the caribou. This mechanism i s provided by the kinship system discussed in later sections. The possibilities of structuring Chipewyan social groups are limited not only by the caribou and the remainder of the 'natural' environment but also by the Chipewyan choice of subsistence techniques. Chipewyan society must provide social groups able to function i n isolation (for the dispersal phase to work) as well as in large residential aggregations. Large aggregations are necessary for social, reproductive, linguistic, and other reasons but the large aggregations may not become permanent because of the Chipewyan preference to subsist upon caribou as well as certain conflicts internal to the kinship system that are discussed i n later chapters. This preference, and the unpredictable nature of the caribou migrations, forces the dispersal phase of the system into existence. Chipewyan society must provide mechanisms that allow social groups to con­ centrate and disperse with a minimum of ambiguity and conflict. To an outsider i t seems that the most reasonable way to accomplish this task would be through a lineal kinship system (probably patrilineal) with shallow lineages. This would allow single discrete groups to merge i n situations of high population density without losing their discreetness and a degree of p o l i t i c a l centrali­ zation that would seem useful for a culture sandwiched between hostile neigh­ bours. Alas, simplicity to the mind of the ethnologist i s not a casual factor i n the social systems men create for themselves. The Chipewyan solved the problem of the concentration and dispersal of social groups by other means. There i s no evidence indicating they ever relied upon lineal kinship to solve this problem.

CHAPTER TWO THE KINSHIP SYSTEM

THE TERMINOLOGICAL SYSTEM Chipewyan social l i f e , during the period of fieldwork, i s dominated by the dicotomy between traditional bush l i f e and the newer village l i f e based upon wage labor and welfare. Bush l i f e has rapidly lost significance in the past twenty years. The new village l i f e has resulted i n major changes in residence patterns, subsistence, and inter-group dynamics as well as forcing a l l the Chipewyan, except the very young, to make major pyschological adjustments. The kinship system is becoming less obvious as the use of personal names and the English language increases. The kinship system of the Mission Chipewyan i s bilateral. Persons are placed into appropriate categories by the principles of genealogical position or relative age. This current system i s a synthesis of structural elements and practices whose origin can only be understood i n relation to neighboring Chipewyan communities and the unique history of the Mission people. Unfortunately the requisite information for such an analysis i s not available and there i s l i t t l e i n dication that i t w i l l become available. Therefore, this analysis i s prepared from a perspective that does not extend beyond the Mission Chipewyan and which addresses the operation of the system rather than i t s origin. Recent population movements (post 1930) have brought differences in kinship usage as well as i n speech, myth, technology, and social practice. Sharp (1975a) has argued that many of these differences i n kinship usage have their origin in different kinship terms and practices i n the home comnunities of the immigrants. Carter (Ms:14-15) has argued that these differences are not accurate reflections of the practices i n the communities of origin of the immigrants. In light of the great degree of variation within the Mission œmrrrunity, i t would be naive to view their existence as being solely the result of immigration. The causes for these variations, and their maintenance within the Mission population, are beyond the scope of this work. Therefore, this analysis i s restricted to the most conservative group of Mission Chipewyan, the yonthehotina which are predominately of the original dialect (Sharp 1975a:72-73; 1975b:33-34), and who show the greatest consistency of practice. The terminology of the Mission Chipewyan (Figure 1) contains few unusual features (for a discussion of the terminology see Sharp 1973:165-209). A purely formal analysis of the terminology reveals relatively l i t t l e but a number of significant features of the actual system are not apparent because of the variations i n the means of categorization that cannot be seen i n the terms. It may be noted here that this version of the terminology includes the extension of seta to cousins through the second ascending generation as terms of reference as well as by relative age as both a term of address and a term of reference. The means of classifying individuals into the categories delineated by the kinship terminology are a function of two distinct and antithetical principles.

10

11 Figure 1 Chipewyan Kinship Terminolcgy MM, FM, any old woman

1.

Setsuna

2.

Setseia

3.

Sunaras

SS, DS, ZSS, ZDS, BSS, BDS, HBSS, HBDS, HZSS, WBSS, WBDS, WZSS, WZDS, HZDS

Sunaras (w.s.)

DH

MF, FF, any old man

4. Saraze

SD, DD, BSD, BDD, ZSD, ZDD, HBSD, HBZD, HZSD, HZDD, WBSD, WBDD, WZSD, WZDD, SW

5. Saze

BS, BD, ZS, ZD, HBS, HBD, HZS, HZD, WBS, WBD, WZD, WZS, Child of sela. Grandchild i f sex of grandchild i s irrelevant.

Saze

(m.s.)

DH

6. Ena

M

7. Seta

F

8. Se'a

FB, MB, FZH, MZH, HF, WFB, WMB, HFB, HMB.

9. Sankie

FZ, MZ, MBW, FBW, WFZ, WMZ, HMZ, stepiother

10.

Sunnara

eB

11.

Sechela

yB

12.

Sari

eZ

13.

Sedeze

yZ

14.

Sela

FBS, FBD, FZS, FZD, MBS, MBD, MZS, MZD, FFBCC* MMBCC, MMZCC, FMBCC. FMZCC, MFBCC, MFZCC. cousin's spouse.

Se la

(w. s.)

girlfriend

15.

Se lea

D

16.

Seyaze

S

17.

Setsu

(m.s.)

WM, WZ, WBW, BW

Setsu

(w.s.)

HM

Seri

(m.s.)

WB, WZH, ZH, ZHB

Seri

(w.s.)

HZ, BW, HBW, ZHZ

18. 19.

Setchi

(w.s.)

Zh, HB

20.

Sesankwi **

W

21.

Senekwi

**

H

22.

Selotina

1. Person from Mission 2. One of my cousins 3. Cousin by marriage

23.

Sethuna

Stepfather

* C = child ** Terms of reference only

12 These principles, structural position (i.e. birth ordered or genealogical posi­ tion [Needham 1966]) and relative age (i.e. placing a person on the basis of the age difference between two people) are applied i n different circumstances and to persons of differing structural distance from ego. Structural position, which requires a known genealogical link, i s applied to a l l persons within the "family". This narrow range of relatives i s fixed by birth or marriage and imbalances of age must be tolerated. Within the kindreds certain categories of relations may be shifted up or down one generation i n or­ der to produce a correspondence between the chronological ages of two individuals and the kinship terms they apply to each other. Category shifting by relative age within a kindred i s most easily accom­ Such a shift i s not plished with affines (e.g. FBW, sankie converted to sela). always adopted by other persons within the kindred. A structural connection i s socio-centric i n nature, the content of the category i s fixed by the group and i t i s applied to specific cases. When a disparity i n age exists between two individuals and the age difference i s i n conflict with Chipewyan ideas about the age differences between categories, one, or both, may shift the category applied to correct the disparity. This i s fundamentally an egocentric situation (i.e. working from a specific relationship to a social statement) and i s not neces­ sarily recognized by the person shifted or their mutual relatives (e.g. ego calls FBW sela instead of sankie, above, but FBW continues to c a l l WBS saze i n ­ stead of shifting him to sela). The Chipewyan at Mission do not value a wide genealogical knowledge. Few people have real knowledge of their genealogical ties to persons beyond their kindreds. As genealogical knowledge decreases with structural distance from ego, relative age becomes increasingly important as a means of classifying individuals into kin categories. This i s true vertically (i.e. ascending and descending generations) and laterally (i.e. within a generation). Relative age can be used, beyond the limits of known genealogical connection to f i t any Chipewyan within the region into a kinship category but this i s not normal practice except when both parties are out of the Mission area, (term 22) "The general rule i s that the inculsion of two relatives i n the same terminological category implies that there i s some significant similarity i n the customary behaviour due to both of them, or i n the social relation i n which one stands to each of them, while inversely the placing of two relatives in different categories implies some significant difference i n Customary behaviour or social relations" (Radcliffe-Brown 1976:9). Radcliffe-Brown's rather basic argument i s applicable to the Chipewyan but, since the categories are broad and the means of placing of individuals within the categories varies, the meaning of the categorization can only be understood i n light of the means of categorization. This point illustrates that the Chipewyan kinship categories are exceptionally flexible i n their content and provide a structure with a minimum constraint upon Chipewyan practice. A l l kinship units are b u i l t in terms of the structure but there i s ample opportunity to shift to different categories within the structure to compensate for demographic, sentimental, or other irregularities. The conflicting operation of these principles i s illustrated through an example of an actual use of relative age to shift an entire line of descent. Figure 2 shows the salient persons i n three lines of descent and the application of kinship terms on the basis of genealogical position and relative age from

13

Figure 2

A shift of Category by relative age B

A

C

81

III

85 Se'a Setseia

Se'a

II

52 Sela Sela

I

26 Saze Sela

71

46

57

Sela Sankie

Ego1

21 Saze Sela

(Se'a(Sankie) .56

26

26

25'

24

(Setsuna) Setsuna

22,

(Saze) (Saze) (Sela) (Sela)

22

2

[2][2]

Ego 2

As of April 1975 Not all persons shown

Saze

kin term by Genaeological Position

(Saze) kin term by Relative Age

14 the standpoint of two ego's. The offspring of the three marriages i n generation III are separate but structurally equivalent lines of descent. In marriage C both partners were quite advanced i n age when they married (the female had several previous marriages and several illegitimate children that are not shown i n Figure 2) and they began producing children many years after marriages A and B even though the ages of a l l the individuals i n generation III were reasonably close. Marriages A and B began to produce children about the same time and continued to have children for about the same period. These children, generation II-most of which are not shown-produced a third generation (generation I ) . In the lines of descent through A and B the kinship categories are applied between the off­ spring of A and B by genealogical position. Generation II of A and B are sela to each other. Their children are saze (to generation II speakers). Generation I, A and B, stand as sela to each other and are potential spouses. In other words, line of descent A and B correspond perfectly to ideal Chipewyan practice for both ego 1 and ego 2. Because of the lateness of marriage C, the children i n line C (generation II) are i n conflict between the relative age difference between them and ego 1 and their genealogical relationship to ego 1. As a result of this age difference ego 1 (generation II) shifts the children of marriage C to generation I. This makes them correspond by generation to the generation of ego l ' s own children. Ego 2 adopts this shift by using (generation II) sela instead of se 'a (i.e. they are cousins instead of niece/nephew to aunt and uncle). The second generation of C i s shifted to the third generation. Generation II of B (ego 1) calls the children of marriage C saze instead of sela. This i s accepted by the children of C, generation II, who c a l l ego 1 se 'a instead of sela. Although relative age overrides genealogical position in generations II and I i t i s not completely successful i n generation III. The husband of marriage C remains se 'a (uncle) to ego 1 but the wife of marriage C becomes setsuna instead of sankie. She i s shifted a generation above her husband to conform with her advanced age and the secondary usage of setsuna (term 1, Figure 1) to mean "any old woman". She, being an affine, a member of the maximal kindred but not the "minimal kindred" may be shifted; her husband, member of a "minimal kindred" (of ego 1) may not be shifted by relative age. The importance of relative age differences i n Chipewyan society extends beyond classifying people into kinship categories. The Chipewyan are sensitive to sexual activity that crosses generation lines and generally comment upon i t with sarcastic humor. Marriage across generation lines i s mildly incestuous. When i t occurs i t i s greeted with reactions ranging from pity or humour to sorcery. These reactions, generally mocking i n nature, rarely proceed beyond the sanction of gossip but there i s always the possibility of sorcery. Sexual behaviour, and to a lesser extent marriage, across generation lines i s frequent because of the problematical nature of a generation i n Chipewyan society. The use of relative age in kinship classification i s , as indicated, ego­ centric i n nature as i t always works from a specific case to a general social statement. Relative age i s incapable of overriding genealogical position i n a l l cases of kinship categorization (i.e. the tendency to use known genealogical position). Since each incident of marriage and/or sexual activity i s viewed from the egocentric position of each observer within the society, some persons w i l l use the genealogical relationship between the two people as a means of categorization. Other observers w i l l use relative age between themselves and one or both of the two parties. S t i l l others w i l l use one means of categorization, say

15 relative age, for one person and the other means of categorization, genealogical position, for the other party. S t i l l other persons w i l l use relative age bet­ ween the two parties. Any single interaction between two persons may thus be viewed by third per­ son i n terms of: (1) the distance between the two parties by (a) relative age, (b) genealogical position, or (c) some combination. (2) The distance between the two parties through another person(s) (either themself or someone else) by (a) relative age, (b) genealogical distance, or (c) some combination. As a result of each observers differing relationships to the two parties involved and the different means of classifying kin, virtually no two observers w i l l view any sexual or marriage relationship i n the same perspective. I t i s not pushing too far to say that from some observer's perspective any marriage or sexual relationship i s incestuous. This already complex situation, with i t s endless possibilities for minor strife and outrage, i s further confused by the absence of coherent rules defining a generation. Either relative age or genealogical position can provide a clear definition of a generation, even i n a cognatic society, but their combined use does not allow clear definition of a generation. Possible solutions provided by Canadian society, recorded birth dates, emphasis upon chronological ages, age grading i n school, etc., are not used by the Chipewyan Many people honestly do not know their exact chronological age, l e t along those of others. Canadian society has, at best, provided a set of conventional ages (such as 19, drinking age; 65, old age pension; etc.) by which the Chipewyan categorize themselves on certain occasions. In i t s widest extension the kinship terminology provides, i n one sense, a simple generational structure. Two generations ascending from ego are grandparents, 1 generation ascending from ego are parents, aunts, uncles, and mother-in-law. Ego's generation consists of siblings, cousins, and siblingsin-law; one generation descending consists of children and saze (which over­ laps with two generations descending). The second descending generation consists of saze, grandson and granddaughter. This loose interpretation of the kinship system cannot be pushed beyond grouping people as grandparents, parents-genera­ tion, own generation, and small children. It may clarify the structure some­ what when used i n this way but i t i s of l i t t l e help i n facing the day to day problems of p l a c i n g people by generation.

To confuse the s i t u a t i o n even more,

what constitutes a generation i s partly sex determined, at least as far as ego's generation i s concerned, but this may be a function of parents picking their children's spouses within the category saze. An examination of the treaty l i s t (1968) for Mission reveals an assymetry, by sex, of the ages of marriage partners. Of the 74 marriages recorded on that l i s t for which the ages of the spouses could be determined (e.g. excluding surviving spouses) but not separating f i r s t marriages from remarriages, the total age range was from +23 years to -8 years. (see Figure 3) . These figures indicate a clear disparity between what constitutes a generation since marriage across generations i s incestuous. The acceptable age range for males i s (-2) to (+15) years older than their wives (mean 6.06). Most marriages occur within the range of (+1) to (+10) years but we must conclude that the universe of potential spouses i s quite different for males and females, even for siblings of similar ages.

16 Figure 3 Relative Age Between Spouses Total Marriages = 74 Male Elder

= 65

Female Elder

= 7

Same Age

= 2

Range of Age Variations Male Elder by Number of Cases Greater than 20 years

2

16 - 20 years

1

11 - 15

years

7

6-10

years

26

1-5

years

29

0 years

2

-1 to -2 years

2

-2 to -5 years

3

Even though these figures are unquestionably affected by the tendency of women to marry older men, second marriages (most of the extreme variations), and the unexplained (less than 3%-2/74) lack of marriage between persons of the same age, the assymetry i s s t i l l there. Unless the Chipewyan disregard their own rule against cross generational sexual behaviour and marriage we must conclude that a generation i s defined i n terms of each ego and depends upon ego's sex. The importance placed upon relative age as a method of ranking and class­ ification surfaces i n several other areas of the kinship system. With a few significant exceptions a l l kinship terms imply either an age ranking or generational seniority. We have indicated that the terminology can be regarded loosely as generational (excluding small children who are a l l lumped together as saze). Within ego's generation age ranking takes on a different form. Age ranking by birth order i s a function of genealogical closeness while genealog­ i c a l distance excludes age ranking. Ego's siblings are ranked by birth order relative to ego and a l l elder siblings are authoritatively superior to ego though the nature of their superiority i s a function of the sex, physical, and personality characteristics of the two siblings. Ego' closest relatives, his siblings, are ranked by birth order but ego's cousins (sela) and siblings-in-law (serij m.s.; seri, w.s.; setchi, w.s.) are not ranked by birth order.

17 Age ranking o f s i b l i n g s by b i r t h order, p a r t i c u l a r l y male s i b l i n g s , i s c r u c i a l to the operation o f the Chipewyan s o c i a l system as i t provides the s t r u c t u r a l b a s i s f o r the s p l i t t i n g o f the s i b l i n g group and the separation o f brothers. During childhood, e s p e c i a l l y i n l a r g e f a m i l i e s w i t h a considerable d i s p a r i t y between the ages o f the f i r s t and l a s t born c h i l d , b i r t h order tends (through the i n d i v i d u a l growth process) t o correspond t o d i f f e r e n c e s i n p h y s i c a l strength. For most o f any ego's childhood h i s e l d e r s i b l i n g s a r e l a r g e r and stronger than him (regardless o f t h e i r sex). Chipewyan a d u l t s pay scant a t t e n t i o n t o a c h i l d a f t e r the age o f two years (unless the tantsia o r l a s t born o f a family) l e a v i n g i t t o be r a i s e d by i t s s i b l i n g s . P h y s i c a l strength o f e l d e r s i b l i n g s n e a t l y matches t h e i r r o l e as person(s) responsible f o r ego, thus strength corresponds t o the patterns o f a u t h o r i t y among s i b l i n g s g i v i n g a r e a l f o r c e t o back t h e i r authority i n their r o l e . Chipewyan s o c i e t y i s e g a l i t a r i a n and e g a l i t a r i a n i s m o f t e n reduces t o a s i t u a t i o n i n which ego's ' r i g h t s ' a r e whatever he can get away w i t h ( i . e . g e t the r e s t o f h i s f a m i l y t o accept). The weapons o f the e l d e r s i b l i n g are a u t h o r i t y and strength; the weapons o f the younger s i b l i n g s are aggravating impotence (usually c r y i n g o r whining). Both categories r e l y upon t h e i r weapons t o i n v o l v e t h e i r superiors (parents) on t h e i r s i d e when they a r e unable t o s o r t things out f o r themselves. Recourse t o t h e i r parents, p a r t i c u l a r l y the f a t h e r i n t h e case o f male s i b l i n g s , i s s i g n i f i c a n t as the f a t h e r remains the only person who i s able t o dampen the c o n f l i c t between male s i b l i n g s as they become s o c i a l l y mature. Once a male c h i l d reaches the age a t which he i s able t o f u n c t i o n as an a d u l t i n economic matters there i s an i n c r e a s i n g tendency t o counter the a u t h o r i t a t i v e p o s i t i o n o f an e l d e r brother w i t h a s s e r t i o n s o f e g a l i t a r i a n independence. A f a t h e r i s able t o soften the c o n f l i c t between h i s sons through h i s moral a u t h o r i t y and prevent a cleavage w i t h i n h i s f a m i l y as long as he i s a c t i v e enough t o l e a d i t . Once he i s dead o r i n c a p a c i t a t e d there i s no superior a u t h o r i t y able t o perform t h i s f u n c t i o n . The Chipewyan unquestionably have stronger sentimental t i e s towards t h e i r mother but males respect the a u t h o r i t y o f t h e i r f a t h e r . Few women are able t o prevent c o n f l i c t and cleavage between t h e i r sons once t h e i r husband i s gone. Age ranking among the Chipewyan i s s i g n i f i c a n t by i t s absence from the cousin and in-law terms. These terms a r e not a u t h o r i t a t i v e l y unequal and provide s t r u c t u r e d r e l a t i o n s h i p s between equals. The Chipewyan seek f r i e n d s i n a c t i v i t i e s beyond the immediate family from w i t h i n these two t e r m i n o l o g i c a l categories. F o r the Chipewyan male, cousins are the people w i t h whom he plays w h i l e he i s growing up. Cousins become l e s s important a f t e r marriage when brothers-in-law become the partners o f choice f o r the more serious a c t i v i t i e s beyond the immediate family. Brother-in-law (seri m.s.) i s a c l o s e r and stronger r e l a t i o n s h i p than the sela r e l a t i o n s h i p though both r e l a t i o n s h i p s g e n e r a l l y involve a choice between a number o f i n d i v i d u a l s w i t h i n the categories. OTHER TERMINOLOGICAL FEATURES The M i s s i o n Chipewyan terminology has a number o f features t h a t appear unusual f o r Northern Athapaskans, a t l e a s t i n the use t o which they are put i f not i n t h e i r form. One o f these features i s the equation o f setsu (m.s.) w i t h wife's s i s t e r and wife's mother. This f e a t u r e , i f f o r no other reason than i t s c r o s s generational grouping, i n d i c a t e s a s t r a i n e d category o f sexual ambiguity among the Chipewyan. More s i g n i f i c a n t f o r our concern here i s the establishment o f simultaneous in-law t i e s i n two generations w i t h the c o n t r a c t i o n o f each marriage. (Figure 4 ) .

18

Figure 4

Chipewyan Affinal terminology Setchi (w. s.) Seri (m.s) Setchi (w.s.) Setsu (m.s) Seri (w.s.) Setsu (m.s.) Setchi (w.s.) Setsu (m.s.)

Setsu(m.s.)

Seri (w.s.) Seri(m.s.) Setchi (w.s.)

Whenever a marriage i s contracted the spouses become in-laws to their partners siblings. The married couples parents become siblings-in-law to each other. The following relationships are established: (1) seri: like sex to like sex in-law relationship. The term i s specific by the sex of the speaker and i s applicable to the siblings of the spouse that are the same sex as the speaker. In the parents generation i t does not appear to be extended beyond the spouse's parents. (2) the setchi (w.s.) relationship i s established between the female spouse and her husband's brothers, between her husband's sisters and her brothers, and between her mother and husband's father. The (3) setsu (m.s.) relationship i s established between the husband and the wife's sisters and their mother; between the wife and her mother-in-law; and between the husband's fattier and the wife's mother. The seri relationship i s one of closeness, trust, and cooperation between equals while the setchi and setsu relationships are more fraught with uncertainty. Both have sexual ambiguity as part of their nature partly because persons i n these two categories have the greatest opportunity for undetected infidelity since there i s great freedom of movement inherent i n these relationships which gives the persons opportunity. Sexual intercourse with the wife's mother i s serious but intercourse i n the other categories i s not very serious. There i s the expectation that affection for the injured party - who i s a sibling - w i l l prevent the revealing of that action. Oppor­ tunity seems to be a major factor in Chipewyan sexual matters and copulation within the categories setchi and setsu does not appear to be too infrequent. The Chipewyan in-law terminology can be extended and i s subject to manipula­ tion of various kinds. At the widest extension, any relative by marriage to one ego's affines (within ego's generation) i s sela to ego. The principle of extension

19 permits a relationship but does not make i t mandatory. By the same token, any affine (ego's generation) i s sela but can be seri (setchi or setsu). Seri can be extended to include the spouses of affines but this usage i s less frequent. In the normal course of events the seri (setchi, setsu) relationship i s extended to those persons one approves of or i s friends with. If an affinal link exists to affines one disapproves of or dislikes, i t i s disextended to sela; affines that are disapproved of or disliked, can be dropped as relatives. These extensions (or disextensions) of categories are not rigid or necessarily per­ manent. The categorization of an individual into a closer or more distant category may depend upon as l i t t l e as whether one i s seeking a small loan or trying to discourage one. THE KINDREDS The Chipewyan kinship system i s the structural basis of a number of groups within the society, several of which are kindreds. The existence of these groups among the Chipewyan has been described by Smith (1976:22; Ms:25-26) for the Brochet Chipewyan. The form of the kindreds between Mission and Brochet seems roughly consistent even though there are differences in nomenclature. The two kindreds, e'thabedella (Smith reports enthagabedele from Brochet) and sello tina are minimal and inaximal kindreds respectively at Brochet but the structure at Mission i s somewhat more complex. The basal unit at Mission i s the siskenna which i s translated as family ("all the family, no cousins", "same blood"). This group consists of the nuclear family of procreation and comes into existence only with the production of children. Informants are inconsistent as to whether or not the spouse belongs within siskenna, but i t clearly refers to the children of a marriage. This term can be extended to siskenna biskenna (my family i t s family) to arrive at the e'thabedella, Smith's minimal kindred. There exists at Mission an intervening group between siskenna and e'thabedella that i s not reported by Smith and Brochet. The e'thadella (interpreted as " a l l the family, no cousins" or "same blood") i s somewhat ambiguous i n structure but appears to consist of the nuclear family of ego's birth, the nuclear family of ego's spouses' birth plus their children plus grandparents. This structure specifically excludes the spouses of parents' siblings, grandparents' siblings, and their descendents. The next larger structure, e'thabedella, interpreted "they a l l have the same blood" includes "very close cousins" and i s a true kindred as i t includes collateral lines of descent by adding the spouses excluded in ego's parents generation in the e'thadella and their offspring but s t i l l excluding the siblings of the second ascending generation and their offspring. Obviously the Chipewyan conceptualization of "blood ties" differs from our own. This group represents that collection of relatives from whom one may reasonably expect assistance and to whom one f i r s t turns when venturing beyond the confines of the immediate family (siskenna or e'thadella) . As with any kindred, the e'thabedella i s egocentric and i s not a corporate group. I t i s not possible to make any state­ ment about residence beyond the tendency for most of i t to be within a single regional band. This group does have the feature of including only persons of known genealogical position as well as excluding some persons of known geneal­ ogical position.

20 The maximal kindred, sellotina, includes persons of known as well as un­ known genealogical position and definitely extends beyond the regional band. The term sellotina i s also used i n the sense of "a person from Mission", i n opposition to a person from somewhere else, when the speaker i s someplace other than Mission. The two senses, though somewhat in variance, represent the max­ imum extension of kinship within the Mission Chipewyan kinship system and are, at least i n this sense, harmonious. In another analysis of the Chipewyan material Sharp (1973:255-59) argues that the kinship categories f a l l into three logical categories. Type I must be based on genealogical position, Type 2, which are of known genealogical position can be shifted by relative age, and Type 3, which are based solely upon relative age. Using these categories, Type I relatives are those found i n the siskenna and e'thadella while Type 2 relatives appear no closer than the e'thabedella. The sellotina includes a l l three types of relatives. The impreciseness of the Chipewyan kindreds i n terms of the informant's inability to consistently class relatives i s derived from a number of sources. The most obvious explanation for their d i f f i c u l t i e s i s the acculturative pres­ sures of Canadian civilization which may have blurred the aboriginal kinship categories, but there are other factors that seem to provide a more plausible explanation. Probably the most significant factor i s the difference i n percep­ tion of the kindreds by the anthropologist and the Indians. The Chipewyan do not see the kindreds as mutually exclusive categories. They advance the meta­ phors of a tree with i t s unfolding branches (you progress out [up] from the trunk just as the kindreds progress out from ego with the passage of time and an increasing number of descendants) or of a "folding into" each other as kin categories are added or removed. Although they use their egocentric kindreds as fixed structures, they prefer to think of them as branching, increasingly inclusive, structures flowing back and forth into each other. A more analytical, but perhaps less accurate, reason for the imprecision in categorizing members of the various structures derives from the nature of the functions the kindreds performed. The kindreds of the Chipewyan are not used to form residence or subsistence groups at the present time and i t i s un­ likely that they ever served such functions (with the exception of siskenna which i s not properly a kindred). The functions of the kindreds were threefold before the recent period. The kindreds: (1) defined the marriage universe, both positively and negatively, (2) provided ties to distant groups of Chipewyan, and (3) provided the basis of interaction in the large but temporary residential aggregations of Chipewyan society. The e'thabedella represents the minimum social group within which marriages are possible for the Chipewyan but a l l marriages within the e'thabedella must be f i r s t cousin marriages. Since the arrival of the Christian missionaries marriages within the e'thabedella have become increasingly infrequent but they are s t i l l proposed at the present time. The sellotina represents the maximal extension of the marriage universe under normal circumstances though in this sense i t i s not only ego's sellotina but also the sellotina of ego's close relatives that set the limits since Chipewyan marriages were generally arranged marriages. This feature of the kindreds, as well as the adaptive nature of the kindreds to large aggregations of Chipewyan, w i l l be discussed i n later sections. The role of the kindreds i n providing ties to distant groups of Chipewyan

21 i s f a i r l y straightforward. Certainly any ego away from home would find i t easier to stay with relatives than strangers. But the kindreds could also serve as a means of mobilizing large numbers of men for raiding or warfare after the pattern of the Iban Dyak. This role, however plausible i t may seem, i s not one that can be investigated on the basis of fieldwork among contemporary Chipewyan. THE HUNTING UNIT The kindreds i n Chipewyan society play a v i t a l role i n the marriage uni­ verse and i n maintaining contact between individuals at the widest possible level of integration but they are unable to meet the Chipewyan need for a cor­ porate group able to act as a unit i n the production, preparation, and d i s t r i ­ bution of subsistence items. These basic needs, as well as several others, are met by a restricted cognatic descent group here called the hunting unit (Sharp: 1973, 1977; Bone, Shannon, Raby:1973). As a restricted cognatic descent group the hunting unit draws membership from a wide range of potential members. Rights of membership i n a hunting unit are normally obtained i n one of four ways: (1) by birth, (2) by marriage into a hunting unit, (3) by founding a new hunting unit, and (4) by parenting a member of a hunting unit. A f i f t h means of ob­ taining rights of membership, adoption, i s discussed i n Appendix 2. The right of membership i s vested by birth i n a l l sons of a hunting unit and i t i s a right they retain throughout their lives. Men who have allowed their membership to lapse may return to their natal hunting unit and bring their families with them, though family must be interpreted here i n the sense of of household. This aspect of the rights of membership of the sons of a hunting unit was perhaps more significant prior to the modern period as the practice of bride-service required each son to move away from his natal hunting unit for a period of two years or more at the time of his marriage. The rights of women i n the hunting unit of her birth are identical to those of a man until the time of her marriage. With the contract of marriage the control over a woman i s transferred to her husband; i n English the Chipewyan say she i s "given" (Nayáti) to her husband. After this point the right to return to the natal hunting unit i s no longer absolute. If a marital separation occurs, whether justified or not, the g i r l ' s parents are entitled to refuse permission for her to remain. Vir­ tually no hunting unit w i l l refuse temporary residence to one of i t s daughters but i t can and does force i t s daughters to leave when i t becomes clear that they desire to remain on a permanent basis. Forcing a daughter i s sometimes as direct, i n the recent period, as beating her and/or physically throwing her out of the dwelling. This forces the g i r l to either return to her husband or seek other living arrangements. Since hunting units recruit bilaterally, they extend the right of member­ ship to married daughters (if they return with their families and husband) but the rights of membership are not expressed i n terms of the g i r l ' s right to re­ turn. Hunting units seek to recruit son's-in-law to membership, and are fre­ quently successful. I t i s the relationship between the recruited son-in-law and the males of the hunting unit, (especially the g i r l ' s father) that allows this recruitment. Although ultimately dependent upon the g i r l ' s birth into the

22 hunting unit (from an ethic perspective) the position and membership of the married couple i s conceived of i n terms of the daughter's husband. I t i s the seri (m.s.) relationship between males that allows the g i r l to return to the -hunting unit as her husband's wife, not her relationship as a daughter of the hunting unit. Trie right of membership i n a hunting unit i s also established by the pro­ cesses of parenting a female member of a hunting unit but this right i s a c t i ­ vated by residence only i n old age or when some factor(s), such as injury or illness, make an individual couple incapable of maintaining their own household. This i s , i n effect, the common Athapaskan practice of moving i n with a daughter in old age. Moving i n with a daughter does not necessarily require a change i n hunting unit membership as the son-in-law may already belong to her parents hunting unit. I t i s however an expression of social impotence which precludes a successful claim to hunting unit leadership and i s avoided as long as possible. The fourth method of gaining rights of membership i n a hunting unit, establishing a new one, i s simple. A married couple simply withdraw from the hunting unit i n which they have membership and seek social and physical isola­ tion from the hunting unit. Their success i n establishing a new hunting unit depends upon their capacity to become independent i n subsistence activities. This course of action i s somewhat risky and many men do not have the capacity or the desire to establish independent hunting units. The hunting unit i n many ways i s analogous to a shallow patrilineage and the analogy i s strengthened by the constant, but unstated, articulation of relationships around, and reference to, the founding male of the hunting unit. A hunting unit always has i t s origin i n a single known married couple and takes the male of the marriage as the founder. At the minimal level, a hunting unit can consist of a single nuclear family, a siskenna. Once the v i a b i l i t y of the hunting unit has been demonstrated by the success of the newly founded hunting unit i n withdrawing from the daily exchange of subsistence items i t takes the founding pair as i t s reference point. The children of the hunting unit grow up within i t s confines and take their social orientation from i t . As the male children reach the age at which they become able to participate as adults i n economic matters they establish outfits for themselves, (e.g. dogs, traps, r i f l e s , boats, etc.) but remain within the sphere of the hunting unit. The Chipewyan treat cash money and earned income in a manner very different from subsistence items. Cash i s an individually procured item and i s not systematically shared between persons as are subsis­ tence items. Unmarried men often have dominant positions i n a hunting unit i n terms of cash income but remain dependent of the hunting unit i n terms of food, shelter, cooking, sewing, and other services. There i s l i t t l e attempt to re­ dress the imbalance i n their position through the use of money. When male children of a hunting unit begin to marry and produce children potential points of fission surface although the fulfilment of these potentials is a function of the specific social situation within the hunting unit, especial­ ly the number of male children. Development of these splits i s based upon the birth ordered ranking of siblings discussed i n the previous section. Assertions of superior status by elder siblings are countered by assertions of egalitarian independence by younger siblings. The developing conflict between brothers can

23 destroy the hunting unit entirely by causing i t to s p l i t into a number of d i f ­ ferent hunting units or through the absorption of the siblings into other hunt­ ing units. The role of father i s c r i t i c a l to the continuance of hunting units as he alone i s able to dampen the conflict between male siblings. The development of splits within a hunting unit can best be illustrated through the use of an example. In 1969-70 the structure of the Burke's hunting unit was based upon a married pair, six of their children, and two adopted grandchildren (Figure 5). The persons underlined i n Figure 5 correspond to the description above and show the actual resident members of the hunting unit. Two of the members, 1 and 5, were absent for short periods i n the employ of a white wolf poisoner. This activity was supplemental to their trapping even though i t involved more time and effort than trapping and produced greater mon­ etary rewards. The 1969-70 bush season was harsh as adequate numbers of caribou did not appear within the region. The Burke's withdrew from the bush prior to Christmas and returned to Mission to spend the winter on welfare (rations). A l l of the hunting unit came into the village by aircraft except 1 and 5 who made the t r i p by dog team. This t r i p was beset by a number of d i f f i c u l t i e s (no r i f l e shells, no provisions, no dog food, wet snow) and the brothers spent Christmas on the t r a i l , tired and without food, tea, or sugar. This was the f i n a l straw for brother 1 who withdrew from bush l i f e entirely and sought employment at wage labour. The group that took to the bush i n 1970-71 was reduced by the loss of No. 1 and No. 6 (who had gotten married i n 1970) but was bolstered by the addition of a second son of No. 3 i n the Spring of 1971. The winter of 1970-71 was good for caribou and the family remained i n the bush until Christmas (July 28 - December 20 i n the bush) but did not return to the bush after Christmas. In 1971-72 the same group went to the bush. In 1972 No. 5 was forced to marry a g i r l against his wishes and when the hunting unit went into the bush he went without his wife. He refused to live with her until just before Christmas, at which point he took her from her father's hunting unit to his own by dog team. 1972 was a good year for caribou and white fox and the hunting unit returned to the bush after Christmas, though No. 3's wife was i n the hospital for awhile giving birth to another son. In 1973 while the hunting unit was i n the bush, Buck (the father) had a heart attack which was compounded by a lung disorder (apparently emphysema) and he had to be hospitalized. The hunting unit s p l i t at this point with most of i t returning to the village but son No. 3 moved to Dachen Lake for the rest of the trapping season and remained there until Christmas. In 1974 when the hunting unit went to the bush No. 3 attempted to assert leadership and succeeded i n having the hunting unit camp at Dachen Lake where they were joined there by his wife's mother and wife's brother. This created a tense situation as No. 3's attempts to control the group were resisted by No. 5 and by Buck. Buck was ineffective because of his i l l health. 1974 was an uncomfortable year as a result of the attempted synthesis of the two groups centering on No. 3 (Paul) and his wife (Figure 6). The attempt of No. 3 to create a new hunting unit under his control was

24

Figure 5

The Burkes Hunting Unit, 1 9 6 9 - 1 9 7 0

1

2

3.

(7)

H.U. members underlined

10

4

8.

5

9

6

7

25

Figure 6

Paul's attempted Synthesis

overlap and source of P a u l ' s attempted synthesis

Paul

(Adopted)

26 ultimately unsucœssful but at the time I arrived i n the f i e l d i n April, 1975, this was not yet clear. The Burke's desired to go into the bush for the summer, a desire shared by the Ethnographer, but the question was where. No. 3 wished to go to Baahen Lake, the location that was f i r s t mentioned to me by Buck i n August, 1974, though Buck and No. 5 wished to go further north to Magnificent Lake. Though the Ethnographer much prefers the Magnificent Lake area, he was trying to avoid making the decision. Ultimately, through No. 3's promise to No. 5 of guiding income at a fish camp and the reluctance of Buck and his wife to express their desires, No. 3 succeeded in having the hunting unit depart to Dachen Lake. The hunting unit arrived at Baahen Lake i n April. Buck, his wife and adopted grandchildren, No. 3's wife and children, No. 5's wife and children and the Ethnographer's wife and children arrived by charter aircraft on April 12, 1975. No. 3 and the Ethnographer departed Mission the following week by dog team and skidoo and arrived at Dachen Lake six days later. No. 5 and No. 3 insisted that this i s a two day skidoo trip during the winter (without anthropologists to watch over). No. 3 departed three days after No. 5 and the Ethnographer and arrived a day after us, making the t r i p by dog team. The f i r s t two weeks after our arrival were spent k i l l i n g caribou for the summer and cleaning up the debris of the f a l l trapping (picking up sets, trying to salvage fur i n the traps, etc.) after which they began to prepare for moving to the summer camp. The desire to move to high ground that caught the wind was prompted by a short stretch of hot April weather that brought out the mosquitoes and by the desire for a clean place to dry caribou meat. The move was made the f i r s t week i n May, at which point every family had dry meat to prepare. Buck and No. 5 moved f i r s t , followed by the Ethnographer the next day. No. 3 moved several days later. The summer location consisted of four tents set on a sand esker i n a location away from the trees and exposed to the wind. During the period at the winter camp there were indications of tension between No. 5 and No. 3 (see Appendix IV) . These tensions were observable i n the grumbling about the differential k i l l i n g of caribou that prompted the two to stop hunting together. A more significant example of the tensions was Paul's (No. 3) accusation of John's (No. 5) wife of stealing supplies (from his cabin) while he was gone the previous f a l l . The theft involved taking supplies from the cabin when she had adequate ones herself and neither replacing them or t e l l ing Paul so that they could be replaced before his return. This accusation was made (indirectly) i n gossip and known to everyone i n camp but John. The tensions reflected i n this accusation of theft, which was accepted by everyone i n the residence group, continued to grow during May, gaining credence as supplies ran short around break-up. The shortage of tobacco was particularly significant as smoking i s a visible activity that i s d i f f i c u l t to conceal. As supplies became low each family would openly distribute i t s "last" tobacco among the group. Much of the days gossip centered on how much tobacco remained in camp, who had i t , and how i t was distributed. Paul directed considerable gossip towards John's wife, accusing her of having tobacco hidden i n her suitcase 5 and smoking i t i n private. During this period some of his kin began to wonder just how passive a partner John was to his wife's alleged stinginess. Lack of tobacco i s a desperate situation, far worse than being out of ammunition, and i t took the Ethnographer a while to realize that the "last"

27 tobacco meant the last rolling tobacco but did not include the pipe tobacco, snuff, or "butts" which were parcelled out i n small quantities. By the time the ice became dangerous i n the third week of May the floorboards of three of the four cabins had been l i f t e d to search for butts that had rolled between the boards i n previous years. Serious contemplation was being given to making a journey to other camp locations, i n spite of the bad ice and snowless t r a i l s , where there were butts from previous years. Fortunately the lack of a function­ ing canoe prevented the attempt from being made. Buck soon ran completely out of tobacco and was given tobacco by both John and Paul but they did not share tobacco with each other. During this period Paul began to t e l l stories about John's wife's odd behavior on various occasions when John was absent from camp. He told how he observed John's wife watching him going about his activities and then depart­ ing her tent and entering the depression that she normally used as a t o i l e t . This depression was alongside the path to the boats and Paul's dogs and the excursions were timed so that Paul observed her urinating. This alleged be­ havior on her part was interpreted as a blatant come-on for sexual activity, mildly shocking i n i t s e l f but more so to a brother-in-law. Paul's feigned innocence ("why she wanna do that i n front of me") did l i t t l e to enhance John's wife's reputation i n camp and no one questioned Paul's veracity. It i s noteworthy that a l l of Paul's attempts to weaken his brother's posi­ tion up to this time (May 28) were directed towards John's wife rather than John. John married his wife at the direction of his father who was persuaded by the g i r l ' s father. Her father constantly came to Buck after drinking, urging the marriage. John had previously attempted a marriage that was blocked by his mother as "too close" and married the g i r l reluctantly. He humiliated her be­ fore the marriage by refusing beadwork she made for him and after the marriage by refusing to live with her for nearly a year. Needless to say, John's rela­ tions with his wife were less than cordial. She was intensely disliked by everyone but Buck and was l i t t l e concerned about anyone other than her children and her family of birth. Her weak position made Paul's attacks even more damaging as her lack of concern for the other hunting unit members and her ob­ servable "stinginess" put John i n the position of being responsible for her with­ out his being aware of the accusations and having no way to counter them. A second aspect of the attacks was to isolate Buck as he was the only defender she had i n the camp and the person responsible for her presence. Buck had forced the acquiesence of his wife, but not her agreement, to the marriage and Paul's gossip separated Buck from the support of his wife, which was marginal at the best of times. This jeopardized even further his already weakened position as leader (due to the heart attack and lung disorder). John was protected from the gossip by the hunting unit and not told of i t by his wife, for fear of punishment according to other informants. He knew something was going on but had l i t t l e information to act upon. He complained to his parents about Paul, worried to the Ethnographer about the work Paul would arrange at the fish camp i n June, and gave small amounts of tobacco to his relations, apparently unaware that Paul followed them with larger g i f t s . John and Paul continued their fight throughout the month of May without directly confronting each other. In addition to the gossip, the two began to withdraw the normal loans of equipment, services and supplies whose flow between persons and families i s the only observable marker of hunting unit

28 boundaries. The termination of this free exchange surfaced directly i n John's suspicions about the allocation of the wolf k i l l e d by Paul on May 7 and i n the competition i n bow making the week and a half around May 17. Paul and John began to compete openly i n their activities: trying to outdo each other at hunting, making things, and i n the distribution of bush products. This was evidenced by their separate hunting of caribou and the failure to distribute the meat to each other shortly after our arrival. On May 7, 1975, Paul and John saw a wolf and caribou on the lake and pursued i t on the Ethnogra­ pher's skidoo with only Paul taking a r i f l e and k i l l i n g the wolf. He gave this wolf to John even though he was the one to k i l l i t . Normal Chipewyan hunting practice i s to regard a l l the hunters as equal partners i n the k i l l . The k i l l i s distributed among them regardless of who k i l l s i t . This i s true only of persons who actually go into the bush together, not of persons who share a camp. In the case of non-divisible game, such as the wolf or bear, where division would ruin i t s value, the actual k i l l e r i s given the game with the understanding that the next one sighted belongs to the person (s) who did not make the last k i l l . Even i f they should miss the shot and i t i s k i l l e d by the person who k i l l e d the previous one, i t i s expected to go to the person who did not receive the last one. This particular wolf, a brown yearling, was badly torn by the r i f l e shell and had l i t t l e commercial value. The following day, May 8, another wolf was sighted and pursued by skidoo. Paul again k i l l e d this one (I believe John took his r i f l e along this time but did not note this i n my f i e l d material) and he kept i t . I t was a large male, nearly white, estimated to be worth nearly $200.00 by them. Paul offered the wolf to the Ethnographer (my interest i n wolves was well known to them and i t was my skidoo) who refused i t and ultimate­ ly gave i t to the tourist he guided for at the fish camp. He did not offer i t to John. On May 11, John expressed concern about Paul's actions, speculating that Paul knew that he would k i l l a better wolf so that i t was greed rather than generosity that prompted him to give John the f i r s t wolf. The deteriorating r e l a t i o n s h i p between Paul and John was v i s i b l e i n the

events around May 17 i n the building of toy bows for Ferd (Buck's eldest son's [George] eldest son) and Ferd (Paul's eldest son). The onset of warm spring weather exposes willows along the lakes and streams and brings flocks of "small birds" (Carter, 1974). These events are followed by a bloom of bows and arrows among the younger children who practice their marksmanship upon everything but Chipewyan adults. This spring both Ferd's sported bows by early May but they were of unequal sizes (the elder Ferd was five years older than the younger Ferd). Paul began to make larger bows for his son and John countered with larger bows for George's son. (Because of the confusion resulting from two Ferds, the younger Ferd became Gulaga, the Chipewyan pronunciation of his middle name). In a short time both boys had adult bows which they could not handle and reverted to previous bows. The tension derived from the bad relations between Paul and John was f e l t by everyone i n camp and intensified by the uncertain position of Buck. This was also the beginning of the crushing period of summer boredom for the men. When the caribou ceased to come the men had nothing to do but make work. On May 22, the ice opened widely enough along the edges of the lake to take the boat from the f i s h camp (a 16 f t . aluminum boat) out to fish the shallows for

29 jackfish (or shoot them with .22's). This activity, which served as a minor source of food, especially for the dogs, was practiced with a passion^ until the arrival of an aircraft on June 5. I t remained the one activity Paul and John could jointly participate i n but only when the Ethnographer was present. Some of the tension was relieved during the f i r s t part of June when a i r ­ craft arrived and alleviated the supply shortage. The fish camp's aircraft also brought i n a pair of tourists. They provided a few days wage labour for preparation of the camp and two weeks of guiding work for Paul, one of which was spent at Fish Lake i n Saskatchewan. Several events did occur i n June that set the stage for the f i n a l conflict between John and Paul. On June 12, 1975, Lee Us and his mother, Paul's wife's brother and wife's mother, arrived to spend part of the summer. Their presence weakened the ties between Paul's nuclear family and the other members of Buck's hunting unit. This was of some significance since the fisherman to whom Paul gave the wolf skin offered to finance a fish camp for him i n exchange for the construction of a cabin for his exclusive use. The speculation about this camp strengthened Paul's ideas about his success, (Paul i s a rather ambitious person i n terms of Chipewyan economic aspirations and fully perceived the advantages, i f not the d i f f i c u l t i e s , of running a fish camp instead of working for one) and the presence of an in-law who was joint heir to a $7,000.00 inheritance as well as a potential low cost employee had to effect his actions. 7

Another event, seemingly minor at the time, was the k i l l i n g of a moose (with Paul's gun) by the tourist during his stay at Dachen Lake. Paul only recovered the moosehide and refused to allow John the use of a boat and spare motor from the fish camp to recover the meat; he also apparently promised the next moosehide he k i l l e d to his sister. This 'promise' was not communicated through the camp and was unknown to Paul. On June 24, 1976, Paul returned to Dachen Lake. He had chartered a plane to Goldtown to purchase various alcoholic beverages for a weekend of drinking at Mission. As a result he arrived short of supplies, completely without milk for the baby, and nearly broke. He had spent the money paid for John's work preparing the fish camp and brought no supplies for his brother; not even the token g i f t of fishing tackle that John f e l t he urgently needed. John took this as evidence of his brother's greed and i l l - f e e l i n g towards him. His mood was further shattered that day as the Ethnographer went to discha for three hours to try and determine the fate of our delayed supplies. Upon his return John was dissatisfied with the distribution of the $40.00 worth of supplies purchased and this prompted a nasty argument between himself and his wife and sister. Disputes like this are a certain sign of serious stress in a camp. The climatic events that forced the fission of the hunting unit occurred on June 25. The Ethnographer arranged a t r i p to the river at the north end of Dachen Lake (in a 16 f t . sport canoe brought i n by aircraft in June) to determine i f some gasoline was s t i l l where i t had been l e f t during the i n i t i a l entry in April. After portaging the rapids and proceeding a mile or so we saw a cow and calf moose. Paul, who was working the 2 h.p. engine, stopped the motor, reached for his gun, and fired at the pair. John and the ethnog­ rapher (who was facing the rear of the canoe) watched. John was ready with his r i f l e but when Paul opened f i r e he did not shoot. He displayed this habit during the wolf k i l l s as well as caribou hunting in the spring. Paul k i l l e d the

30 cow but not the calf and the brief attempt to locate i t on shore failed. We returned to the cow, which lay i n an open water muskeg, and butchered i t . Only some choice parts of the moose were taken along with the hide as we had a f u l l canoe. 8

Once the canoe was loaded we departed. John and Paul became engaged i n a heated shouting match which included considerable swearing and some unpleasant references to John's wife. This argument was conducted i n Chipewyan and was followed by an explanation i n English (both Paul and John speak English) deliv­ ered i n a casual - and insulting even i f considerably less profane - manner by Paul while John remained silent. John did talk about i t at a later date. He had expressed his desire for the moose hide i n a f i t of dismay after Paul announced that i t was for his sister. John f e l t he had a right to i t , that he needed i t , and because Paul already had one i t was not his right to give i t to their sister who wanted i t for a decora­ tive jacket instead of functional gear. Paul told of his promise to give the next moose hide to obtained to his sister and both expressed dissatisfaction at the other's greed and insulted each other. After this John refused to help bring i n the meat - Lee and I ended up doing i t - and stated he was going to Magnificent Lake to stay for at least two years. As this t r i p was not practicable at the moment (Buck's freight canoe was not finished and the insects were very bad making travel hard on the children; i t was also hot, hitting 100°F indicated i n the sun the next day), John comforted himself with hunting moose on his own - he k i l l e d three i n the next two weeks - and preparing for the t r i p to Magnificent Lake which was plan­ ned for early July. 9

On July 2, John's wife was receiving assistance i n the preparation of a moosehide by Paul's mother-in-law. Her daughter saw her and asked her to stop; when she refused her daughter told Paul. He approached his mother-in-law and ordered her to stop working and not to help 'that woman' (John's wife) . The old lady was insulted by Paul's actions and complied even though she was reduced to tears. She was insulted and resented the loss of the opportunity to work on the hide as she became bored i f she had no work to occupy her. John ultimately gave her the moosehide as he shot a larger one a few days later. The next two weeks were d i f f i c u l t for the camp as Paul and John refused to speak to each other. John kept busy with his hunting while Paul went on picnics with the family or fishing with Lee. By mid-July John could stand the situation no longer and, being nearly out of supplies, departed for Magnificent Lake by canoe. He planned to go to the white wolf poisoner's camp at Damned Lake to obtain supplies to augment the caribou that were expected at Magnificent Lake. He was sufficiently disturbed to leave late i n the day of July 15 despite the daily anticipation of an aircraft to ferry him there and a northwest wind that made waves large enough to make travelling dangerous. He had no map and had never made the t r i p i n summer which caused his parents to fear for him. Subsequent to John's departure he and Paul had l i t t l e contact though Paul and I attempted to catch him on the 18th, 19th and 20th. after a plane had brought i n supplies. Contact was established by aircraft within a week and 10

11

31 John was given supplies. Paul and a brother-in-law (ZH) who had come for a v i s i t went to Magnificent Lake to hunt caribou but I cannot comment upon the relations there for lack of data. The events described above are the result of a growing independence of John and Paul with the illness of Buck being a crucial factor as this prompted Paul to attempt to gain leadership within the hunting unit rather than separat­ ing and founding a new hunting unit incorporating his brother-in-law.12 Once John moved, Buck was faced with two choices, either remain with Paul i n the face of his growing independence or move to Magnificent Lake with John, over whom he retained a much greater degree of control; he chose the latter.13 As we have stated, the hunting unit does not correspond to a named cate­ gory i n Chipewyan culture. Deterrnination of the boundaries of a hunting unit can only be made through the observation of the flow of labour, equipment, and subsistence products i n a bush environment. I t i s therefore significant that the f i r s t serious signs of trouble within the hunting unit involved the d i s t r i ­ bution of caribou k i l l e d during the spring and the allegations of theft - actu­ a l l y misuse - of supplies by John's wife. The i n i t i a l events were followed by increasing suspicion and further withdrawal from the normal exchange of services and goods. Even expected behaviour was greeted with suspicion. Paul and John had separated, i n terms of reciprocity, long before the final confrontation forced physical separation and even then the physical separation was delayed three weeks. This i s consonant with Honigmann's assessment of Northern Athapaskan personality (1975:553-559). RECIPROCITY, MAGIC, AND CONFLICT BETWEEN HUNTING UNITS AND KINDREDS In the l i f e cycle of a hunting unit separations between brothers, as de­ scribed above, are normal. These separations help keep the numbers of the hunt­ ing unit within a manageable size, something also aided by ecological pressures. More importantly they prevent the hunting unit from turning into a patrilineal descent group. Since only the father i s able to dampen the conflict between brothers, and then only while he i s active, each successive cleavage within a hunting unit orients the children of each generation to their own father rather than their grandfather. This i s augmented, as a source of orientation to the father, by the Chipewyan habit of not using the names of the dead within the family. The substitution of a kinship category for the name of deceased ances­ tors. Most of my informants whose grandfathers had died before the informant was old enough to know them were unable to identify their grandparents by either English or Chipewyan names. They simply did not know or care. In combination these factors always orient a hunting unit to a single male who i s the effective founder of the hunting unit. Living men who head hunting units may continue to think of i t i n terms of their father after his death, but no one junior to them does. The effect of this i s to make every hunting unit based upon a single founding male and appear no deeper than the living generations although in fact hunting units might continue for generations. In each passing generation a symbolic segmentation i s necessary but this seg­ mentation need not necessarily be accompanied by any physical separation of the social group. At the minimum the process requires only death, a generational

32 grandparent kinship terminology, the kinship structured authoritative ine­ quality between brothers, and an egalitarian culture. The l i f e cycle of a hunting unit, starting from an origin i n a nuclear family, involves growth until the children begin to marry at which point de­ fections occur to other hunting units. During this period the hunting unit tends to reduce to a single pair of brothers (or a brother and brother-in-law). With the death of the founding male, or his leaving the hunting unit to become a dependent i n a hunting unit containing a daughter, leadership passes to the next generation and the process i s repeated. At various points i n the l i f e cycle of a hunting unit i t may appear as: a single nuclear family, a pyramidal multi-generational family grouping, or a multi-generational truncated pyramid with two (or more) siblings or affines at the top of the pyramid. The description of the l i f e cycle of the hunting unit indicates that the hunting unit i s similar to a shallow patrilineal descent group with a loose preference for patrilocal residence but actively trying to recruit daughter's husbands. Implicit i n these features i s the potential for the formation of actual patrilineal descent groups - demographically i f not idealogically - and the dominance of Chipewyan society by a few successful hunting units which could develop into lineages and/or clans. That this has not happened i s a function of the particular environmental circumstances the Chipewyan find them­ selves i n , their commitment to caribou hunting, the cultural application of the strategy of simultaneous concentration and dispersal to obtain caribou, and idealogical factors. The Chipewyan system of magical power, which i s based upon unsought dream power, revealed by magical creatures or the use of purchased charms i n the ab­ sence of individual dream power, underlies a l l social interaction between adult males. Magical power expresses i t s e l f socially through success i n subsistence activities, competitive activities (e.g. gambling or the pursuit of women), or healing. Success at these activities i s the only proof of magical power. As the hunting unit i s a residence unit and a subsistence unit, i t i s bound toge­ ther by the success i t exhibits i n obtaining subsistence items from the bush. This, i n turn, i s a constant validation of the state of the magical power of the men within the hunting unit, particularly the most influential person i n the hunting unit. The potential growth of a hunting unit, since a l l members must be co­ resident, i s limited by i t s capacity to generate subsistence items within an area that can be easily traversed by hunting unit members. At some point the harvest of this area becomes incapable of meeting the demands and expectations of the members without excessive travel. Dissatisfaction sets i n and members ultimately leave the hunting unit. This means that the capacity for permanent growth i n a hunting unit i s checked by ecological as well as social constraints. Growth of a hunting unit, past a certain point, i s incompatible with a long term temporal duration. l4

This previous material illustrates that hunting units are subject to internal pressures generated by the kinship system which can lead to their fission. These fissions are normal and necessary parts of the operation of the Chipewyan social system. Changes of this nature must be distinguished from the normal ebb and flow of hunting unit membership. Chipewyan social organization i s exceedingly flexible and there i s large scale movement, both

33 geographic and social, within the social system. Hunting units constantly add or drop members but these changes do not disrupt the basic structure of the individual hunting units. Normal Chipewyan social l i f e i s a constant flow from situation to situation i n a search for advantage and an avoidance of conflict. Types of structural options are few but implementation of the structures i n real social situations are numerous. Movements are continuous because the con­ f l i c t s are inherent i n the structures; no mere change of persons or situations can eliminate the inherent conflict of Chipewyan social structure. The hazard i n analyzing Chipewyan society i n terms of restricted cognatic descent groups i s the temptation tó assign the structure greater rigidity than i t actually has. The hunting unit i s not an emic category, a definite warning regarding i t s utilization, and cannot be defined or determined i n the f i e l d by the kinship relations that structure i t . Its boundaries can only be determined by observation of the distribution of foodstuffs produced from the bush. The hunting unit i s a subsistence group, a social group engaged i n the joint production and distribution of food. Without this function to be per­ formed, i n relative social isolation, the hunting unit does not exist as a feature of Chipewyan social organization. The hunting unit and the kindred are both basic to Chipewyan society but their relationship i s not one of smooth oomplimentarity. Each i s a dominant structure i n certain social situations but these situations overlap enough to generate a degree of conflict and anxiety in Chipewyan l i f e . This overlap both allows f l e x i b i l i t y i n the social movement of groups and individuals and indirectly necessitates that movement. The hunting unit i s a sociocentric group that functions i n the production of food. As a residential group i t has narrow boundaries; i t s focus i s inward, structuring primarily the relations of i t s members among themselves and only secondarily structuring the relations of i t s members outwards as a group. The kindred i s an egocentric group; as such i t i s not a residence group and has quite a different character from the hunting unit. The kindreds are directed outwards; they p u l l the individual away from his hunting unit. When we speak of the kindreds and the hunting unit together we are, i n a sense, comparing apples and oranges. They are not comparable other than by the functional roles they play i n the Chipewyan social system or the structural relationships between the categories that compose them. They are alternate ways of structuring social l i f e . Like many other systems within the Chipewyan cultural matrix they are i n an imperfect and constantly shifting balance. The kindred and the hunting unit each provide the means of solving half of the contradictory requirements placed upon Chipewyan social groups by the environment and the Chipewyan choices about the utilization of the environment and i t s resources. The hunting unit provides the means of dispersing the pop­ ulation i n the small social groups necessary for environmental exploitation; the kindreds provide the means of integrating the population into larger social groupings and binding the population into an interlocked mutually dependent system. The conflict arises from the fact that hunting units are discreet residential groups while kindreds are overlapping groups of kin categories. Savishinsky (1971, 1973) i n analyzing the role of stress i n Hare society

34 argues that stress i s generated both by isolation i n the bush and crowding in village situations. He argues further that the stress produced by these alternate means of living drive the Hare i n an oscillation between the bush and the village. Among the Chipewyan the generated stress i s symptomatic of conflict between Chipewyan values towards egalitarianism and the kinship systems generation of an authority system. As the subsistence producing group within Chipewyan society i t i s d i f f i c u l t not to regard the hunting unit as somehow the "basic" unit of Chipewyan society, but even the most successful hunting units cannot remain i n isolation from the rest of Chipewyan society and expect to remain part of i t . Whenever a hunting unit comes into residential association with other related hunting units the inherent instability of the hunting unit becomes apparent. Within the hunting unit the division of labor i s well sorted out and each member i s aware of his rights and obligations to other hunting unit members. Routine functions are accomplished with a ndriimum of fuss and interpersonal conflict i s at a known level. There i s a predictability to daily l i f e that, even i f boring, i s known and comfortable. When the hunting unit f i t s into a larger social unit the stability and structure of the hunting unit become uncertain. Each member comes into contact with kindred members beyond the hunting unit; persons between whom there exist no structured inequalities. We said i n the previous section that the force of the kinship structured inequality between male siblings i s a force sufficiently powerful to s p l i t hunting units. A similar pressure i s exerted upon each member of the hunting unit by the attractions of the freedom of interaction within the kindred. Each person, beyond infancy, finds a new and larger social world i n their kindreds within which they may seek diversion. The normal division of labor i n the hunting unit begins to break down when related hunting units are i n r e s i ­ dential contact. Wood i s not gathered and brought i n , young children play and do not perform their chores. Meals are delayed and become uncertain, even sleeping times and places are erratic. Informants have commented particularly upon the uncertainty of meals when hunting units come i n from the bush. The meal among the Chipewyan does not serve the function of r i t u a l com­ munion among the family that i t does i n Western society. Although considerable variation exists within the community (children eating last or with adults, males and females eating separately, etc.) i n regard to meals, they become far more uncertain i n a village or large camp situation. The schedule of meals depends more upon circumstances than the time of day and often days pass without a l l the members of the domestic unit being together to eat. It i s particularly hard on children who must either harass an adult into feeding them or go hungry. In the constant bustle of a large aggregation of Chipewyan the slipping of the daily tasks may not seem particularly significant but i t does produce enough uncertainty to provoke unsolicited comments. I t i s also characteristic of virtually a l l aspects of daily l i f e i n a situation of large residential aggregations and the effects are ajmulative. In a short time the slippage ex­ tends to major activities such as hunting, fishing, and handicrafts. The conflict between hunting unit and kindred i s very strong within what we have been calling the reciprocity network. Sharing within the hunting unit,

35 while clone without cost, i s based upon the kinship ties between hunting unit members. Kinship ties identical to those within the hunting unit exist between many hunting unit members and individuals beyond hunting unit boundaries. They, in a situation of high residential density, find themselves equally obligated to non-hunting unit members. There are also many more non-age-ranked kin relations to be acted upon i n this situation. They are obligated as individuals in a kinship network rather than by virtue of their group membership or as a group towards a group. To the extent that each individual honours the obligations of his kinship ties towards persons who are not members of his own hunting unit he i s not honouring his obligations to the hunting unit. This i s a simple point and hard­ ly a surprising situation, nevertheless i t i s a constant source of conflict within a hunting unit and especially regarding the f u l f i l l i n g of kinship ob­ ligations towards persons who are i n the kindred of a single hunting unit member. The pressures upon the hunting unit are increased by the Chipewyan valuation of non-ccmmitment to material goods. Generosity i s valued per se and i t i s a good example of generosity to trade away valuable items (such as a new r i f l e ) for less valuable items (such as an old or broken r i f l e ) . The greater the disparity between the exchanged items the more valued the exchange i n the eyes of the participants. Such exchanges do enhance the position of the person giving the more valuable object generally and i n the abstract but they are often bitterly resented by persons close to that individual, particularly persons of the opposite sex. In a situation of high residential population density subsistence items soon begin to flow along the kinship lines established by each individual's kindred. This pattern of distribution, though i t cements individual relation­ ships, ignores the needs of hunting unit co-members and places a strain upon the kinship ties that ultimately bind the hunting unit together. These exchanges are not devoid of the competitive aspects of the magical system and the dis­ tribution of power as are exchanges within a hunting unit. Ultimately the stress upon the hunting unit i s great enough to generate the anxiety Savishinsky has described for the Hare and pressure i s developed within the hunting unit for a return to the isolation of the bush with i t s well defined roles and different sets of stresses. It i s apparent that the Chipewyan situation i s a b i t different from that of the Hare i n respect to the oscillation of social groups between isolation and high social contact. Where the Hare face stress derived from high social density per se, ( i f I understand Savishinski correctly) the Chipewyan face stress from high social density of kindred members. The Chipewyan hunting unit can relieve this stress either by physical isolation (i.e. away from a l l other Chipewyan) or by social isolation from Chipewyan belonging to the kindreds of the hunting unit members. The distinction may seem unnecessarily academic but in fact the hunting unit can, on occasion, temporarily cope with large aggre­ gations of relatives simply by residing beyond convenient walking distance from clusters of relatives within a village or bush camp. The key point i s that isolation for a Chipewyan hunting unit i s social, referring to the particular kinship categories of the persons with whom they interact, rather than physical. This pattern i s apparent i n the placement of residences i n high density

36 situations where the Chipewyan have a choice i n the location of dwellings, as around spring fishing areas. I t was partially visible i n the settlement pat­ tern of the village of Mission as late as the spring of 1970 (Appendix 1) but at that point i t was being rapidly disrupted by the Federal housing program. The view of the hunting unit and the kindreds as antithetical structures i s derived from fieldwork begun i n 1969. By this point the Chipewyan had been sedentary or at least orientated to permanent villages for a decade. We pre­ sume that the two structures were antithetical i n earlier periods but have no observational evidence to support the assumption. The hunting unit has come under increasing pressure from the kindreds during the last decade as a result of the Federal housing program, the i n ­ creasing income level of the Mission Chipewyan, and the increasing orientation towards village l i f e . The improved economic situation of the Mission Chipewyan has allowed them to make greater use of charter aircraft i n their movements into and out of the bush. In the period prior to 1973 these charter a i r trips were relatively infrequent as the cost was very high i n proportion to available income. As income increased prior to 1973 the Chipewyan utilization of the a i r ­ craft increased by using larger aircraft for entry and exit rather than using aircraft more frequently. In 1973 the Federal Government began to pour money into Mission by creat­ ing a large number of jobs on various projects. There were also several out­ side sources of jobs (such as the mine at ga Lake) that were not previously available. With the increase i n the number of jobs went a rapid escalation of salaries (e.g. an informant who i n 1970 was unemployed was earning $250.00 a month i n 1973, i n 1975 he was earning $1,200.00 a month). There were a max­ imum of five f u l l time jobs at Mission i n 1970 only two of which were available for males. The top salary was $268.00 a month. In the post-1973 period there was l i t t l e real increase i n the cost of living so most of the increased income was put into disposable goods (e.g. snowmobiles: 1969-70:1; 1972-73:6-10, 1975-76:80-100). The immediate availability of high paying wage labor jobs was a tremendous temptation to the Chipewyan who were never very interested i n trapping and for whom i t was a money losing operation except at the very best of times (Sharp 1975:35-44). From the winter of 1973-74 onwards i t was possible for most adult males to find wage labor almost at w i l l at any time of the year. As a conse­ quence there was a rapid withdrawal of interest i n trapping operations and a large majority of men and their families remained at Mission year round with only temporary excursions into the bush for hunting; a pattern perhaps more characteristic of the Southern Chipewyan on the Churchill River (Jarvenpa, 1975) than the Caribou-Eaters. The increased cash income of Mission was, to some extent, used to supple­ ment and support those hunting units that did go into the bush for the trapping season. The low cash income hunting units that trapped were aided by high cash income individuals who had jobs. These individuals bought supplies and a i r ­ fare for the hunting units and received i n return fresh and dry caribou meat from the hunting units. The new disposable income made i t possible to send ex­ tra aircraft out to the bush camps during the year. These aircraft would bring in supplies of varying quantities and return with a load of meat. The outlying hunting units also served as base camps for Chipewyan coming into the bush for

37 hunting trips, a service for which they generally received some extra supplies. (The aircraft hunting reported by Bone, Shannon, Raby [1973,45] did not become common until 1974 or 1975. Their assessment i s more or less correct but I do not see how they arrived at i t since the phenomenon they report did not exist until a year and a half to two years after they went to print) . A l l of this served to increase the degree of contact between hunting units and the kindreds of their members. By 1975 only the most conservative of the Chipewyan s t i l l took their families into the bush for the trapping season and access to the caribou. These hunting units tend to be centered on adults who are i n their f i f t i e s or older. Much of their cash support comes from children who are working i n steady jobs and have l i t t l e time or opportunity for serious hunting. Although the relation­ ships are asymmetrical when expressed i n terms of money, they nevertheless remain within the acceptable balance of reciprocity by Chipewyan standards. I t simply i s not possible to place a consistent cash value upon caribou meat. In spite of the fact that the persons providing cash to hunting units i n the bush are often children of the hunting unit, the relationship i s s t i l l one of individual to individual along kindred lines rather than hunting unit to hunting unit. That i s , the fundamental conflict i s s t i l l preserved as the relations are between sociocentric group and egocentric group. The support received from individual s within kindreds may be used by the entire hunting unit but not necessarily uniformly. The caribou meat may be provided by the entire hunting unit i n reciprocity but i t i s not necessarily generated uniformly. The strength of the conflict was such that i n 1975 the Ethnographer's impression of the hunting unit was that i t had become a marginal social unit occupying a precarious economic position as a meat producing group for the larger Mission catrnunity. This view i s certainly valid for the group I was with during the early part of the caribou migration when aircraft were arriving every few days but I was i n no position to cross check this impression with other groups. This role vanished with the freeze-up of the small lakes. The decay of the hunting unit i s the result of many factors, most of which have become more pronounced during the past few years, but the simple fact i s that the increased cash flow has allowed the village bound Chipewyan to extend their influence into the bush to maintain contact with their kin. This contact i s antithetical to the continued existence of the hunting unit. The relationship among relatives within a kindred i s not, obviously, simply an economic one. Relatives are bound by a great many factors beyond their mutual rights and obligations but the hunting unit, as an unrecognized feature of the culture, i s unable to survive- i n a situation where the multiplic­ i t y of kinship ties i s not somehow a r t i f i c i a l l y reduced. The weakening of the hunting unit i n the bush was preceded by the collapse of the hunting unit i n the village as a result of the Federal housing program. The f i r s t new houses were constructed at Mission i n 1965. Eight houses were built then and i n each subsequent year. These houses were large (by Chipewyan standards) multi-room frame buildings. In spite of the gross unsuitability of the design to the climatic conditions of Mission (water would often freeze i n parts of the house i n a direct line from the f i r e on very cold days) they were highly desired because of the space and their newness (i.e. like the tape re-

38 corder and skidoo at a later date, having a new house was 'in') . They became available on the basis of 'need' i n accordance with a formula established by Indian Affairs but the actual ranking of people by 'need' was done by the Chief. This meant that the allocation of houses was a p o l i t i c a l question. In any case the l i s t was prepared by nuclear families i n accordance with the recordkeeping practices of Indian Affairs. It i s a simple fact of l i f e that bureaucrats, engineers, cost accountants, and functionaries i n general are unable to proceed without a plan. This, per­ haps laudable, need i s necessary for governments and agencies to oornrrunicate internally. Unfortunately the need for internal communication often overrides the real considerations of the external world with which these institutions must deal. Before you can build a town you must have a plan. Unfortunately the plan must only make sense i n terms of the institutions internal requirements; the requirements of the external world are decidedly subordinate to the internal requirements. In the case of Mission, someone, or some group, sat down and, with the best of intentions, drew up a plan for the village. The plan for the village of Mission i s very neat. The houses are l a i d out on streets that run parallel to the main axis of the lake. The streets are a l l straight and the nouses are spaced i n accordance with good land utilization in a suburban housing development. In the midst of thousands of square miles of unoccupied land the Federal housing program has converted Mission from a spacious village into a crowded slum. This, by i t s e l f , was a survivable error; merely a harmless exercise i n bureaucratic stupidity.15 Unfortunately the location of the houses i s not the only factor that has affected the Mission Chipewyan. The sequential availa­ b i l i t y of the new houses (generally as a reward for p o l i t i c a l support prior to the election of a new chief i n 1973) put each family i n a situation where i t could accept a new house and move away from i t s kin or refuse and wait an i n ­ determinate number of years before having a second chance at a new house. In theory this dilemma could be avoided by having the house b u i l t where the recip­ ient desired but this required the establishment of a film l i s t prior to the beginning of the construction and persuading the responsible agencies to deviate from their plan. This occurred i n only a few situations i n the early years of the housing program. In practice the housing program separated eight nuclear families from their co-resident kin each year. Most of these families were central families within hunting units and their relocation served to weaken the role of the hunt­ ing units at Mission, already weak for the reasons discussed above, and this weakening became progressively more noticeable as the housing program continued. By the summer of 1970 the existence of the hunting unit could not be uncovered by an observer that had not spent time i n the bush or already knew of i t s existence. By 1972 i t was no longer possible to find any but the faintest traces of the hunting unit i n the residential pattern of Mission.

CHAPTER THREE THE MARRIAGE SYSTEM THE ABORIGINAL SYSTEM The marriage system of the Caribou-Eater Chipewyan prior to the establish­ ment of the Roman Catholic missions i s largely indeterminable from either eth­ nographic sources or early accounts. I t i s not feasible to make serious state­ ments about marriage choices but i t i s possible to gain some understanding of marriage i t s e l f . Early accounts, particularly Hearne (1971) give us a view of a polygynous institution with some degree of conflict between spouses. To the extent that Hearne's primary source, Matonabbee, i s reliable and typical, we can assume that marriage was based largely upon economic factors. (We must recognize that what we as Euro-Canadians regard as economic factors were magical or other factors to the Chipewyan). The ability to support a wife or extra wives was crucial to obtaining one and judging from the relationships between contemporary wives and their assorted lovers and husbands i t seems likely that a woman's choice of a spouse, at least a f i r s t spouse, was limited i f not de­ termined by her family. Marriages, at least polygynous marriages, do not appear to have been par­ ticularly stable. The contemporary Chipewyan lack the figure of a 'prize woman' i n their mythology but there seems to have been considerable competition for younger women and i t i s probable that younger wives of polygynous marriages changed hands several times during the course of their lives, both with and against their w i l l . The uneconomic valuation of women appears to have been low as i t i s at the present time. They were subject to not only their husband's authority but also their husband's abuse of his authority up to and including death. There were undoubtedly structured mechanisms giving a woman protection, one of which we shall discuss i n a later section, beyond her a b i l i t y to flee a bad domestic situation but they are not readily identifiable i n what I know of the early contact sources. Information from myth as well as the observation of marital relationships of contemporary Chipewyan gives a more balanced and wide ranging view of the pre-Christian marriages. There i s l i t t l e reason to doubt that a great many preChristian marriages were unhappy affairs but i t also seems clear that the options for sorting out and eliminating bad marriages were greater. I t i s only reasonable to expect a wide range of variation i n marriages i n terms of their 'quality' and to presume that the majority of marriages were monogamous and reasonably productive though serial polygyny was probably common and a major factor i n the establishment of durable marriages. Aside from questions of reproduction and population maintenance, males seem to have been dependent upon marriage for regular sexual activity and the handicrafts of women. Female relatives could provide many of the necessary handicrafts for an unmarried man but they would become less reliable sources after their marriage. This indicates that, although permanent bachelorhood was not unknown, a man had to be married i n order to successfully exploit the 39

40 bush and lay any claim to magical power or influence i n Chipewyan society. With this i n mind, i t i s easy to see that any activity that disrupted marriage was a powerful threat to a man's ability to exercise an influential role i n Chipewyan society or even maintain a position as a competent adult (Sharp, Ms A) . An example of such an institution would be wife wrestling. 16 Wife wrestling i s a puzzling Athapaskan behaviour i n which a man may challenge another man for possession of his wife. It was not wrestling i n the Western sense but rather a hair and ear pulling contest. The two opponents face each other, grasp their opponents hair or ears, and attempt to throw each other to the ground. As such i t i s a contest of strength and endurance of pain and only secondarily one of balance and s k i l l (Hearne 1971:104-107). Hearne particularly indicates that wife wrestling could occur for appar­ ently t r i v i a l reasons, such as needing something packed a short distance, and that the loss of a wife i n one of these contests was irrevocable. A man who lost his wife this way would be too shamed to take her back. I t i s more than f a i r to doubt that wife wrestling occurred for such t r i v i a l reasons but i t i s easy to see how such an institution could act as a powerful sanction i n a num­ ber of circumstances. We have already indicated that the loss of a wife was a serious matter relating to a man's magical power and influence i n society. A wife's ability to persuade a lover, friend, or relative to wrestle her husband for her i s ob­ viously a powerful check on the type of treatment a man gives his wife. He would abuse her at the threat of irrevocably losing her. As the new marriage created by a victorious bout of wife wrestling lasted only as long as the victor desired i t could have served as a female initiated means of divorce. A second way that wife wrestling could act as a sanction was to prevent indi­ vidual men of unusual strength from terrorizing and bullying other men. A single man of unusual strength may be able to defeat every other man i n a so­ c i a l group but he could not do so sequentially. An abusive individual chal­ lenged by a series of his peers would be unable to keep a wife and would either have to face the loss of status of remaining unmarried or else depart the so­ c i a l group i n order to keep a wife. From the l i t t l e b i t of information that we have about pre-Christian Chipewyan marriage i t seems that i t was a relatively f l u i d system with b u i l t - i n checks on potential abuses. I t obviously worked on rather different principles than does Christian marriage among the Chipewyan and does seem to have provided a great deal of individual and social f l e x i b i l i t y . The system obviously worked well enough as the Chipewyan managed to survive the pre-Christian era with l i t t l e difficulty. THE PRE-CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE SYSTEM What speculation there i s on the aboriginal Chipewyan marriage system by ethnologists i s based upon early fieldwork (Curtis) and church or other ar­ chival records (J.G.E. Smith). Derived from Curtis' (1928,Vol. 18) work upon the Gold Lake Chipewyan i s the idea that the Chipewyan practiced patrilateral cross-cousin marriage. This idea has received support from the work of J.G.E. Smith who, i n numerous places, reports finding i t i n the church records from

41 Brochet, Manitoba and regards i t as a normative Caribou-Eater practice. We remain unconvinced by these arguments. What Smith and the others report i s undoubtedly patrilateral cross-cousin marriage but what they do not present i s information that this marriage i s systematic or that other forms of crosscousin marriage (e.g. matrilateral or 'bilateral' cross-cousin marriage) are not also practiced. This i s particularly significant as, with the exception of Snowdrift, we lack adequate kin terminologies for the Chipewyan i n areas beyond Mission. The fractional systems we do have indicate sex of speaker and sex of spoken to cousin term distinctions as well as parallel and cross-cousin dis­ tinctions making i t d i f f i c u l t to posit either a prescriptive or preferential patrilateral cross-cousin marriage system. Before such a system can be seriously considered these terminological ambiguities must be c l a r i f i e d , the generational cousin terminology of Mission and Snowdrift must be explained, and the role of hunting unit exogamy explored. This latter point, which i s discussed i n relation to adoption in Appendix Two i s crucial as a patrilateral cross-cousin marriage system requires a minimum of three exogamous groups to be linked into the system. I t i s rather d i f f i c u l t to conceptualize such a framework i n a bilateral kinship system that shows no indication of having been anything other than bilateral since the splitting of the proto-Athapaskan language (Sharp 1977b). Eggan (1955:542-543) seems to have seen through this problem when he argued that the practice of old men moving in with their daughters was customary among the Chipewyan. In ethnographic situations where only fragmentary information i s available this practice might well seem to be patrilateral cross-cousin marriage. As residence with the daughter i s not under-taken until a man i s unable to main­ tain a separate household, normally only after the death of his wife, several of the relevant persons would be dead. Combine this with the Chipewyan lack of interest in genealogies, the generational grandparent and grandchildren terms (saze) and the simple preference for a daughter to care for oneself in old age might look like a far more systemic practice. When we are forced to make inferences from inadequate and ambiguous data any interpretation i s subject to a considerable degree of scepticism. Cur preference, while we f u l l y recognize that change i s continuous and normative in a l l social systems, i s to assume that conditions and features of social l i f e were not very different from contemporary situations unless we have solid evi­ dence to justify the assumption and specify something about the nature of the differences. Conjectural history i s a l l great fun, the less information there i s the more fun i t i s , but there i s a real danger that the conjectural models established w i l l be given greater validity than they deserve by using them to explain differences i n contemporary societies. It i s f a i r enough for a con­ jectural history to be a product of research but not to use the result to rein­ terpret the data upon which the conjectural history i s based. THE CHRISTIAN ERA The beginning of the Christian era, which at the earliest was at least a century and a half after contact and probably closer to two centuries, i s a major milestone i n Chipewyan history. The effects of the missionaries have been almost completely negative; the only positive benefits seem to have resulted

42 from the hostility between the Church and the Hudson's Bay Co., another Western institution not noted for i t s beneficial effects upon mankind. The Ethnographer i s aware that the above statements are less than neutral but i t i s only f a i r to l e t the reader know of one's biases. The i n i t i a l f i e l d situation i n 1969 was approached with a deep ignorance of both these institutions and their influences on Chipewyan l i f e . That ignorance of these institutions has developed into less than partisan support must be viewed at least i n part as a result of the be­ haviour of the institutions themselves during the periods of fieldwork. The Chipewyan conceptualization of themselves i n the period prior to the arrival of the priests i s amazing i n the extent to which they feel indebted to the priests for their humanness. Prior to the arrival of the priests of Chipewyan say ijerolanite, they lived like the animals (Smith 1976:14). In Sharp (1973:2) this phrase was interpreted as a metaphorical statement upon the similarity between Chipewyan social organization and the behaviour of the wolf and the caribou (Sharp 1976:25-34). I t was not until 1975 that the realization that this phrase had other metaphorical implications of relevance to Chipewyan cosmology and myth became apparent. As the serpent brought the self-awareness to Adam and Eve that resulted in their loss of the Garden of Eden, so the priests brought the knowledge of speech to the Chipewyan that separated them from the natural world to which they belonged. Before the priests arrived the Chipewyan and the animals had no human language. They spoke a common tongue and could intermarry. The world was dominated by magic and the Chipewyan was master of his fate. This period is closely akin to a notion of "Middle Earth" as developed by Tolkien, Lewis, and others as i t followed an earlier period devoid of humans and dominated by giants and monsters. With the priests came the end of "Middle Earth". Bene Ya-ti, the Chipewyan language, came into being driving a wedge between the Chipewyan and the natural magic of the animal world. From this s p l i t the magic has ebbed as the animals withdraw from the world, refusing to teach their magic to Chipewyan, taking their knowledge with them. Fewer and fewer magical animals involve themselves i n the affairs of the Chipewyan and i n each generation the store of magical knowledge decreases. Regretably the Chipewyan are dependent upon this magic for their control of the world for i n the great contest between the 'kinds of men' the control of technology and things f e l l to the white man and i t i s his age that i s now ascendant. 17

With the priests have come many changes; Christian notions of guilt and shame that are so amenable to the northern Athapaskan personality (e.g. Hippler 1973) as well as an awareness of new marriage rules. No longer was i t permis­ sible to marry 'anyone' (i.e. cousins, sisters, etc.) now i t was known that 'cousins' should not marry. The formal rule of the Roman Catholic Church (as explained and practiced at Mission) i s that there may be no marriage between persons related through grandparents. This rule i s interpreted to mean that a potential pair of spouses must not share a single great-grandparent or be descended from siblings i n the grand­ parent' s generation though this rule i s sometimes (and quite ambiguously) ex­ tended to sharing relatives united by marriage i n the grandparent's generation. A description/rule such as this i s cumbersome and boring to a native speaker of English and doubly so to a native speaker of Chipewyan. Therefore i t i s

43 usually interpreted into English as meaning that cousin marriage i s prohibited. The d i f f i c u l t y here i s drawing the appropriate equation between the English (or French) cousin terminology and the Chipewyan cousin terminology. I t i s not impossible that the Chipewyan term sela i s a response to the ambiguity of the English/French cousin terminology though bilingual speakers have l i t t l e trouble keeping the specifications of the terms i n the various languages sep­ arate except when they attempt to translate them. After a minimum of a century of contact with the Roman Catholic Church the ideas of the Chipewyan and the Church about appropriate marriage categories re­ main at odds. The Chipewyan s t i l l regard f i r s t cousin marriages as valid and propose them and do not even question marriages between second cousins. Their success in effecting these marriages has been augmented by the Church's lack of genealogical records of any great depth at Mission. 18 The conflict over the categories and their contents has been intensified by the missionaries ab­ solute commitment to the stability (i.e. prohibition of divorce equals stability) of marriage and a rather odd 19 conception of genetics on the part of one of the priests that led him to believe that this very heterogenous population was suffering from the "bad" genetic effects of too much "inbreeding". Even though the Roman Catholic missionaries have introduced changes into the marriage system, changes that have become more pronounced among the Mission band i n the last f i f t y years, i t i s not the changes i n the content of the cate­ gory of marriageable persons that are most significant. The most significant change has been i n the nature of marriage i t s e l f . We have already indicated that marriage i n the aboriginal period was flexible i f not loose. Under the i n ­ fluence of the Roman Catholic missionaries marriage has become rigidly binding. The position of the Roman Catholic Church upon divorce i s well known and the theological arguments on this issue are as irrelevant to our concern here as they are to the Chipewyan at Mission. What matters i s the interpretation of church dogma by the local authorities; the priests and the bishop. At Mission the interpretation of the church position upon marriage has been r i g i d to the point of insanity. A l l the priests that have been at Mission during the past six years have been inflexible i n their refusal to countenance the break-up of a marriage, under any conditions. A solid, stable marriage i s view­ ed as the cornerstone to a solid Christian family. Divorce (and separation) i s viewed as a threat to the solid family that i s the basis of the Christian com­ munity. With or without underlying genetic rationalizations of the need for ordered marriages, divorce per se, not the incidence of divorce, i s perceived as the paramount threat to the system preached by the Oblate Fathers. The issue of the sanctity and immutability of marriage i s not open to question. I t i s not a rational issue and i s greeted with no more reason than is the communist conspiracy to save the wolf and flouridate the water in Alaska or the insidious, but presumably non-communist, plot to poison Western Canada by flouridating the water of Vancouver. The i n f l e x i b i l i t y of otherwise reasonable men on this issue might be humorous i f i t were not for the results of this i n ­ flexibility. The least damaging result of this viewpoint i s the constant pressure placed upon the young people of the carimunity to get married. Failure of young people to find a spouse by their late teens i s seen as a threat to the institution of

44 marriage. Aside from the fact that the pressure i s applied more upon women than men, who are more able to resist i t , i s the fact that for periods of several years i t has been applied without the knowledge that parents control the marriages of their children. This has resulted i n a number of bad forced marriages. The worst aspect of this position i s the concomitant view that marriage i s so sacred that i t must be endured no matter how painful, destructive, or violent i t may be. A bad marriage becomes a test of faith, a t r i a l sent by God to be endured until death. This position i s maintained by the priests even i n cases where the hus­ band i s so abusive of the wife that the wife i s frequently hospitalized for months at a time; i n cases where the husband i s so abusive of the children that several have died under rather suspicious circumstances; i n cases where the wife's f i d e l i t y i s so uncertain that village gossip i s of the opinion that none of the children of the marriage have the pater as the genitor. The i n ­ transigence extends so far as the castigation of elderly women, abandoned by white common law husbands for decades (whose continued existence i s uncertain), for forming common law partnerships instead of choosing to l i v e alone i n destitution. To an outsider this i n f l e x i b i l i t y i n the application of a value i s i d i o t i c but the Chipewyan have accepted this value i f not the absolute i n f l e x i b i l i t y of i t s application. Their acceptance of the Church's teaching about the nature of marriage i t s e l f has given the contemporary marriage system a degree of i n ­ f l e x i b i l i t y that i s unlikely to have been present i n the pre-Christian marriage system.

CHAPTER FOUR MAKING THE SYSTEM WORK THE TERMINOLOGICAL SYSTEM II Each time an ethnologist attempts his trade, which i s the analysis of human social systems, he i s influenced by different aspects of the system. The f i r s t tine this Ethnologist wrote about the Chipewyan kinship system (1973) he was most influenced by the constraining aspects of the system. At the present time he i s most influenced by the capability of individuals to use the system; to maneuver within the constraints to accomplish goals of various kinds at both conscious and unconscious levels. At the current time the Eth­ nologist's view of the system i s , to use a metaphor, that i t provides a grammar which the Chipewyan must use to express social relationships. The reader may notice that the analysis presented here varies in a number of ways from Sharp, 1973. To the extent that this analysis reflects both further fieldwork and thought on the question we prefer to think of i t as better but r e a l i s t i c a l l y the difference comes from the emphasis upon different aspects of the system. Chipewyan parents control the marriage of their children. This control, in the traditional system, i s absolute for a f i r s t marriage of either a son or a daughter. Only in the past few years (since 1974) has parental control over marriage begun to weaken and that weakening i s due more to neglect and apathy than any loss of control, though this may rapidly lead to loss of control. This control i s indirectly subject to the control of other persons. Parents do not exist within a vacuum. They are within a kindred, within a hunting unit, and have parents of their own whose authority they should respect. They also have children, the prospective spouse and that person's parents both to consider and listen to though influences from ego's or descending generations are gen­ erally less significant than influences from ascending generations. We might characterize this situation by saying that parents have power over their children in arranging their marriage but are influenced by other persons in the exercise of the power. The power of the parents of the child i s exercised differently for the two sexes. This differential exercise of power appears to be due to the Chipewyan's greater valuation of males (Sharp 1976) and greater power of males to resist parental control but i t i s d i f f i c u l t to gather sufficient information to analyse Chipewyan women's feelings, values, and actions in these situations. In any case we shall present the two sexes separately. A woman i s "given" by her parents to a prospective husband. At that point he has unrestricted sexual access to her - as far as the parents are concerned and she i s prohibited from marrying anyone else. If the couple favor the marriage an irregular and erratic cohabitation may develop but these cohabitations usu­ a l l y do not involve sustained co-residence. Women are often given to a man a considerable time prior to the seeking of the approval of the priest and the posting of the banns. During the times when the Chipewyan lived in the bush these arrangements often became marriages i n fact and were ritually recognized by a Roman Catholic ceremony at such time as i t was convenient. The Chipewyan choice of the word 'given' (Nayâti) i s significant as once

45

46 the woman i s given the issue i s finished; she i s disposed of and the rights over her are no longer disposable. If the woman i s unwilling to marry the person to whom she has been given, then the parents, much as a sold mule must be convinced to move, must coerce her into accepting the marriage. The techniques used to coerce a daughter vary in degree and application for each situation but consist of the two primary sanctions of childrearing: threats and violence. Parents restrict the activities of their daughter i n this situation and constantly attempt to persuade her to accept the marriage. The persuasion i s both positive (e.g. building up the future spouse, t e l l i n g the g i r l she w i l l be well off) and negative (e.g. threatening to throw her out of the house and never l e t her return, swearing at her). Mixed with these are beatings (e.g. with a dog whip) and spankings (e.g. with the hand or seme soft object) . This pressure i s applied i n an erratic manner as long as i s necessary - often several months - to make her agree. In one sense a woman's consent to her marriage i s necessary - obviously she cannot be tied and gagged throughout the ceremony - but the contest i s so imbalanced that the outcome i s rarely i n doubt. Few women are able to avoid marriage to a person to whom they have been given. Nevertheless women are not without means of resisting their parents. We may view their means of resistance but presume no correspondence between our categories and Chipewyan ideas on this subject.20 A woman's primary defense against her parents i s to s t a l l the marriage i n the hope that her parents w i l l change their minds and revoke their consent. This activity i s normally coupled with attempts, by herself and others, to persuade the parents that the marriage w i l l be bad. Stalling i s a d i f f i c u l t task as i t involves direct resistance to the parent's wishes by forcing and taking their threats and punishment without yielding. This defense i s rarely effective for more than a few months but i t can swing the balance i n proposed marriages where the parents have no great ccranitment to the proposed marriage. Stalling i s a tertiary activity based upon threats of action and ultimate­ ly actions themselves. Threats of action, the second level of resistance that a woman has, are not often made directly but are implicit i n the stalling ac­ t i v i t i e s . Nevertheless they represent a set of actions different enough from stalling, which may be merely perfunctory, to deserve separate description. Where stalling i s often accomplished by crying, wailing, or a silent refusal to participate in family l i f e or to talk, the basic ingredients of the child's aggravating impotence, threats of action are delivered directly to the parents or the intended spouse. These threats include two patterns, the threat to do something awful to herself, thus making her an unfit person to marry, and the threat of running away. The f i r s t category includes threats of suicide as well as of getting pregnant, drunk, or otherwise engaging i n shameful activities. Running away i s the ultimate threat a woman can deliver as i t implies complete separation from the family and a departure from Mission on a permanent basis. This threat, though I have no evidence that i t i s ever done, has become more real i n the post World War II era since better a i r service has made inter­ community travel easier. Ironically such an action i s viewed as a complete separation and requires that the g i r l seek distant kinsmen for support but to be successfully carried out requires marriage in the distant location. Surpris­ ingly, but consonant with Van Stone's analysis of Snowdrift (1965), I have no data to indicate that elopement i s ever used as a means of avoiding a pending forced marriage though i t i s talked about as an option.

47 A woman's third course of action i n resistance to a forced marriage i s directed towards the future spouse. These actions are not so much attempts to avoid the marriage as they are punishment of the groom for forcing the marriage. The threats of misbehavior directed towards the future spouse are classed sep­ arately from actual implementation of the threats as the goal of the threats i s to cause the future spouse to back out of the marriage while the actions them­ selves are to punish and shame the future husband. These actions generally consist of conspicuous "going around" or "visiting" with old boyfriends or other available males and concomitant promiscuous sexual activity (or the appearance thereof) or becoming pregnant by another man. The latter i s most common when the forced marriage breaks up an established or un­ usually intense relationship. The former courses of action are public and can be overcome after the marriage with relatively l i t t l e difficulty but the latter, even though generally less widely known, may affect the marriage (as well as the ensuing child) for the l i f e of the couple. As a tactic i t i s most effective when the paternity of the child i s ambiguous rather than certain. The Chipewyan males a b i l i t y to resist an unwanted marriage i s greater than a woman's. They are more highly valued than women and before they achieve a status that makes them suitable for marriage they have to obtain the s k i l l (and possess the equipment) to survive on their own i n the bush. For this rea­ son men spend l i t t l e time stalling a proposed marriage but immediately jump to the second level of resistence. The nature of the second level of resistance for men i s rather different from the second level of resistance for women. Men are unable to engage i n immoral conduct i n the same way as women since sexual activity does not reflect on their suitability as spouses and the things that do reflect upon their suit­ a b i l i t y as spouses are either long term aspects of their reputation (e.g. poor performance at hunting or trapping) and cannot be displayed successfully i n the short time between a wedding proposal and the wedding or they reflect too d i ­ rectly upon a man's reputation to be used to block a wedding (e.g. going to j a i l , stealing). A man may also attempt to humiliate the proposed spouse i n the hopes that her parents w i l l withdraw the marriage or simply from vindictavenes s (e.g. insulting her cooking, refusing beadwork she has prepared for him) but he generally relies upon his strongest weapon, the ability to absent himself from his family for long periods of time. To be successful such a withdrawal may require several years but a single season or year w i l l work i n most cases. Most withdrawals are purely symbolic involving flights to other Chipewyan towns for visiting, gambling, drinking, and g i r l chasing. They last only a few weeks or months before loneliness and guilt about violating parental injunctions bring the man back for the marriage. Men are capable of humiliating their potential spouses when a l l else f a i l s . Lacking the ability to become pregnant themselves they attempt to shame their new spouses by being obviously unfaithful (the night of the wedding dance i s a good time for this) but this i s liable to cause counter i n f i d e l i t y by their wife. A uniquely male weapon i s the refusal to live with their wife after the marriage. This refusal cannot long stand against community pressure - including the now mocking refusal of the unmarried women to provide sexual gratification (e.g. "where i s your wife, Martin?") - but i s a painful reminder to a l l the kin, i n -

48 cluding affines, of the man's resentment of his forced marriage.

21

The rights, obligations, and weapons of social positions at any point of conflict are crucial to an analysis of a social system. Recurring conflicts, such as we have just described, must be regulated and limited or extensive social change w i l l occur. Whatever changes have occurred i n the Chipewyan system i n the past are now safely under the control of the social system and the current forces for change are not greater than the people can handle. The system i s not static, i t i s not unchanging, but the changes within the system were developing from the normal dynamics of the cultural system at least through 1975. Regulation and control of marriage by the parents was most probably advan­ tageous prior to the formation of the village of Mission. Even allowing for the existence of " a l l native" communities and trips into the trading posts, children - especially daughters - were less familiar with the range of potential spouses than were their parents. Children travelled less than adults and g i r l children less than boy-children. My primary male informants, now i n their midf i f t i e s , indicate that they did not f i r s t come into the trading posts until they were about ten years of age. What potential spouses children did know would be close relatives and members of their own hunting units. The latter would be excluded from the range of possible spouses by Chipewyan rules and the former by Church rules. Knowing a wide range of potential spouses for their children i s important for the operation of the marriage system but i t i s not as important as the parents knowledge of persons within their own generation. When marriages are arranged by parents the primary interaction i s from parent to parent, not between parent and child. People seek spouses for their children, not neces­ sarily without consideration of their wishes and feelings, by contacting their relatives and being contacted i n turn. In this, as i n other matters when assist­ ance i s required beyond the hunting unit, people turn to members of their kindreds. In the search for spouses for their children the parents' kindreds are the primary avenues. The metaphor of avenues i s appropriate for a street sys­ tem does not represent the only way to arrive at a destination but i t i s the sys­ tem most people w i l l use on most occasions. Even i f i t i s not the most direct route the advantages of familiarity and ease of travel more than compensate for the extra distance. Familiarity i s even more important i n dealing with people than i t i s i n travel. This i s more understandable when we realize that the potential spouse i s only part of the consideration i n proposing a marriage. It should be recalled here that the Chipewyan affinal terminology creates sibling-in-law relationships i n both the spouses' generation and their parents' generation. Terminologically the relationship between the generations i s iden­ t i c a l though i n practice i t i s not extended as widely i n the parent's generation. Ego's parents not only acquire a spouse for their child but a set of siblings-inlaw for themselves. The sibling-in-law relationship, particularly the same sex sibling-in-law relationship, seri, i s both powerful and close. The marriage of one's children presents a unique opportunity to bind together two hunting units in a close relationship and extend that relationship into the next generation. The Mission Chipewyan kinship terndnology provides a flexible set of cate­ gories within which parents may recruit spouses for their children but, as with

49 other kinship terms, the means of categorizing the kin are as important as the categories themselves. The primary category of potential spouses i s saze but, as we have indicated, saze i s an ambiguous term i n several respects. Saze are grandchildren and the children of relatives, including affines' children. Saze may also be used as a purely generational term for persons of the second descend­ ing generation from ego and as a general term for small children. 22 The ambi­ guity of the category i s further marked by i t s use as a sex specific term for daughter's husband (Figure 7). Figure 7 SAZE Saze

BS, BD, ZS, ZD, HBS, HBD, HZS, HZD, WBS, WBD, WZD, WZS. Child of Sela, Grandchild (when sex not relevant). Small

child.

Saze (M.S.) DH In a loose sense the category saze contains a l l possible spouses for ego's children as well as those persons who have already married (male) ego's daughters. If we recall the Chipewyan notion that sexual activity between generations i s incestuous we can see that the category saze w i l l also contain persons with whom marriage i s prohibited. On one occasion, at a public meeting i n 1972, I was ask­ ed by the Indian Agent to explain to the people of Mission what I was doing there. In the course of this explanation I cited the term saze as an example of the type of thing I was investigating. When I mentioned that the term was used both before and after the marriage to refer to a daughter's husband the interpreter for the meeting corrected my by indicating that i t was used only after marriage. In a f i t of paranoia I rechecked my data and then talked to the interpreter at a later date. I was able to explain his objection on only two possible grounds: (1) an idiosyncratic use of the term for which there was no other evidence or (2) an indication that the "meaning", or rather the choice of meaning, for the term i s keyed to the context in which i t i s used. The latter explanation proved to be correct and i s evidence that, although the term saze defines the universe of potential spouses, saze i s not the active category within which parents seek spouses for their children. The evidence presented above was the only clear natural semantic evi­ dence I obtained on this issue but i t i s important as i t f i t s with other findings to indicate that, even though the search must be made i n reference to their c h i l ­ dren's generation, the parents's search for spouses for their children i s con­ ducted within their own generation. Conducting the search within their own gener­ ation i s not without significance for the children. Even though the potential spouses are saze to the parents they are not necessarily of the parent's c h i l ­ dren's generation (i.e. sela to their children). I t i s here that the imprecise nature of a generation i n Chipewyan society can cause conflict. 2 3

The persons i n the parent's generation are categorized by genealogical position as well as by relative age. The dual categorization process reduces uncertainty within their generation but i t can create uncertainty within their children's generation i f the 'smoothing' effect i s carried into the category saze. I t i s easy to see how this can result by using a hypothetical genealogy

50 to illustrate the point. (Figure 8A). In this illustration the relationship between G and H i s one that i s eminently suitable for marriage from the parents viewpoint. H and G are rela­ tives but not close enough to discomfort the priest. They are of known struc­ tural (genealogical) connection and from the parent's perspective (A & B, and E & F) they belong to the same generation. However the actual age difference between G and H i s 19 years. This span i s too great for them to belong to the same generation from the perspective of both G and H, hence the children, G and H, see the marriage as prohibited. Normally the sela relationship between them would be shifted to se'a/saze with G becoming se'a to H and H saze to G. Women are f e r t i l e for a period that can exceed 25 years and this has marked affects i n the maintainence of generational distinctions. To be safe l e t us assume that B produced children over a 15 year period. I f we only show the last born child, I, (Figure 8B) we can see how some of the complications begin to develop. The relationship between I and H i s structurally sela. Because of their closeness i n chronological age this category would not be shifted. They belong to the same generation and are suitable spouses. So far the shifts of category by relative age have simply placed the male siblings G and I i n different generations as far as their marriage prospects are concerned. As they would not compete for the same spouses - G i s unlikely to wait until H and I mature before seeking a spouse - the d i f f i c u l t i e s are hidden by the developmental cycle and the actual difference i n ages. To return to our original point, l e t us now assume that A shifted the terminological categories of his distant affine E to correspond to the difference i n chronological age. We shall transfer these shifts to the f i r s t descending generation (A's and E's children) as this i s the way H and I would learn their kinship relationships as they grew up. (Figure 8C). Once the shift of E and F occurs on the basis of relative age they belong to the generation suitable for spouses both genealogically and by relative age for G. Since shifts of category by relative age can become genealogical positions i n descending generations, H becomes an unsuitable potential spouse to both G and I since H belongs to a de­ scending generation. If we assume that time has passed so that both I and H are ready to marry (say 15 years making I now 20 and H now 16 with a l l other persons now 15 years older) we can see that H i s s t i l l saze to A but i s also saze to G and I. Thus H i s a suitable spouse for I from A' s perspective but prohibited from I ' s per­ spective. What i s true for A, I, and H i s also true for every person i n our hypothetical genealogy and each shift of category by relative age w i l l further compound the situation. Situations such as this are frequent sources of misunderstanding i n any proposed marriage. The rules are simple enough but their application by each individual and concomitant partial spread through groups and other kinship net­ works give the appearance of no system at a l l . Whether or not this mass of con­ f l i c t according to rules i s a system or not i s an analytical decision and the reader should not feel bound by our preference to view i t as one; i t i s however clearly not random or disorganized behavior. Parental decisions concerning marriage often appear arbitrary to their children and i n many cases they are. Since they are made from the parent's

51

Figure 8(A) Ego

Generational Confusion A

C

B

40

45

35

30

E

F

25

20

G

I Descending

H

20

1 Start point

Figure 8(B)

Generational Confusion A

C

B

45

40

E

D.

35

F

E

25

H

I 5

20

20

1

Last born of A + B

Fiaure 8(C) Ego

I D

II D

Generational Confusion A

B

45

40

G

20

C 35

I

D

30

E

5

F

25

20

H 1

52 perspective of the f i r s t ascending generation much of the apparent arbitrariness i s a result of the ambiguities within the system. Many choices of spouses are arbitrary or at least so ill-conceived that their bad results are obvious to everyone but the parent. I t i s d i f f i c u l t to assess the extent to which women are viewed as things whose disposability i s no more significant that that of an item of material culture. I advance the above statements with caution as i t has been sufficently d i f f i c u l t to penetrate the shame, bitterness, and ration­ alizations of informants on this topic for me to be sure of the Chipewyan mo­ tivations that produce bad forced marriages. I do have the impression however that forced marriage i s , and has been, used as a punishment for children who are not sufficiently under parental control or have otherwise become objects of parental scorn or i l l feeling. PICKING A SPOUSE: THE CHILDREN'S OPTIONS Even though control over their marriage choice i s vested i n their parents, the Chipewyan are rarely indifferent to the choice of a spouse or the decision that they are to be married. The majority of marriages are initiated by indi­ vidual Chipewyan and approved by their parents. Men initiate most marriages and a great many more women that men end up i n forced marriages. I t i s not uncom­ mon for men involved i n a relatively casual relationship with a g i r l to forma­ l i z e that relationship i n marriage by approaching the g i r l s ' parents, directly or indirectly, without the g i r l ' s consent. The more active role given men i n Chipewyan society, their greater ability to resist parental pressure, their greater moral worth, and their greater mobility allow them a more active formal choice i n a spouse. Women are also active i n choosing a spouse but their formal rights are significantly less than those of a man. Prior to the existence of permanent villages a woman's opportunity for social contact with eligible young men was quite limited. Most potential spouses were known only by reputation, gossip, and/or casual contact. Obviously marriage proposals initiated by the potential spouses themselves were based upon different data than were those initiated by their parents. Not the least significant difference i s sexual attraction, some­ thing rather important to the potential spouses but not a factor i n parental decisions. Westerners are unaware of many of the factors that lead the Chipewyan to make the decisions they do i n sexual or marital affairs. Particularly the economic aspects of Chipewyan marriage are largely invisible to the casual ob­ server. Potential spouses therefore initiate marriages for reasons that seem casual to the Western observer and often do so with a speed that seems to indi­ cate that the choice of a spouse i s a t r i v i a l matter. Outsiders, including teachers and priests, are raised i n the tradition "love marriages" and generally f a i l to see that i t i s being married (as opposed to unmarried) not to whom you are married that i s categorically important (Sharp, Ms.a, 7-10). Chipewyan men can initiate a request for marriage i n one of three ways: (1) by asking the g i r l ; (2) by asking his parents, or by (3) asking the g i r l s ' parents. The f i r s t option i s used when the g i r l consents to the marriage. The couple then each approach their own families after which the man approaches the g i r l ' s family. If consent i s obtained a l l around the parents of the couple talk among themselves and plan the wedding. The order of action i s not significant

53 or even mandatory, what i s significant i s that a l l parties interact and agree prior to the two sets of parents making the arrangements. The second pattern occurs either because the young man i s too shy to approach the g i r l directly or because she has refused the marriage. He then seeks his parent's approval and gets them to negotiate a marriage. The third approach assumes that the woman does not desire the marriage so the young man approaches the g i r l s ' parents directly; he merely assumes the negotiating tasks from his parents as the quest may involve months or years of pleading and pestering the g i r l s ' parents which his parents are unlikely to do. Chipewyan women are not able to approach a mans' parents directly so they must work through the man himself or through their own parents. This reduces their capability to persuade the parents of a man who does not wish to marry them as they cannot push to the limit of their own motivation but only to the limit of the motivation they can arouse i n other persons. Where a man can lobby directly a woman can only lobby indirectly. Overcoming the objections of a balky partner through their parents i s only part of the problem. There are also times when a balky parent or parents must be persuaded. These cases only occur when the couple are determined to get married. When a parent(s) and partner object the objections are simply too powerful to be overcome except i n the most unusual of circumstances. The key to persuading a reluctant parent i s patience and persistence. The couple keep company and attempt to persuade the balky parent directly and through intermediaries. If they are of legal age they can generally count on support from the priests but marriage without parental approval i s very rare i f not unknown. If there i s l i t t l e evidence that the balky parent w i l l change their mind the couple may begin to stay together on an intermittent basis. I t i s unusual for this to develop into cohabitation but i t does happen. Pregnancy i s a weapon that can be used to force a marriage but i t can backfire. The danger i n becoming pregnant, which has the expectation that marriage w i l l follow, i s that the parents may react to the pregnancy by forcing a marriage but to a person other than the father of the child. THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE In an earlier section of this chapter we argued that both the marriage system and the nature of marriage i t s e l f had changed i n the Christian era. Now we shall examine the nature of marriage as a relationship between two people among the contemporary Chipewyan. The data upon which this analysis i s based i s not hard data. I t i s the result of impressions, overheard fights, reading letters to people, and gossip, as well as more conventional observation tech­ niques and conversations with informants. I t i s a l l synchronic data or memories of informants. I do not have the data to support the statement that there has been a shift i n the nature of the relationship since the formation of the v i l ­ lage, but I am certain that the tensions and pressures of marriage, like the tensions and pressures of other social relationships, have been intensified by the new "micro-urban" environment. The Chipewyan regard jealousy as a bad characteristic i n a person. Jeal­ ousy extends beyond purely sexual matters into the interaction of persons of

54 the opposite sex of ego with persons of the same sex as ego. The prevalent theory, used to characterize a good partner, i s that they should not be j e a l ­ ous of the social interaction of the partner, including the sexual adventures of the partner both before and after the marriage. On closer examination one finds that this ideal i s only to be applicable to the partner and that i t i s never achieved. 24 This value i s significant, not because of i t s content or i t s achievement, but because i t i s indicative of the nature of Chipewyan mar­ riage. A non-jealous partner i s ideal but they should not expect the same consideration i n return. Marriage at Mission, no matter how romantic the couple at the beginning, eventually becomes a heavily patterened and "cold" relationship.25 Husbands and wives do not break away from their siblings and natal family until they begin to die away. Even i n old age, when the sexual pressures of marriage are reduced, the best that can be expected i s a comfortable interaction with l i t t l e displayed hostility and less affection and warmth. In marriages between younger couples the coldness of marriage i s best seen i n the contrast between the be­ havior of the spouse and their cross-sex siblings. These are the persons ego turns to with problems, confidences, and worries. These are also the persons to whom one shows affection and concern. I t does not take too many months of living i n tent camps to realize that this affection and concern i s not transfer­ red to the marital relationship. Older couples are harder to characterize because they are less numerous and their sibling groups tend to be more dis­ persed but there i s no increase i n warmth or affection i n the conjugal family to compensate for the scattered or lost siblings. The justification for classifying Chipewyan marriages as cold and formal would be a major work i n i t s e l f . Here we shall only deal with two related causal factors, the role of gossip and i n f i d e l i t y . In Sharp (1975a) the reaction of the Mission settlement to a proposed sororate marriage was discussed. In that work i t was indicated that i n questions of sexual misconduct an accusation was taken as proof of guilt. In general, this i s an accurate assessment of a l l actions that become the object of village gossip. Since gossip i t s e l f i s both the regulatory mechanism and the sanction, the very willingness of the community to gossip about the action i s the punishment. There can be no vindication i n a gossip system other than the refusal of the corrnunity to gossip; guilt or innocence are not relevant. Gossip can be provoked not only by the actions or inactions of the sub­ jects but also by other persons. Accusations, falsehoods, jokes, or even incorrectly understood statements can be picked up and dealt with i n the form of gossip. Gossip i s a subtle and effective regulatory device but i t i s sub­ ject to manipulation and abuse by third parties. I t can be deliberately induced by individuals to maneuver one or both of the spouses, to seek revenge, or simply for malicious purposes. These actions are so frequent that I was unable to locate a single marriage i n the community that had not been (or was not) the subject of accusations of sexual misconduct on the part of one or both partners. The Chipewyan hold the notion that spouses should be faithful to each other but the gossip system precludes the public acceptance of the f i d e l i t y of the spouses. The accusations i n gossip produce reactions on the part of the wronged spouse, either violence towards the partner, counter infidelity, or both regardless of the truth of the accusations. As a result of this system,

55 although fidelity i s valued and expected, the expectation i s never met. A spouse becomes a source of betrayal and pain rather than a source of support and affection. Siblings (and to a lesser extent sela), towards whom there i s no expectation of sexual access or sexual f i d e l i t y , become the sources of support and affection. Marriage among the Chipewyan, for a l l i t s problems, i s a "necessary" social institution. Leaving aside such fundamental questions as the role of the division of labor i n society and the role of rules of incest and exogamy we can find explanations of the "need" for marriage at less general and less profound levels of analysis. We recognize that a functional analysis of the role of something i s not an explanation of why i t i s there but such explanations are often useful i n spite of their non-historical nature. This point was made repeatedly by Radcliffe-Brown though few of his North American c r i t i c s seem to have read enough of his work to realize this. Marriage i s a necessary require­ ment to obtain adult status i n Chipewyan society and i t i s the only manner the Chipewyan have devised to link together two hunting units without excessive competition (Sharp, Ms.a). The marriage ceremony i s , among the Mission people, the effective i n i t i a ­ tion r i t e into adulthood. A l l but the most hopelessly deformed of women and a l l but a very few men marry. Those men who do not marry are regarded as, and called, boys even by persons many years their junior. The nature of marriage among the Chipewyan and the need to be married to achieve adult status may explain some of the apparent casualness with which the Chipewyan marry. Van Stone's (1965) discussion of marriage at Snowdrift indicates some of the same features may apply there. I t i s d i f f i c u l t to understand Chipewyan attitudes when some people react so strenuously to a proposed marriage and others marry for reasons that seem casual. Even assuming that the potential spouses have a l l known each other since childhood does not explain the rapidity with which decisions are made. In my f i r s t f i e l d trip, during one of my f i r s t sessions with informants, I was questioning an elderly couple about kinship terms i n the hope that they might remember changes that occurred i n their l i f e ­ time. Eventually my informant, old David, began to t e l l me how he was travel­ ling from Disoho Lake to Lake End i n the company of his father. He was then s t i l l a young man i n his teens. As they rounded an island i n the Disoha River they saw another canoe. In this canoe was a young g i r l whom he decided to marry as soon as he saw her. His wife said l i t t l e during this description except a few side comments to my interpreter (a woman i n her fifties) verifying the incident. I was surprised that such a sudden decision to marry would be made, carried out, and remembered over half a century later. In firm antici­ pation of a glimpse of the cross-cousin marriage system I expected to find I had the interpreter ask David why he wanted to marry that particular g i r l . His response, to the amusement of a l l but the egg-faced anthropologist was, "because I was horny". It i s d i f f i c u l t to take such a comment seriously yet i n 1970 a young man brought the f i r s t Indian owned skidoo to Mission. He made the t r i p from Ena Lake i n the late spring but the skidoo was soon broken by young men taking their f i r s t joy rides. He lacked the funds to get i t fixed and soon found his casual girlfriend pregnant. As he had not obtained funds to f l y home he stayed and mar­ ried her. A similar event occurred i n 1972 when a visitor from Lake End came to Mission to spend the month of August. He found a casual girlfriend whom he l e f t at the end of the month. Shortly afterwards the g i r l found herself pregnant

56 and wrote the young man i n October asking him to return at Christmas. He arrived to find the g i r l pregnant and himself married a few weeks later. 26 He stated that he would not have returned to Mission i f he had known she was pregnant but that since he was there he might as well get married. This attitude seems to reflect ideas of marriage that regard the condition of being married as more important than the choice of a specific spouse. The primary expectations from a spouse are economic and reproductive rather than emotional. As long as a potential spouse seems capable of meeting these re­ quirements and does not deviate from the norms too greatly they are acceptable. This pattern of almost indifference to the choice of a spouse has been changing rapidly i n the past twenty years as a result of the greater familiarity with Western ideas about marriage and the greater opportunities for social contact between people i n the village. Where the old system was geared to pairing spouses that did not know each other well the emerging system i s based upon potential spouses being familiar with the range of possibilities and having strong preferences for particular persons. HUNTING UNITS, MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE Analyzing why individual Chipewyan make certain marriage choices i s i n ­ teresting but i n a bilateral system necessarily lacking prescriptive or even preferential marriage categories i t i s unlikely to carry us very far. Marriage i s more than individual choices and cases, i t i s also a social phenomena that has implications for social groups. Marriage i s contracted between two per­ sons by or with the approval of their parents. The choices are made among per­ sons related by kinship and organized by kindreds but a l l of these persons are members of social groups. These social groups, the hunting units, are necessary factors for consideration i n both the planning and the analysis of marriage. In the traditional system a l l persons belonged to hunting units. This membership introduced two additional factors into the regulation of marriage. (1) Hunting units are exogamous and (2) no two hunting units may be connected by more than a single marriage between their living members. The f i r s t factor i s simple and largely a reflection of the closeness of kinship ties within the unit. I t poses no serious obstacle to marriage regulation as the hunting unit is subject to ecological and social factors that prevent i t s unlimited growth. Were i t not for the constant fission of the hunting unit and the restriction of membership to residents that keep hunting units small they would i n a few gene­ rations contain many potential spouses. As i t happens this situation does not occur frequently enough for the question of exogamy to become a serious factor. Chipewyan social groups are fluid. There i s a good deal of movement of families from hunting unit to hunting unit over time but most families belong to only a few hunting units during their l i f e cycle. Hunting unit exogamy be­ comes problematical only for those families that never establish long term ties to a single hunting unit or few hunting units but instead sequentially stay with a number of different hunting units over the l i f e span of the nuclear family. There are few such families and they are usually deviant either from some char­ acteristic of the head of the family (e.g. lazy, inept, quarrelsome,) or per­ sons with few relatives i n the area i n which they live (e.g. immigrant families or orphans) . Smith (1976, Personal Communication) has indicated that the heads of these families, with their wider range of experience and contacts, are gen-

57 erally outsiders i n the Brochet area and often become p o l i t i c a l or magical figures. If hunting unit exogamy i s not a serious factor in structuring Chipewyan marriages the rule that no two hunting units may be connected by more than a single marriage among living persons 27 i s a significant factor. The Chipewyan preference for the marriage of their children to the children of close relatives restricts the number of possible choices considerably. When consideration of demographic factors and factors of sentiment between relatives i s taken into account there i s a relatively small range of probable marriage choices. As each subsequent child marries the range of possible spouses i s further reduced by the elimination of the off-spring of affinally connected hunting units. This rule excludes a range of practises: the sororate, the levirate, widow inheritance, polyandry, and wife sharing (e.g. the Semai practice of younger males having sexual access to their elder brothers' wives, [Dentan 1968, 75] that can be viewed as means of maintaining affinal relationships when the death of a spouse occurs. Instead of maintaining a marriage alliance as long as possible throuqh substitutions at the death of a partner i n the marriaqe the Chipewyan have opted for a system i n which the marriage alliances are ex­ clusive to the l i f e span of the couple. The alliances are renewable after the death of the last surviving person of the original pair. While two hunting units are connected by a marriage their exogamous status i s absolute but as soon as the bond i s severed by death i t may be recreated by a new marriage. The system creates repetitive discreet alliances rather than continuously reformed alliances. This i s consonant with the Chipewyan shallow genealogical know­ ledge (and interest) and frees them from past obligations. Even though such marriage alliances could extend over a number of generations they always appear new and discreet. The most noticeable result of these marriage rules i s a high incidence of cousins marrying cousins. This i s visible within the Mission regional band and especially between Mission and Lake End. I lack fieldwork data from Lake End so I am unable to analyze the inter-community marriages satisfactorily but the Mission people attribute differences i n kinship terminology to the Lake End people and a high incidence of 'cousin' marriage. This latter point i s present­ ed by informants from Mission so as to sound like a bilateral clan based pre­ ferential - i f not prescriptive - cross-cousin marriage system. Whatever i s go­ ing on at Lake End, and I doubt that i t i s as bizaare as my Mission informants make i t seem, i t would be worth investigating. The prohibition upon more than a single marriage uniting hunting units i s significant at a level of analysis above the question of making a specific marriage choice for a child. Intermarriage i s the only real basis the Chipewyan have developed to unite hunting units i n sustained residential association with­ out conflict. Relationships between hunting units are competitive. They are expressions of the magical power that underlies men's activities. The men's activities are directed towards the production of subsistence items f i r s t and competitive so­ c i a l interaction secondarily. The competitiveness finds expression in the u t i ­ lization of the environment and the distribution and utilization of natural products. Since the hunting units are subsistence producing groups and dis­ creetly corporate there i s always a disparity i n the amount and quality of the

58 products they have produced. This disparity, derived from magical power, i s therefore a direct reflection of the relative magical power of the hunting units i n residential association. Since the hunting units control no territory and have no exclusive right to any area, they must concentrate upon the one item that i s unequivocally theirs to control; the labor and s k i l l of their members. The only effective way to share this labor (and i t s produce) i s along kinship lines. The intermarriage of two hunting units creates a network of interlocking non age-graded affinal relationships between the members of two hunting units. This can be shown by comparing the relationship between the hunting units camp­ ed on Magnificent Lake for the trapping season of 1975. Figure 9 shows the two hunting units i n 1975 as they would stand i n terms of kinship without the connecting marriage and the basis of the kinship categorization. A total of 6 people, 3 pairs out of 9 adults, are linked by a kinship term (sela) . Of these six there was active dislike, based on an assessment made i n 1970 prior to the connecting marriage, of long standing between E and G and relative indifference between B and D. Only A and C were linked by strong ties of sentiment which were expressed i n the closest possible terms, sela, through the shared god­ parent. 29 The linking marriage between the two hunting units was between E and F. This was the forced marriage of John (F) initiated by A to C and acccmplished through A's perpetual asking of C to allow i t . C consented when his son, F, attempted a marriage with his elder brother's deceased wife's younger sister during a period when he was i n Mission alone (discussed i n Sharp, 1975a). His parents heard of the proposed marriage and D flew into Mission and squashed i t . In response to F's attempt C agreed to the marriage and i t occurred i n the spring of 1972. The kinship structure after the marriage, Figure 10, i s quite different i n the number of kinship ties established. The d i f f i c u l t y of even represent­ ing the ties on a diagram shows the intensification of the relationships. After the marriage, again excluding age graded cross generational ties and the children of G, the number of relationships among 11 people (excluding G's hus­ band and infants) i s a total of 28 kinship relationships - not counting the marriage of E and F. A single marriage has included every person i n both hunt­ ing units and more than quadrupled (6 vs 28) the number of kinship relationships. This example illustrates the interlocking of hunting units by a single marriage as well as indicating that a major shift i n the Chipewyan symbolic system would be necessary for two or more marriages to exist between two hunt­ ing units. I t gives some indication of the strain that the kindreds can place upon a hunting unit when i t i s i n residential association with too many related persons. The number of kinship ties i n a high residential density situation increases so rapidly that i t becomes impossible to even begin to honor the estab­ lished kinship obligations. I t also suggests that the role of affinal kinship in Northern Athapaskan societies may need some reexamination. The interlocking effect of a marriage upon two hunting units i s the major opportunity within the Chipewyan system for the extension and regulation of ties between groups. The marriage of the children of a hunting unit represents a means of extending the influence of the most influential person within the

59

Figure 9

Two hunting units prior to intermarriage Sela

A

B

B

D.

33a (+)

(+) 17

7 Sela

21 F

As of 1970. Not all persons shown

17

14

60

Figure 10 Ties between two hunting units after a linking marriage S Setsu Seri (m.s.)

A

Setsu

B

C

Setchi (w.s.)

D

Seri (w.s.) Setchi ( w.s.)

(+)

(+)

Setsu Seri (m.s.)

22

E

12

7.

Seri (m.s.) Setchi (w.s.) Sela*

A s of

1 9 7 5 . Not all

persons

shown.

* R e l a t i o n s h i p of Seri (w.s) not used b e c a u s e of l o n g s t a n d i n g d i s l i k e .

22

Seri (m.s.)

26

8 G

4

61 hunting unit. In both the aboriginal and contact-traditional systems these allocations of children represented the most reasonable mechanism to obtain p o l i t i c a l influence. I t would be incorrect to assume that using marriage to establish ties to build a base for p o l i t i c a l influence was normal or even particularly cammon but marriage presents too obvious an opportunity to have been ignored i n a l l cases. Traditional Chipewyan placed a low, i f not nega­ tive, value upon p o l i t i c a l influence but i t i s unlikely that many persons ever achieved p o l i t i c a l influence 30 without the astute allocation of children i n marriage. The marriage system of the Chipewyan i s rather complex i n the multipli­ city of factors which must be considered i n the execution of any marriage. The search for a spouse i s conducted by the parents primarily among their kin­ dreds but with reference to the individual to be married and previous marriages within the hunting unit. The role of the two structures, the kindred and the hunting unit, overlap i n nature. Each serves to modify and limit the potenti­ a l i t i e s of the other, making each marriage the result of a balancing of many often contradictory factors. A similar overlap of functions between the kin­ dreds and the hunting unit exists i n the maintenance of marriage i n situations of stress or separation. Divorce, i n the Euro-Canadian sense of a legal negation of marriage, does not exist at Mission. Two separations within the community have become per­ manent since the initiation of study i n 1969. Both cases involved the active intervention of white Canadians and Indian Affairs. In the f i r s t case the wife has been gone from the community for six years, i n the second the wife i s now dead. Both women l e f t Mission and abandoned their husbands and children. The two marriages i n question are interesting for a number of reasons. 31 The two women are married to a man and his uncle (Figure 11) but are quite close i n actual age. This i n i t s e l f would set up a potential conflict which could be solved through the use of relative age except for the fact that the sister (F) of one of the women (B) i s also married to an uncle (FB) of her husband. In addition the personalities of the two uncles, C and E, are sig­ nificant since they lived together and were abusive to their wives. The f i r s t separation occurred between A and B i n 1970. They had married i n a rush a short time after B had been rejected by a boyfriend of long stand­ ing. I t was executed by mutual consent with the consent of a l l of the parents but against the advice of B's mother, G. B was well educated by Chipewyan standards and held a high paying job as a teaching assistant. She was i n daily contact with the teachers i n a near peer relationship as she taught the Kindergarden children basic English, a task none of the white teachers could accom­ plish. Her family background was unusual i n that her mother was very independ­ ent even though she had remarried after B's father's death. A, the husband of B, was poorly educated and quite traditional i n his outlook. He was interested i n a mixed village and bush l i f e and was l i t t l e interested i n Canadian culture except for the technological products he could obtain from i t . His expectation of a wife was that she would be a traditional woman, skilled i n sewing and bush living. Instead he found himself with a wife who was interested i n Canadian culture, disparaging towards bush l i f e , steadily employed i n the village, and earning the second highest income i n the community.

62

Figure 11

The

separations

G

D

C

7 B

A

6

3

E

F

2

63 In some ways their marital problems are symbolic of male-female relations during the period 1969 - 1973. The men had l i t t l e chance of employment i n the village and l i t t l e commitment to i t while the women were highly committed to the village as a way of l i f e . Among the unmarried people this was expressed in disparaging comments towards the opposite sex and the contraction of few marriages. The developing hostility between A and B was expressed i n painful periods of bush l i f e during the summers and increasing incidents of i n f i d e l i t y between the two including a rather dramatic period of a few weeks when A had an open affair with an unmarried woman. In 1969-70 the teachers began to play an i n ­ creasing role i n the relations of A and B. Responding to B's s t o r i e s with sympathy they offered her advice from their perspective. As they saw i t , there was no reason to tolerate such abuse and they urged her to leave her husband (even though they were a l l Catholic, that being a condition of employment at the Mission school). During this period B must have been influenced by the treat­ ment of her sister, F, and D, both of whom were badly abused by their husbands. 32

In the spring of 1970 B separated from her husband and went to Discha. This separation was very d i f f i c u l t for her. She remained i n Discha for a short period during which she ended up i n an abortive love-making session with a Hudson's Bay Company employee. In a state of distress she l e f t his residence and went to the R.C.M.P. charging him with rape. Her accusation resulted i n his arrest late at night and a night i n j a i l . The actions of the R.C.M.P. and the other white agents can only be interpreted i n light of the Byzantine p o l i ­ tics of the Discha white community which we are unable to consider here. The charges were dropped shortly but these events created a considerable hassle and quite a b i t of grief for him. B was then assisted by Indian Affairs to relocate and ultimately settled in Prince Albert. She has not returned to Mission. The six children of the marriage were dispersed among the relatives of A and eventually some were re­ moved to foster homes. A few years later A began to cohabit with a woman at Mission but, as the church does not recognize divorce, she was banned from the church and the liaison broke up under pressure from the priest. The events surrounding the separation of A and B were topics of gossip throughout this period. The community was i n i t i a l l y divided i n i t s opinion towards the two people. A, as a man who did not beat his wife excessively and who worked hard at trapping, was well regarded i n the village but B had a high degree of sup­ port as she also worked for the children. In the early period of the disputes B was generally judged the better of the two largely because of A's obvious infidelity and gambling. However when the separation occurred the public sentiment turned not so much to A as against B. Her employment and aspirations attracted negative attention as 'smart' (uppity, imitating Euro-Canadians), she was accused of trying to be white. When she abandoned her children and husband public sentiment turned strongly against her. Instead of the usual joking and mocking that are characteristic of Chipewyan gossip she became a sub­ ject of vituperation. The second separation at Mission that became permanent stems from different immediate causes but also involved a marriage between a relatively educated woman and a poorly educated man whose only s k i l l s were those of bush l i f e . In this case, the marriage of C and D i n Figure 11, the husband had aspirations of economic success through making a "quick buck". C knew of only two ways to make his quick buck: poisoning fur bearers - especially wolves - and prospect-

64 ing. Unfortunately he knew nothing of prospecting except that "good rock" had gold i n i t . He was constantly carrying around samples of "good rock" to be assayed i f anyone would furnish the money for or perform the analysis. This activity was ridiculed by the Mission community. His aspirations of success through wolf poisoning were derived from the economic success of Fred Riddle, a white ex-government poisoner who generated an ample income from his ecological­ l y devastating and now i l l e g a l poisoning. C's only claim to this activity was that he wanted i t and i t was not right for Riddle to make a l l that money when C did not make any. C's economic failures were compounded by a serious drinking problem, an acute case of laziness, and a violent temper that found expression i n savage bouts of wife beating. Wife beating i s not unusual among the Chipewyan and i s usually associated with gossip about the wife's f i d e l i t y . I t i s sometimes pro­ voked by Chipewyan women as proof of their husband's interest i n them and a rather general association of attention and care i n interpersonal emotional re­ lationships with pain and abuse i n those relationships. This association i s clearly and directly related to Chipewyan child rearing practices and the Chipe­ wyan variant of the "Northern Athapaskan Personality". The association i s real but the practice i s subject to both cultural limits and individual toler­ ances. C exceeded these limits by a wide margin. D was beaten frequently and severely, requiring hospitalization several times a year. I t seemed more normal to see her with lacerations and black eyes than to see her without such marks of abuse. C, D, E, and F formed, with their children, a hunting unit when i n the bush but this particular hunting unit was relatively unstable and made no attempt to function as a unit i n the village. The hunting unit depended p r i ­ marily upon the efforts of E who was a good trapper and a reasonable hunter. C devoted most of his attention i n the bush to preparing home-brew and drinking. In effect C was attached to E i n a symbiotic relationship i n which E did the work and paid the b i l l s while C provided D as a subject of mutual abuse, the source of woman's work, and apparently as an unwilling sexual partner for E. E's wife (F) was suffering mental disorders that kept her hospitalized throughout a l l but one short stretch of the study period. She returned to Mission for a short period during the middle of the study period. She was sent as a discharged patient and provided with medication. For some reason she failed to remain on the medication. E shared some of the characteristics of C and though he did not beat her (F) the way D was beaten he did keep her under constant pressure with threats of beatings and accusations of adultery. Most of her problems, however, stemmed from the remainder of the community though the stress of her domestic l i f e was high. Mission i s tolerant of a wide range of deviant social behavior as long as that behavior i s accompanied by competence i n adult economic activities. The conmunity i s exceedingly intolerant of perceived insanity, physical disfigura­ tion, or disorders that prevent an individual from performing an adult economic role. F was perceived as insane by the community and was constantly mocked, jeered at, teased, called ejuna (crazy), and made the subject of jokes and phys­ i c a l abuse by the village children (e.g. throwing stones at her). In a short time she was unable to control herself under this pressure and she was returned to hospital care outside the community.

65 The pressure upon D increased from 1970 - 1972 and culirunated in three separate events during that period that led her to abandon her husband, child­ ren, and Mission. In 1970 C, i n a drunken f i t , beat and stripped D after ac­ cusing her (apparently falsely) of adultery. He took her by her hair and drag­ ged her out of the cabin around the paths of Mission, shouting curses at her, before abandoning her i n the snow and returning home. Fortunately the tempera­ ture was only -20°F so no serious frostbite developed but she did require hos­ pitalization for a short period. In 1971-72 C beat his wife so severely that she was sent to the hospital i n Gold Town. Upon her return a few weeks later he became drunk on the liquor she brought him and, after accusing her of i n f i ­ delity during her recuperation, beat her so severely that she was returned to the hospital i n Gold Town. The beating occurred the night of her return to Mission from the hospitalization required for the f i r s t beating. D delayed her return to Mission a few weeks after the second beating but did return. The R.C.M.P. were well aware of C's actions towards his wife but had no effective usable sanctions. J a i l terms simply aggravated C and became the cause of further beatings of D. Fines had no deterrent power and placed more of a strain on C's relatives than on C. 33 Certainly aware that they had a potential murder case on their hands, the R.C.M.P. began to advise D to leave Mission and made informal offers of assistance. C took advantage of these offers of assistance and separated from her husband. She remained i n Discha and at the f i s h camp between the two settle­ ments where she worked for awhile before leaving for Prince Albert. She tried to return to her husband one more time a few years later but he again beat her. She l e f t for La Ronge where she died of a heart attack a short time later, apparently partly resulting from the alcoholism she acquired i n Prince Albert. These two separations are significant illustrations of the power of Chipewyan ideas about marriage and the extent to which people w i l l tolerate abuse within a marriage before breaking away from i t . Both separations re­ quired the active intervention of white Canadians as well as the assistance and funding of the agencies they represented. The white community and the associated government agencies do not intervene i n the majority of circumstances and certainly did not intervene prior to the beginning of the formation of permanent settlements i n the early 1950s. Prior to the advent of these agencies separations did occur but the character of the separations was different. Most marital separations are temporary, resulting from an excessive dis­ play of hostility, particularly physical hostility, between the spouses. The separations can result from an active role (i.e. leaving) or a passive role (i.e. being thrown out) . They are rarely more than a few days in length and are most noticeable when women leave. A great many temporary separations may occur, and be unnoticed, when men depart for hunting trips, etc. to avoid a marital dispute. This biases the presentation here as these separations into the bush would pass unnoticed by myself and most, i f not a l l , of the community. When a couple separate they receive support from their kin but only for a short period of time. Pressure from the comitunity at large, principally through jokes raised i n gossip, begins to force the couple back together. Women are particularly subject to this pressure when they leave their husbands as their parents w i l l only care for them for a short period. After this short period of reaction to the immediate affront their parents w i l l expel them, i f necessary

66 by force. This requires the woman to either return to her husband or make alternate living arrangements. This i s d i f f i c u l t as their kin are unlikely to provide support, and risk the womans' parents i r e , once the woman has been expelled. There has been one instance of separation that I am aware of that was not instigated by the spouses. The marriage i n question has been pathological. The husband was at one point in time the father of two as yet unborn children, one at Lake End and the other at Ga Lake. These pregnancies occurred within 18 months of the death of two of his own children under suspicious circum­ stances, one sufficiently suspicious to lead to a t r i a l for child neglect lead­ ing to death. (He was acquitted on the basis of the cause of death being v i r a l pneumonia). He had beaten his wife repeatedly and severely throughout their marriage and had beaten his father-in-law on several occasions, one such beat­ ing leading to a six month j a i l term. After one series of beatings administered to his wife, followed by his departure from town, the wife's father came to her house and took her to his home. When the woman's husband returned her father refused to allow his daugh­ ter to return to her husband. The woman was, and i s , t e r r i f i e d of her husband. Her desire to return was motivated by fear rather than duty or love. The hus­ band began to seek ways of regaining his wife. He attempted to catch her out­ side but could not as she did not leave the house. He tried to persuade the g i r l to return by talking to her f a t h e r but the father refused to allow her to leave. Eventually the husband came to the house when his father-in-law was out and told her to pack and return with him. The father-in-law was informed of this and returned prior to their departure but the son-in-law again threat­ ened violence and was able to depart with his wife. 34

35

The father-in-law was i n a weak position as he was unable to mobilize any kinsman (Figure 12). He was not physically strong himself (the result of the otter referred to i n footnote 35), reputedly suffering from stomach cancer, and his two sons (soon to die i n a boating accident caused by the otter) were too young to assist him. Because of his weakness he no longer spent time in the bush and belonged to no hunting unit. His brother was unable or unwilling to assist him and he had no other available kinsman. This incident may be nothing more than a gamble by a lonely man to attain at least reasonable treatment for his daughter but i t may also indicate other facts about marriage. Nuclear families, and the hunting units in which they are enmeshed, acted as exogamous wife-exchanging units (see Appendix I I ) . Even i f the exchanges were not systematic i n terms of reciprocity i t seems unlikely that they surrendered a l l rights over the women they give i n marriage. At the minimum they retain the right of adoption of one of the woman's children and the right to reside with the woman i n their old age. I t seems that they also retain the right to recover the woman given i n marriage under special circum­ stances, of which abuse may be only one, and terminate that marriage. The Chipewyan at Mission f e l t that ego was justified i n recovering his daughter and supported him though they did not physically intervene. Unless the treatment of ego's daughter was beyond a l l their experience, which certain­ ly does not seem to be the case, this implies that the wife-giving unit retained the right to recover the daughter. In the period prior to the Roman Catholic Church's intrusion into Chipewyan lives this right may have been frequently

Figure 12

Recovery of a wife

(+)

Ego

(+) given to grandmother

2 adult(+)

1 adult(+)

(+)

(+)

(+)

68 exercised and may have acted as a powerful constraint upon the abuse of women. Further, the right to recover the daughter indicates something about the nature of the relations between hunting units. Termination of a marriage by retrieving the woman given would seem to terminate the kin relations between the wife giving units. (This i s not the case when one of the spouses dies) . Such a voluntary termination would probably leave i l l feelings between the two wife exchanging units but even i f i t did not create conflict of sentiments i t i s unlikely that the two wife exchanging units could maintain close or even friendly relations. When the factors of polygyny and high adult death rate from accident and disease are taken into account i t seems certain that the preChristian period36 would be characterized by a series of relatively short a l ­ liances that were constantly reforming to take account of the demographic changes i n the populations of the wife-exchanging units as well as sentimental, p o l i t i c a l , and social factors. Since the influence of Western institutions and agencies has been one of slow elimination of Chipewyan control over significant areas of their l i f e (e.g. marriage, economics) and the introduction of rigid systems i n place of flexible systems, i t seems only reasonable to assume that the pre-Christian marriage system was more flexible and responsive to Chipewyan needs37 than i s the current system. The current system, which i s a mixture of traditional Chipewyan custom and Chipewyan adaptations of Western customs, i s however s t i l l flexible and capable of serving the requirements of the culture.

S

N = NEWHOUSE

Figure 13.

Map of Mission in 1970 with the name of the head of the household.

70

31 Joe Cheba

59

Phillipe Sayazie

2 Harry Sandy Point

32 Moise Skull

60

Nicola Laban

3

Jules Eckodh

33 Pierre Nilghe

61 August Sandy Point

4 Alex Black Lake

34 Maurice Yooya

62

5

35 Noel Laban

63 Shed

6 Paul Sandy Point

36

64

7 Pierre Sayazie

37 Fred Cook

65 William Dadzene

8 Martin Dadzene

38 Willie Broussie

66

Germaine Dadzene

9 Joe MacDonald

39 Ben Toutsaint

67

Campet Medel

40 Pierre Catholic

68

Campet Medel

1

10

Noel Sandy Point

Mike MacKenzie

Germaine Crow

Fred Toutsaint

Christine Rummy John Cook

11 /Alphonse Robillard

41

Louis Ditheda

69 Martin Broussie

12

Simon Robillard

42

Bernard Kazagan James Toutsaint

70

13

Pierre Robillard

43

John Eckockh Alec Black Lake

71 Pierre Toutsaint

14

P h i l l i p Robillard

44

Joe Beavereye

72 Modest Toutsaint

15

Johnny Medel

45

Jerome Eddibar

73

Joe Cook

16

Armand Robillard

46

John Alphonse

74

Jimmy Donnard

17

Martin Robillard

47 Moise Eckoch

75

Gabriel Cook

18

Edward Boneleye

48 Alec Piche

76

Teachers' Residences

19

Norbert Eddibar

49

77

School

20

Celestin Bigeye

50 Victor Robillard

78

Playground

21

John Yooya

51 Martin Sayazie

79

Indian Hall

22

Pierre Broussie

52

80 Nurse

23

Charlie Throussie

53 Alphosine Yooya

81

24

Noel Bouvier

54

82 H.B.C. Residence

25

Jerome Sandy Point

55 Modest Gatroux

83

H.B.C. Wharehouse

26 William Bouvier

56 Ethnographer

84

Freezer

27 Oliver Bouvier

57 Boniface Disain

85

Indian Affairs

28

unoccupied

58

86 Church

29

Louis Crow

87

Stan Robillard

30

John Laban

88

Ben Mackenzie

Louie Toutsaint

John Baptiste Leon Cook

Thomas Disain

Solomon Toutsaint

Powerhouse

APPENDIX II ADOPTION AS RECIPRCCITY 1 INTRODUCTION The Chipewyan have figured, along with other Northern Athabascans, i n a number of theoretical typologies of social organization and band level sub­ sistence i n spite of the alarming lack of ethnographic data. Only two recent studies (Van Stone 1965; Sharp 1975) provide complete kinship terminologies. This lack of the most basic information has not prevented anthropologists from developing generalizations about the Chipewyan. The Chipewyan are described as an egalitarian society of great geographic and social mobility that lacked institutionalized leaders and p o l i t i c a l offices. The Chipewyan are often described negatively i n terms of what their society lacked: p o l i t i c a l leaders, descent groups, sodalities, family hunting territories, well defined religion, and cultural distinction from their neighbours. Their only generally recogniz­ ed distinguishing feature i s the reputation for treating their women worse than any other North American Indian people. This negativism, described by Koolage (1975), has allowed a simplistic view of the Chipewyan to exist i n the literature. A view largely devoid of social dynamics and derived from inadequate fieldwork, i.e. fieldwork performed inadequately or not performed at a l l . What appears to be a culture of extreme simplicity i s actually one of considerable diversity and complexity but one i n which the complexities are subtle and significant structural variations are often hidden by surface similarities, a point that has been made elsewhere (Sharp 1975). SOCIAL STRUCTURE Two somewhat conflicting pictures of Chipewyan social structure have emerged i n the past 20 years which place principal analytical emphasis on the band. One, put forth by Steward (1955) and accepted by Service (1962) holds that the band i s the basic unit of Northern Athabascan social organization. The Chipewyan band i s presumed to have been patrilineal (patrilocal i n Service's view) and to have decayed into a composite band of unrelated persons as a re­ sult of the dislocations of the contact period. This view, which i s supported primarily by Ethno-historical evidence, I feel to be accurate for the CaribouEater Chipewyan band only as far as the lack of marriage rules i s concerned. Another view, put forward by Helm (1965, 1968, 1969) i s based upon fieldwork and Ethno-historical material and emphasizes the dynamic nature of Northern Athabascan bands, centering upon conjugal pairs and sibling-pairs as key ele­ ments within a band composed of kin related persons. Her view, applied to the Chipewyan, rightly stresses the dynamic aspect of the band of kin related per­ sons but her theory i s dependent upon kin relatedness being the binding feature of a l l Northern Athabascan bands. In our own work we have placed the analytical emphasis not upon the band but upon an unnamed restricted cognatic descent group which, after Smith (1970) , we have called the hunting unit (Sharp 1977, 1978). 2

The existence of this restricted cognatic descent group among other North71

72 ern Athabascan societies and i t s u t i l i t y as an analytical focus has not been ethnographically demonstrated, but i t s presence among the Chipewyan as the functioning corporate group does much to explain the ambiguities and conflicts of their social system when viewed from Ethnohistorical and ecological per­ spectives, (see Smith 1971, 390-461). MARRIAGE One of the primary functions of the hunting unit i s the regulation of marriage. The hunting unit, through the parents and members, allocates un­ married persons among other hunting units. This process i s a dual one. E i ­ ther parent or child may propose a marriage, but the parents have an absolute right to veto a proposed marriage and an almost absolute right to dispose of a child i n marriage. Parents of an unmarried person seek potential spouses for their children within the kinship category saze. This kinship term (which i s the man speak­ ing term for DH) i s applied to siblings' children, the children of cousins of the same generation, and grandchildren, except i n situations where the sex of the grandchild per se i s the relevant factor (Sharp 1973, 201-206). Individuals seek potential spouses among the entire domain of unmarried persons of the appropriate age and sex (excluding siblings) though the extension of the term sela to include the child of any relative of ego's generation places most mar­ riage choices within the category sela. 3

The current system of marriage rules does not support the contention of Curtis (1928) and Smith (Ms.) that the Chipewyan practiced patrilateral crosscousin marriage. As parallel cousin—cross-cousin distinctions are apparently rare among the Chipewyan (Sharp, 1975), the preferential practice of patri­ lateral cross-cousin marriage seems to be impossible. RECIPROCITY The positing of patrilateral cross-cousin marriage as the Chipewyan mar­ riage system, though not supported by contemporary data, i s significant as i t demonstrates the subtlety of reciprocity i n Chipewyan society and a manner i n which patterns of reciprocity can develop i n a bilateral system. In a b r i l ­ liant insight Eggan (1955) argued that what appeared to be patrilateral crosscousin marriage among the Chipewyan was i n fact a customary practice of wid­ owers moving i n with their daughters when they become too old to maintain a household. In effect, the a l l i e d corporate groups were exchanging unmarried women and elderly men. Patrilateral cross-cousin marriage cannot serve as the basis for this practice as i t requires a minimum of three exchanging groups i n order to work i n a systemic manner. Published reports of fieldwork among the Chipewyan do not support the contention that such wife exchanging groups exist and some (Sharp, 1973, 1975, 1977) preclude the possibility of marriage between hunting units i n alternate generations as incestuous. The possibility of multiple marriages between hunting units i n a single generation, though a structural feature that varies between settlements of Chipewyan, i s not simultaneous i n any case. Though patrilateral cross-cousin marriage cannot serve as the basis

73 of reciprocity in the bilateral system of the Chipewyan, Eggan's 1955 argu­ ment does raise an issue of some theoretical concern. Needham (1962:11) asserts of Levi-Strauss that "exchange i s the universal form of marriage" and that Levi-Strauss "envisages the possibility of the notion of 'exchange' being usefully applicable i n the analysis of non-prescriptive marriage". Since the publication of The Gift (Mauss 1967) i n 1925 i t i s d i f f i c u l t to imagine the phenomena of reciprocity and exchange not applying to so fundamental an area of human society as marriage. If marriage i s an exchange, then reciprocity must be served. But must reciprocity for an unmarried woman be served only by the return of an unmarried woman? The central notion of a g i f t i s i t s ambiguity, and the exchange of women may involve things other than women i n order to create equivalence. Anthropologists are familiar with assymetric marriage systems, the notion of women as tribute, as well as marriage patterns i n some caste-like systems that show how women may be exchanged i n an assymetric manner with status, p o l i ­ t i c a l power, or other considerations providing reciprocity. In societies like the Chipewyan, where there i s no regularity of exchange of women (assymetric or symetric), p o l i t i c a l position, or caste to provide a counter-prestation i n exchange for the women given as wives, the identification of the mechanism that allows reciprocity to be served i n a marriage system i s harder to identify. ADOPTION AS RECIPROCITY A discussion of the theoretical implications of this issue i s not our purpose i n this paper but we shall identify one form of exchange i n Chipewyan society that could act as a mechanism of reciprocity and redress the imbalance inherent i n a cognatic system. This institution of reciprocity i s a particular form of adoption that occurs only between generations of hunting units a l l i e d by marriage. The recruitment and operation of the Chipewyan hunting unit i s described elsewhere (Sharp 1973, this volume) but we shall briefly recount some of i t s features here. Membership in a hunting unit i s activated by residence but the right of membership i s determined by birth, marriage, or parenting a member of a hunting unit. Men who have l e f t their natal hunting unit have an absolute right to return to i t and bring their families with them. Women's rights i n their natal hunting unit are restricted as their absolute right to return i s lost at the time of their marriage. As long as the husband survives his right to the woman must be recognized. The woman may not withdraw from the marriage and return to her natal hunting unit as i t must eventually expel her i n support of her husband's claim on her. The effect of the restriction of membership - but not the right of membership - i n a hunting unit to residents as well as the specific loss of rights at marriage by a woman has consequences for the reciprocity system. One of the hunting units that gives a spouse i n marriage w i l l lose that member and this loss cannot be 'repayed' by a marriage i n the next generation as such a marriage i s incestuous. Repayment i n the third generation remains a possi­ b i l i t y by the native categories but i s prohibited by the marriage rules of the Roman Catholic Church. In any case only these generations of adults are socially significant and a delay of reciprocity into later generations

74 i s not satisfactory i n a society that does not remember the names of the dead, l e t alone their debts of reciprocity. The Chipewyan have developed a mechanism to provide reciprocity without waiting for marriage i n subsequent generations. Both sets of grandparents have the right to request a child of the marriage, however, the rights of the mother's parents are stronger and the nature of the resulting adoption i s different i n each case. The grandparents who are members of the same hunting unit, i . e . co-resident, adopt a child on a s t r i c t l y temporary basis and the child continues to recognize i t s parents as i t s parents and to address them by the appropriate kinship terms (seta F, ena M). When the grandparents are not hunting unit members, i . e . not co-resident, as i s normally the case with the wife's parents, the adoption can take on a different character. Although most adoptions are temporary some become per­ manent and last as long as the grandparents live or maintain a separate house­ hold. In these infrequent adoptions, which depend upon the desire for a child, the maintenance of a separate household, and the availability of a child i n addition to the possession of the right to a child, the adopted child i s terminologically elevated one generation. The adopted child then addresses i t s grandparents (setsuna, MM, FM; setseia MF, FF) by the parental terms and ad­ dresses i t s biological parents by name or rarely, by sibling terms. Though adoptions of this type do not allow the creation of a systemic exchange of women between hunting units because of the Chipewyan categori­ zation of marriage across generations as incestuous they do provide direct reciprocity to the giving hunting unit for the woman lost i n marriage. The practice i n effect denies the generational difference between hunting units by replacing an adult with a child. Death however, can rarely be denied and at the passing of the grandparents the child returns to i t s parents. Extension of the exchange into a cycle i s precluded by the removal of the grandparents from the exchange system at their death. The return of the child to i t s parents provides reciprocity for i t s own adoption just as the adoption pro­ vided reciprocity for the child's mother. Adoptions of the type described are very rare and are d i f f i c u l t to isolate since adoption with generational elevation of the adopted child occurs for other reasons. Nevertheless, the existence of this type of adoption - apart from i t s frequency - i s important as i t provides a means of reciprocity i n a marriage system where specific reciprocity was not thought possible. SUMMARY We have attempted i n this brief paper to make three limited points about Chipewyan society which may be of relevance i n the study of other bilateral systems: 1) even bilateral systems may contain descent groups that can be analyzed as exchangers of women; 2) reciprocity, though i t can be delayed, must be satisfied i n some manner; and 3) reciprocity for a woman given i n marriage can be satisfied through the exchange of things other than women. The Chipewyan appear to have developed a number of mechanisms, including moving i n with a son-in-law i n old age and the process of adoption coupled with genera­ tional elevation of the adopted child, that allow women given i n marriage to be exchanged for things other than women. We should hope that the limited data and analysis presented here would stimulate further investigation into the phenomenon of adoption i n other Northern Athabascan societies.

75 FOOTNOTES 1.

The fieldwork on which this article i s based was supported by N.I.M.H. fellowship and f i e l d research grant (No. IFOIMH 43470-01A1).

2.

This term hunting unit i s used by Bone, Shannon, and Raby (1973, 62-63) to designate an extended family unit, but their description of the hunting unit as, "While this tent unit was the smallest organization of the Chipewyan society, i t could be expanded as the need arose into an extended family; or temporary union with other families may occur as a loosely organized patriarchic tribe" indicates that they have no conception of the hunting unit as a corporate group or the means by which i t i s structured.

3.

On the basis of age-grading i n the kinship system a l l potential spouses are cousins (seta). December 1975

76 REFERENCES Bone, Shannon, Raby

The Chipewyan of the Stony Rapids Region, Mawdsley Memoir No. 1, Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

Curtis, E.S. 1928

The North American Indian, Vol. 18, Plimton Press, Norwood, (cited from Helm 1960).

Eggan, F. 1955

Social /Anthropology: Methods and Results, Social Anthropology of North American Tribes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Helm, J . 1965

Bilaterality i n the Socio-Territorial Organization of the Arctic Drainage Dene, Ethnology 4, pp. 361-384.

1968

The Nature of Dogrib Socio-Territorial Groups, Man the Hunter, Lee, R.B. and De Vore, I., ed., Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago.

1969

A Method of Statistical Analysis of Primary Relative Bonds i n Community Composition, National Museums of Canada Bulletin 288, Contributions to Anthropology : Band Societies.

Koolage, 1975

W.W.

Conceptual Negativism i n Chipewyan Ethnology, Anthropologica, N.S. Vol. XVII, No. 1, pp. 45-60. Systems of Highland Burma, Beacon Press,

Leach, E.B. 1964

Political Boston.

MacNeish, J.H. 1960

Kin Terms of Arctic Drainage Dene: Hare, Slavery, Chipewyan, American Anthropologist, Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 279-295.

Mauss, M. 1967

The Gift,

W.W.

Needham, R. 1962

Structure Chicago.

and Sentiment, University of Chicago Press,

Service, E.R. 1962

Primitive

Social

Sharp, H.S. 1973

The Kinship System of the Black Lake Chipewyan, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University.

1975

Introducing the Sororate to a Northern Saskatchewan Chipewyan Village, Ethnology XIV, No. 1, pp. 71-82.

1977

The Chipewyan Hunting Unit, American Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 25-34.

1978

Comparative Ethnology of the Wolf and the Chipewyan,

Norton, New York.

Organization,

Random House, New York.

Ethnologist

77 Wolf and Man: Evolution in Academic Press, New York.

Parallel,

Smith, J.G.E. 1970

The Chipewyan Hunting Group i n a Village Context, Western Canadian Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 2.

m.s.

The Emergence of the Micro-Urban Village Among the Caribou Eater Chipewyan, unpublished manuscript.

1975

The Ecological Basis of Chipewyan Socio-Territorial Organization, Proceedings : Northern Athapaskan Conference. A.M. Clark, ed. National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Vol. 2, pp. 390-461.

Steward, J.H. 1955

Theory of Culture Urbana.

Van Stone, J . 1965

The Changing Culture of the Snowdrift Chipewyan, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 209.

Change, University of I l l i n o i s ,

APPENDIX III FUDGING THE SYSTEM

We have repeatedly stated that the Chipewyan kinship system i s extremely flexible through i t s use of multiple means of categorization and through the extension and disextension of categories. These manipulations of the system are a v i t a l aspect of i t s operation but i t may be d i f f i c u l t for the reader to judge the legitimacy of our statements without direct data. We shall provide a partial analysis of a number of genealogies i n this section i n order to show how the principles discussed i n the earlier part of this work are actually used. The mechanisms for fudging the system are directed to the resolution of conflict and are egocentric i n their application. The rules are social and general throughout the system but they are used by individuals i n specific c i r ­ cumstances to solve specific problems. Within a single genealogy i t i s often possible to find numerous examples of shifts of various kinds. The f i r s t genealogy, John Labor's, provides a number of examples of these shifts. This genealogy i s reasonably typical i n terms of depth and extension. It does not represent the limit of depth or width obtainable by an investigator but i t does represent the depth and width obtainable from a single informant. Some known genealogical connections are dropped by the informants (e.g. ego's e BWMB). We can only presume that these are disextensions of the kinship termino­ logy and conform to real social patterns of interaction. The genealogy i s also typical i n the ambiguity of the informant's knowledge of small children (the analysist has excluded some known children of ego). The ambiguity derives from several sources. Death (e.g. B), and the lack of relevance of small children (ages from 21 surviving children as of 1970) and unmarried adults are two sources of ambiguity. Informants can often name many of these children by name (rarely a l l of them) but do not apply specific kin terms (except the generic saze) or worry about the identity of them until they become socially relevant to ego for some reason. The ambiguity of ego's genealogical knowledge i s apparent vertically up­ wards as well as downwards. John was unable to provide any information about his grandparents' families other than a name for his FM(D). (It i s not clear whether this name i s English or Chipewyan). He was unable to associate his maternal grandparents with either a place identification or a group identifica­ tion. The only information he was able to venture about his paternal grand­ parents (C) was that they were Mission people rather than outsiders (i.e. immi­ grants from another regional band.) I t i s not safe to equate knowledge displayed to the anthropologist with knowledge possessed by the informant but I had the informant questioned by other native informants on some of these points at other times and they report­ ed no additional information. Unless there are prohibitions upon revealing i n ­ formation about ancestors that I am not aware of, I must assume that the limits of knowledge obtained by me correspond to the limits of information acted upon i f not the limits of information actually known by the informant.

78

Figure

Unknown

14

John Labor's genaeology

Unknown Ambrose

Setseio

Pierre

Jeromie

(Gombelas) 74 (Sea)

45

.53

A Setsuna

72

Sela

= o

Saze

+ Saze

Sela F

Sela

Q

Sela

.62

Sea

70

63

43

71

71

Sela

Sela

Sela

Sela

J

G

H

K

55

Se'a Sela L

52

1

35

60

29

il

,30

Saze Selea S

Seri

.26

57 Ego

.53

50 Seri

45

N

24

Setsu

B

32 Saze

Dec. 1972

42 Sela

M

Medal

Se'a

27

66

Sela Sela O

P

80 The utilization of relative age i s apparent i n a number of the places i n the genealogy as given by John Labor. I t i s also possible to see how known genealogical connections can be overridden by the application of relative age at other places i n the pattern of kin term application. I assume that there i s a tendency to reduce cognitive dissonance within the kinship network and that shifts that occur at one place tend to be reflected i n category shifts at other places. The affinal connections between ego to his wife's parents (F) and his wife's father and brothers (G and É) illustrate this point nicely. I was unable to obtain the age of F and F's wife at the time of their deaths (they died before 1968) but ego classifies them as sela. This term i s given by ego after their death so i t may not be an accurate reflection of what he actually called them but i t i s a significant shift as WF(F) should be se'a rather than sela and WM should be setsu rather than sela. Ego i n effect drops F and his wife down one generation and denies the affinal connection. This i s puzzling since ego's father's brother's daughter (K) i s maintained as sela at age 71 (ego's age plus 14 years) while K's husband, L, i s elevated a generation to se 'a (as FBDH he should be sela) even though he i s also 71 years old. Category shifting of persons connected by marriage, i s more frequent than category shifting of per­ sons connected by descent but since K's siblings and their spouses (M, N, O, P) are neither shifted or dropped (the spouses) this does not seem to be a rea­ sonable explanation, especially since I and J (ego's wife's brother's wife's parents) are subjected to a partial category shift (i.e. I and J are placed i n different generations). The shifting downward of F and his wife i s explicable since they, along with G and H, stand i n a dual relationship to ego. F i s both wife's father and ego's father's brother's wife's sister's son (FBWZS). This tenuous genealogical connection provides a justification for classing F, G and H as members of ego's generation and this i s what i s done not because of F but because G and H are both acknowledged magic men and G i s the most important (powerful) magic man i n the area. In this case the advantages of a same generational relationship of equality are greater than a cross-generational relationship of inequality (and junior status) even though the genealogical relationship involves a greater structural distance. This type of maneuvering i s typical but must be placed against the opposite category of maneuvering: a disextension of kinship terms. The woman A, who i s ego's brother's wife's mother i s categorized as grandmother, setsuna, because of her age yet her second husband's f i r s t wife's brother, Q, i s categorized as sela. Here the connection by marriage f a i l s to override the difference i n relative age and the generational structure i s ignored. This relationship lacks the advan­ tages of the relationship with G and H so that A's brother, not shown on the chart, i s not considered a relative by ego even though ego i s addressed as sezeni by him and ego i s only four years younger. The man as well as A are immigrants and A's brother uses the term sezeni (friend) i n the same manner as original dialect speakers use the term sela i n same sex - same age relationships. Although relative age i s most frequently used as a leveling device we do not wish to give the impression that i t i s only used to eliminate differences. It can also serve i t s function of covering over social ambiguities by creating distinctions between persons. This i s shown by ego's term utilization to R and S. S i s ego's eldest daugher's husband. At age 35 he i s categorized as saze

81 by ego and this categorization f i t s the marriage structured link (saze [m.s.] = DH) as well as the generational use of saze. S's father R (ego's daughter's husband's father) i s seventy-three years old and has given up active exploita­ tion of the bush. Here the age difference overrides the appropriate category of seri (m.s.) and ego categorizes R as se'a. Relative age thus creates a further social distance between ego and R by increasing the distance i n relation­ ship rather than reducing i t . I t i s interesting to note that R calls ego sunaras, the male grandchild term instead of saze. This pattern i s also applied to his other married daughter's husband (neither are on the chart). This usage i s somewhat confusing as i t places ego i n the generation below R's son, ego's saze. Unless i t represents the remnants of some strange system of assymetric ranking of wife givers, an equation of saze with sunaras and saraze (the sex specific grandchild terms), or a completely idiosyncratic kin term usage we must attribute i t to the fact that R i s also an immigrant from Brochet and i s s t i l l using terms i n accordance with how he learned them there before he moved into the Mission band area fifty-seven years ago. The d i f f i ­ culty here i s the question of the origin of the usage which i s hard to explain, rather than the functions of the variant forms of kin terminology within the Mission band which we regard as easily explicable i n terms of boundary mainte­ nance of sub-groups and families. The next genealogy we shall examine, that of Moise Cripple, i s interesting not so much as an exercise i n the use of kinship terminology among the Chipewyan but as an exercise i n the disuse of kinship among the Chipewyan. Moise was a very strong and powerful man i n his youth. He had made a considerable reputa­ tion for himself as a hunter and trapper i n addition to one as a fighter. Devoted to a bush l i f e he and his father remain among the most faithful to that way of l i f e . As late as 1975 they were i n the bush up to eleven months a year. The keystone of Moise's reputation has been his independence and active pursuit of the bush l i f e . This aspect of his reputation became even more important to him after a bout with polio as a young man. I t i s a miracle that he survived at a l l but the disease l e f t him with a slight limp and a slurring of his speech. After his recovery he was unable to maintain his reputation for strength and toughness by fighting i n the village and turned even more to a bush l i f e . Ego's marriage to B was arranged against the wishes of B (she had been hospitalized for T.B. at 14 and only returned to her family a few months before at the age of 16) who f e l t she was too young to be married. As part of ego's axmitment to a traditional way of l i f e he has consist­ ently refused his wife freedom in even small ways such as wearing pants. Chipewyan custom was for married women to wear dresses with heavy opague sup­ port hose while unmarried women wore pants, reserving dresses for special oc­ casions such as mass at Christmas. This pattern was just being broken i n 1969 and by 1975 was no longer followed by women under forty. Even though the chart shows seven surviving children i n 1972 this figure i s incorrect. Ego was un­ able to give an accurate number and name a l l his children. Ego desired the larg­ est possible family and by 1976 ego's wife had 12 children - without any twins and was pregnant. The strain of child bearing was a constant source of d i f f i ­ culty between ego and his wife but she i s unable to force a change i n his a t t i ­ tude and has to do without birth control. Moise's independence shews i n a number of ways i n the genealogical chart

F i g u r e 15 Moise Baptiste

Cripple's Genaeology

Ellen

Gis'kala

B John Se'a

C

D

Campet

E

F I G Roderick Se'a

Alec Se'a

+ 4 under age 14

Unknown but all from F o n d - d u - L a c and now dead

Se'a

Setsu L

Mathew

P S a z e Saze J

Leon Martin S e l a Sela

Ego

g o t number of c h i l d r e n wrong a n d was unable to n a m e

Dec. 1972

them

B Seri

Seri Setsu Seri K

under under 5 4 Name Name ref. "bidor Saze biskenna Saze" Sunaraze No term of N Address

M

7

6

Name Setsu When grown O

Seri

83 obtained from him. This chart i s quite narrow i n width, not as a result of Moise's lack of relatives but because of his unconcern with them. A on the chart, for example, i s the same women that i s A on the previous chart. Her family and siblings are not recognized as kin by Moise even though he knew of their existence and the genealogical connections between them and himself. The same feature shows in the lack of terms applied to C, E, and G, the wives of his father's brothers (B,C,F). These women would have had a kinship term applied to them i f I had questioned him but on his own he chose not to apply terms to them. The same phenomena can be seen i n the treatment of his mother's family (H and I) . Moise knew that they were alive during his lifetime but as they lived at Lake End they were of no concern to him. This i s more than sim­ ply the fact that they were dead as he was unable to identify his grandmother. (I, MM) i n any manner other than the term setsuna. This genealogy i s a more accurate reflection of Moise's thinking than the previous one i s of John's i n that I did not lead Moise into giving terms for relatives I already knew about but developed this from his identification of persons as relatives during the interview session. It i s obvious from the chart, as well as from the interview, that Moise i s not very interested i n kinship, intellectually or otherwise. How­ ever, there are patterns i n his disinterest. Far more males than females were identified by kinship terms or by name. In fact a l l females given kinship terms are the result of the Ethnographer's or the interpreter's questions (K was the interpreter). Moise also prefers names to kinship terms as a means of reference - I am not able to comment on his use of terms of address to these people - and indi­ cated i n his conversation a consistent tendency to deny the use of kinship terms to small children and other persons he did not regard as adults or otherwise of significant social concern (J, N, 0, P). His term usage, while i t presents us with a minimal set of kinship term usage, also exhibits the Chipewyan insistence upon treating kinship as something to be used. Interestingly, he i s the only informant to carry the term setsu (m.s.) into the 1st generation descending. The third genealogy we present here i s an extension of the genealogy of Fred, Louie, and Jimmy. This genealogy i s but a partial one as many lines of descent from ego's (Fred) father's brothers are not developed. We shall develop this genealogy i n order to make two points: (1) the tendency for marriage to occur among the offspring of close relatives, (closer than the church would knowingly allow) and (2) that the degree of interconnectedness of kin i s so great that the maintenance of hunting unit identity i s not feasible in a situa­ tion of high residential density. The f i r s t point i s illustrated i n four marriages: (1) ego's elder broth­ er's marriage, (2) ego's eldest brother's eldest son's marriage, (3) ego's father's elder sister's daughter's son's marriage and (4) ego's father's younger sister's illegitimate son. The third marriage i s the easiest to discuss and we shall begin with i t . The relationship between the couple i s that of (male) mother's mother's brother's son's daughter (MMBSD) to (female) father's father's sister's daugh­ ter's son (FFZDS). This marriage i s too close by the rules of the church and was opposed by B. After two children were born of the relationship and given to B to raise she relented and gave assent to the marriage. In i t s e l f there i s nothing too unusual about the marriage but i t shows that marriages initiated by young people themselves do f a l l among close relatives.

Figure 16

Freds

Genaeology

from Wollaston paul

57

D

Edouard

(3)

(2)

Thomas of

(1)

G

C

Chap 3

Se'a

Sela Sela E

[T U]

Fred

65 Sela

Sela

B

Sela F

of figure 1] 4 Saze

(+)

1

(+)

Ego

[7] [3] [2]

1

2

[+5]

2

(infanticide)

4 —

[2]

85 The other three marriages f a l l into a different pattern as at least one of them (1) was forced while another (2) occurred very rapidly - as discussed i n Chapter 4. I have no information as to the nature of the contracting of the fourth marriage. Marriage (1) and (2) are between sisters who married a man and his father's brother but their mother was married to the father's brother (1) and grandfather's brother (2) prior to their birth. The genealogical rela­ tionship i n marriage ( 1) i s (male) FBWD to (female) MHBS and i n marriage (2) i s (male) FFBWD to (female) MHBSS. Marriage (4) i s between the g i r l ' s father's brother's daughter and her f i r s t husband's sister's son. This cluster of marriages between two brother's children and the children (and one grandchild) of another set of siblings i s f a i r l y typical except for the sharing of a spouse between the two sibling groups. I t i s no longer pos­ sible to obtain an accurate picture of the motivations that prompted these marriages but i t i s noticeable that C and D do not belong to a common hunting unit now and that the other sibling group s p l i t apart into separate hunting units during the 1930s or earlier, long before the contraction of the marriages. In the kin usages I collected from ego the use of relative age i s used to intensify relationships by lowering members of structurally ascending generations into ego's generation although there are cases where relative age i s ignored in order to preserve a structurally closer relationship. Ego applies the term sela to E even though they are about a decade apart i n age and E's sister i s married to ego's father's brother. In fact the two men generally trap within a hundred miles of each other and saw each other several times a season. Ego occasionally borrowed supplies from E and the closer relationship of equality was advantageous to him. E rarely used a kinship term towards ego and when he did i t was the term saze. E was not unfavorably disposed to ego but E's wife resented ego's borrowing. Ego used the structural term sela towards F, his father's sister's daugh­ ter's husband (also his father's sister's son's daughter's husband's father). The two men were not close but F lived i n Discha and was the clerk at the Hudson's Bay Co. store there for over forty years. F's home was a convenient place to v i s i t and wait for transportation when ego was i n Discha. A less utilitarian reason for ego's application of the term sela to E and F derived from the marriage to a younger son of F to the second daughter of E (a second marriage for her). Although this marriage has been troubled, the couple had been separated for four months by February, 1977, i t was more harmonious for ego to regard both E and F sela. The second aspect of this genealogy i s the extent to which even a partial representation of the extended kinship net of any person creates such a multi­ p l i c i t y of kinship ties that i t would be impossible for the hunting unit to remain a functional unit when i t i s embedded within a large aggregation of kin. Ego and his elder brother form a hunting unit but even allowing for the t i e created by the marriage of ego's elder brother and his eldest brother's son into the same family i t i s clear that there i s no way ego and his elder brother can func­ tion as a subsistence unit except by isolating themselves from the majority of their kinsmen. Hunting units that are larger and lack the overlapping of kins­ men characteristic of ego and his elder brother would be i n an even more d i f f i ­ cult situation.

Figure

17

Buck's

Genaeology To Freds genecology figure 2 Gon

Imm from east

From Fon-du-Loc Ego

F of figure 2

H of figure 1

adopted by V now south

1

4

13

4

2

2

2

2

marriage of figure

2

1

2 2

fig.

2

87 The next genealogy we present represents an extension of the hunting unit discussed i n detail i n Chapter 3. Ego i s Buck, the head of the hunting unit, and we have included no relatives on the side of Buck's wife. They are ex­ cluded primarily for the d i f f i c u l t y of representation and partly because two of the surviving sisters i n the Mission area were married to whites while the sole brother lost a l l of his children. There are eleven surviving siblings at Isle-a-la-Crosse but there was no face to face communication between the two groups of siblings between 1933 and 1973. After 1973 there was some visiting but no significant interaction. This kinship diagram interconnects with other diagrams i n this chapter at several points. Fred's genealogy connects at per­ son G on this diagram who i s also person G on Fred's diagram; H of this figure i s also H of figure 1 and marriage three of Figure 3 i s also labelled H on this diagram. We intend to make no specific points on this material beyond showing that the hunting unit i s a structure created from a much larger matrix and to show that the actual kinship interaction involves only a small sample of the total range of kinship extensions. We encourage the reader to use the genealogies in this chapter as a contrast to the limited interaction of actual hunting units shown i n earlier sections and to see for themselves how the kindreds provide a wider network beyond the hunting unit for potential social interaction and marriage choices.

APPENDIX IV Chronology of Events at Dachen Lake

April 23

May

Arrival of Ethnographer and John at Smalltree Lake.

24

Arrival of Paul at Smalltree Lake.

26

John k i l l s f i r s t caribou at Dachen Lake (3).

28

John brings i n caribou. Talks of moving to summer camp.

1

Location for summer tents chosen by Paul and John. f i r s t k i l l of caribou (4) that are recovered.

3

Hunters working separately. John on streak of missing caribou. To date: John 3, Paul 8 (+7 on t r i p to S.T.), Buck 8. Total 26, recovered 11. John expresses concern about what Paul w i l l pay him for guiding, i f not satisfactory indicates w i l l not come here next summer.

4

Buck and John move to summer camp.

5

Ethnographer moved to summer camp. John broke streak and k i l l e d 2 caribou; wife began processing of dry meat. Paul loses 4 caribou to wolves, most of his meat i s dispersed i n the bush. Paul moves to camp.

7

'Bad' wolf k i l l e d . 'Good' wolf k i l l .

Paul's

8

Paul completes move. wife's 'theft'.

Learned of John's

9

Buck indicates intent to trap Dachen Lake i n F a l l , 1975.

11

John speculates on wolf k i l l .

12

John's smoke tent burns, Paul laughs.

13

Buck making unfavourable comparisons between Dachen and Magnificent Lake.

16

Talk of moving to Magnificent Lake at break-up. Discovery by ethnologist of manipulation by Paul to go to Dachen Lake.

17

Noticed competition with bow construction. period of make-work and boredom for men.

22

Beginning of fishing craze.

26

Tobacco c r i s i s intense, muskeg berry leaves prepared as a tobacco substitute by John. 88

Last caribou k i l l e d .

Beginning of

89 May June

July

28

Start of stories (5/29, 2/27) about John's wife.

1

Buck's wife makes muskeg berry leaf substitute.

5

7Aircraft at fish camp, work for Paul and John. Fishing craze ends. Ferd l e f t . Some tobacco arrives. Buck goes to Mission for supplies.

6

John complains about Paul as stingy, doesn't deny wife a l i t t l e stingy.

7

Tourists arrive, talk of Paul's fish camp. Paul guiding.

9

John talks about wife's lot.

Moose meat l e f t to rot by Paul.

12

Arrival of Paul's mother-in-law.

13

Buck returns with son and grandchildren to watch. Paul out to guide at Fish Lake.

24

Paul returns.

25

Paul k i l l s moose - fight over hide.

30

John withdraws and begins moose hunting. Buck's wife complains about Paul's neglect of the youngest child (a g i r l ) .

2

Paul k i l l s moose.

(Hassle with John?)

Fight over Paul's mother-in-law working hide.

15

John departs for Magnificent Lake by canoe.

16

Plane arrives.

17

R.C.M.P. aircraft looking for John.

Lee and mother leave.

18,19, 20

Abortive attempt to catch John by Ethnographer and Paul.

August 11

Buck and Ethnographer move families to Magnificent Lake.

NOTES 1.

We are speaking here of hunting units, social groupings that contain both sexes and small children. We have not analyzed the applicability of this statement for single sex groupinqs such as the "task groups" outlined i n Helm's, "The Nature of Dogrib Socio-Territorial Groups". (1968). Helm has also pointed out to me the similarities between my emphasis and Steward's use of 'primary subsistence unit'.

2. We are using the term range as analogous to the term 'home range' i n the ethological literature instead of the term territory because the area utilized by a Chipewyan social group i s not a territory i n the sense of an owned area with well defined boundaries. Chipewyan ranges of utilization are not owned, bounded, defended, or exclusive i n any manner. 3.

A thorough analysis of this pattern, from an ecological perspective, would have to take consideration of a number of these factors i n greater detail since not a l l added increments of time or terrain are of equal value. For our purposes here, an analysis of the Chipewyan cultural strategy for solving the problem of caribou unreliability, analysis i n this depth i s not necessary.

4.

Acceptability was determined by eliminating second marriages that occurred late i n l i f e and those marriages i n which negative comment was recorded about the age disparity.

5.

Because dislike magical conceal

6.

This activity, like a great deal of the hunting, fishing, and trapping, i s conducted primarily to escape boredom rather than for the product of the activities themselves.

7.

Paul's father-in-law was removed to a mental institution i n Saskatchewan during Paul's wife's childhood. He was driven insane by ghosts upon whose grave he accidentally slept one night on the t r a i l . Unfortunately, during the fifteen years or so of his absence, no one bothered to inform his family what had happened to him. Shortly before his death i t became necessary to determine the disposition of the accumulated old age pension funds and a search was made of the records revealing the presence of a family. They were contacted shortly before his death and were awaiting the settlement of the estate i n the summer of 1975.

8.

During the butchering of the cow I asked John i f he removed and hid the ears to prevent other moose from hearing his approach on future hunts. He said he had never heard of that but Paul had, (I learned i t from their mother's brother) so John did i t . I asked him i f he did i t several weeks later when he k i l l e d another moose and he replied that he, "always did that".

9.

Moose were very plentiful that year at Dachen Lake, only 20 miles from treeline, and we later found moose signs at treeline i n August. Prior to this moose were rare i n the region. Their presence here was probably due to the massive forest fires further south i n the past five years as the moose with-

a woman's suitcase contains her undergarments, males i n her family opening i t . Contact with female undergarments œntaminates males power and brings on a spell of bad luck. John's wife used this to delicacies i n her suitcase which she parcelled out to her husband.

90

91 drew from this region i n September and no sign was seen during the late f a l l and early winter. 10.

Paul was not very interested i n the pursuit and turned back as soon as he located John's t r a i l on the 20th. He seemed more interested i n the pos­ s i b i l i t i e s of the various lakes we crossed as locations for fish nets or future house sites.

11.

Lee and his mother returned to Disoha and gave a garbled account to the R.C.M.P. that had John departing i n a rage during a storm after a fight with his father. The R.C.M.P. chartered an aircraft to Dachen, deter­ mined that the situation was not c r i t i c a l , then flew to the south end of the Lake for an afternoon of fishing from the aircraft.

12.

Both of Paul's brother-in-laws are unmarried even though i n their late 20's or early 30's. This causes them to be classified as 'boys' i n the community rather than men. In addition one of the two men i s a sexual deviant; this has allowed Paul to gain quite a b i t of control over them even though he i s only an affine.

13.

Though I am certain that this was not the only factor to influence him, i t was a factor.

14.

In a real sense, since the Chipewyan believe that the size of animal populations does not vary, only i t s distribution, there i s always enough subsistence material to go around but not enough magical power to obtain i t .

15.

The other factors, including the lack of planning of sewage disposal f a c i l i t i e s and water sources, have made Mission a death trap in which the physical benefits of c i v i l i z a t i o n are paid for with unnecessary deaths from hepatitis and meningitis.

16.

Hearne's description of shaving and greasing the head to win a contest of this sort i s a clear indication that at least some Chipewyan valued their wives sufficiently to accept public shame rather than loose their spouse.

17.

The original contest was indecisive, the white man won only i n the second running of the contest. This logic i s amenable to 'cargo-cult' ideologies but I have only a single instance of such a cult i n my notes and i t was a failure.

18.

I am a b i t unclear as to why they do not exist (or I was not allowed access to them). The priest stated at various times that the records did not begin until the late 1940s and that they were destroyed i n the church f i r e of 1953. In any case, the records I was shown and allowed to copy do not have the time depth to separate out many impermissible marriages as the f i r s t recorded marriage i s i n 1948.

19.

This i s known to be applicable to only one of the missionaries but may be true of more as i t i s a rather common misconception. Obviously, I w i l l not identify the person i n question.

92 20.

Personalities among the Chipewyan as well as intra-family relationships vary at least as much as they do i n Western society. This makes i t d i f ­ f i c u l t to make general statements apart from specific cases. We caution the reader against taking our general statements i n such a light that the Chipewyan practices seem too r i g i d and inflexible. We are presenting loose, general patterns here, not s t r i c t rules.

21.

In this discussion we have been assuming that only a single spouse was unwilling. I am certain that marriages i n which both spouses were un­ willing were frequent i n the period prior to W.W. II but have no direct data on this. I t should also be noted that i n a great many arranged wed­ dings neither spouse i s really unwilling though one or both may be less than bubbling with joy at the proposed marriage.

22.

In spite of the excellent work of Carter (1974) at Mission and the state­ ments of my informants, I am unwilling to rule out the possibility that the category saze i s linguistically marked i n some way to differentiate between these various meanings. With my limited linguistic ability I would not be able to note such distinctions at a conscious level without supporting recognition of category separation from my informants (who i n s i s t that i t i s the same word).

23.

By natural I mean evidence that did not crop up i n a course of discus­ sion about the category i n which I was investigating the content and use of the categories. The interpreter's carments were an unprompted cor­ rection of what he f e l t was a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word saze by me.

24.

I have had lack of jealousy touted as a virtue more by males than females. This i s partly a function of my sex though I do not doubt that males espouse this virtue (for their partners) more often than women do but i t i s also a female value. I have heard, from very dubious sources, that lack of jealousy used to characterize Chipewyan marriages. I don't believe this, at least not for the past forty years although I do know of cases where husbands beat their wives for not sleeping with a man the husband told her to; as well as men claiming that husbands allowed them sexual access to their wife, and one rather odd case i n which a wife's boyfriend moved i n with the married couple and took over the conjugal duties to the exclusion of the husband who s t i l l lived with them.

25.

I dislike absolutes but this one comes close. I argued this point with a priest at one point i n the fieldwork who strongly disagreed. To support his argument he was able to mention three marriages i n a ccmnunity of 548 that did not f i t this pattern. The Chipewyan do not always agree with this assessment however.

26.

Marriages do occur i n other communities without parental consent. I t i s one way out of the Mission marriage system as they can be contracted with­ out the consent of the visitor's parents.

27.

This rule i s an empirically generated rule not a stated rule. The Chipewyan always react to any possible marriage that breaks the rule by stating the potential spouses are "too close" but they do not verbally formulate the rule themselves.

93 28.

This pattern seems nicely adapted to a small marriage pool. The normal (i.e. greater than one marriage) marriaqe universe of the Mission Chipew­ yan embraces Mission, Disoha, Gold Town, Brochet, and Ga Lake. The total population of these settlements i s under 2,000 people and covers an area roughly 200 miles by 400 miles. Under these circumstances too great a genealogical depth could cause great d i f f i c u l t y i n contracting any mar­ riages .

29.

Occasionally they referred to each other as 'god-brothers' i n English. The use of a godparent to provide a structural link i s atypical but the seeking of some structural connection more definite than relative age i s common when sentiment dictates an intensified relationship. In this case Buck's father was Allan's godfather.

30.

I t i s beyond the scope of this work to provide an adequate discussion of the magical system, upon which a l l p o l i t i c a l power i s based, to demon­ strate this point. We refer the reader to D. Smith's (1973) excellent paper on Chipewyan magic and Pddington's (1968) discussion of magic among the Beaver.

31.

These two cases are mentioned elsewhere (Sharp 1973:213-14) but not ana­ lyzed. In that presentation the two women are incorrectly identified as sisters. This results simply from my own carelessness i n rushing to complete that work as they are elsewhere correctly identified i n the same work. I admit to being a lousy proofreader.

32.

Her stories of abuse by A were occasionally accompanied by apparent sexual overtures towards one of the male teachers. However intended, these actions (e.g. laying on a couch opposite a male teacher i n the teacher's room after school when they were alone and relating stories of abuse i n a tone of voice interpreted as one seeking comfort) helped keep the teach­ er involved i n her problems and offering advice and support.

33.

Through the period 1972-73 the R.C.M.P. were perceived as aliens and whites. Any fine levied by the courts was regarded as an unjust threat from outsiders and the persons fined, even when acknowledged as guilty by the entire carntunity, could count upon economic support to pay the fine.

34.

The g i r l ' s mother had died a few years before, the victim of the magical vengeance of one of the giant otters resident on Mission Lake.

35.

My informants are not clear on this point. This may have been the occasion upon which the father-in-law was beaten so badly that he required hospi­ talization and the j a i l term then was levied on the son-in-law.

36.

'Pre-Christian' must be regarded as a function of the influence of the missions rather than a point i n time and the time i t s e l f may vary by the influence of the missionaries on specific institutions.

37.

This i s of course a double speculation - the current system may be just as responsive as the old one even though the mechanisms for re­ sponding are somewhat different.

REFERENCES Bone, R; Shannon, E; Raby, S. 1973

The Chipewyan of the Stony Rapids Region, Mawdsley Memoir No. 1. Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

Carter, R.M. 1974

Chipewyan Semantics : Form and Meaning in the Language and Culture of an Athapaskan-Speaking People of Canada, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, Durham, N.C. (Published on demand by University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan).

Ms.

"Rhetorical Process and Linguistic Change in Chipewyan Kinship Terminology", Unpublished manu­ script.

Chang, K.C. 1962

A Typology of Settlement and community patterns i n some Circumpolar Societies. Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 1, pp. 28-41.

Curtis, E.S. 1928

The North American Indian, Vol. 18, (The Chipewyan, The Western Woods Cree, The Sarsi) pp. 3-52; Norwood. [also Johnson Reprint Corporation.]

Dentan, R. 1968

The Semai, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.

Eggan, F. 1955

Social Anthropology: Methods and Results i n Social Anthropology of North American Tribes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940

The Nuer, Oxford at the Clarendon Press.

Hearne, S. 1971

A Journey from Prince of Wale's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean, M.G. Hurtig Ltd. Edmonton.

Helm, J . 1968

The Nature of Dogrib Socioterritorial Groups, i n Man The Hunter, R.B. Lee and I. DeVore, editors. Aldine Publishing Co., Chicago.

Hippler, A. 1973

The Athabascans of Interior Alaska: A Culture and Personality Perspective, American Anthropologist, Vol: 75, N.S. No. 5, pp. 1529-1541.

Honigmann, J . 1975

Psychological Traits i n Northern Athapaskan Culture. Proceedings : Northern Athapaskan Conference, 1971, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Canadian Ethnology Service Paper No. 27, Vol. 2, pp. 545-576.

Jarvenpa, R. 1975

The People of Patuanak: The Ecology and Spatial Organization of a Southern Chipewyan Band, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota.

94

95 Koolage, W.W. 1975

Conceptual Negativism i n Chipewyan Ethnology, Anthropologica, N.S. Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 45-60.

Lee, R.B. & DeVore, I. 1968

Man The Hunter, Aldine, Chicago.

Needham, R. 1966

Age, Category, and Descent. Bijdragen tot des Tall -, Land - En Volkenkunde, Deellzz, S. Gravenhage, Martinus Nishoff.

Ridington, R. 1968"

The Medicine Fight: An Instrument of P o l i t i c a l Pro­ cess Among the Bearer Indians, American Anthro­ pologist, Vol. 70, No. 6, pp. 1152-1160.

Savishinsky, J. 1971

Mobility as an aspect of Stress i n an Arctic Community, American Anthropologist, Vol. 73, pp. 604-618.

1973

The Middle Ground: Social Change in an Arctic Community, National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Paper No. 7, Ottawa.

Sharp, H.S. 1973

The Kinship System of the Black Lake Chipewyan, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Durham, N.C.

1975a

Introducing the Sororate to a Northern Saskatchewan Chipewyan Village, Ethnology, Vol. XIV, No. 1, January 1975, pp. 71-82.

1975b

Trapping and Welfare, Anthropologica Vol. XVIII, NO. 1, pp. 29-44.

1976

Man: Wolf: Woman: Dog, Arctic Vol. XIII, No. 1, pp. 25-34.

Nd.a

Old Age Among the Chipewyan, Other Ways of Growing Old ed. Harvell, S. & Amoss, ? Stanford University Press. (In Press)

1977a

The Chipewyan Hunting Unit, American Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 377-392.

1977b

The Caribou-Eater Chipewyan: Bilaterality; Strategies of Caribou Hunting and the Fur Trade, Arctic Anthropology.

1978

A Comparative Ethnology of the Wolf and the Chipew­ yan, Wolf and Man: Evolution in Parallel, Academic Press, New York.

Smith, D. 1973

Inkonze: Magico-Religious Beliefs of Contact Traditional Chipewyan Trading at Fort Resolution, N.W.T., Canada, National Museum of Man Mercury Series, No. 6, Ottawa.

N.S.

Anthropology,

Ethnologist

96 Smith, J.G.E. 1976

Local Band Organization of the Caribou Eater Chipewyan, Arctic Anthropology, Vol. XIII, No. 1, pp. 12-24.

Smith, J.G.E. 1976,

Personal Commnunication.

Nd.

The Emergence of the Micro-Urban Village Among the Caribou Eater Chipewyan, In Press, (Human .Organization).

Van Stone, J.W. 1965

The Changing Culture of the Snowdrift Chipewyan, National Museum of Canada, Bulletin 209, Ottawa.

PUBLICATIONS DE LA COLLECTION MERCURE

MERCURY SERIES PUBLICATIONS Each component of the National Museum of Man, (History, Education and Cultural Affairs and National Prograitmes Divisions, Canadian Ethnology Service, Archaeological Survey of Canada, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies and the Canadian War Museum), provides papers for publication i n the Mercury Series. These are available from the following address on receipt of a cheque made payable to the Receiver General of Canada.

Chaque division du Musée national de l'Homme (les divisions de l'Histoire, l'éducation et des affaires culturelles, et les prograitmes nationaux, le Service canadien d'Ethnologie, l a Commission archéologique du Canada, le Centre canadien d'études sur l a culture traditionnelle et l e Musée canadien de l a Guerre), fournit des articles à l a Collection Mercure. On peut les commander de l a source ci-dessous, en adressant une demande accompagnée d'un chèque libellé au nom du Receveur général du Canada.

Services des commandes Division de l'édition Musées nationaux du Canada 300 ouest, avenue Laurier Ottawa, Ontario K1A OM8 Canada

Order Fulfilment Publishing Division National Museums of Canada 300 Laurier Avenue West Ottawa, Ontario K1A OM8 Canada

At present the Canadian Ethnology Service Mercury Series consists of the following papers:

Le Service canadien d'Ethnologie a déjà contribué à l a Collection Mercure les numéros suivants:

1972 No.

1

PRELIMINARY STUDY OF TRADITIONAL KUTCHIN CLOTHING IN MUSEUMS. Judy Thompson. 92 p. $1.00

Analysis and comparison of Kutchin costumes located i n North American and European museums, taking two garments of the National Museum of Man (Canadian Ethnology Service) as starting point. No.

2

SARCEE VERB PARADIGMS. Eung-Do Cook. $1.00

51 p.

Outline of the ways i n which Sarcee verb stems can be classified into paradigmatic sub-classes whose inflectional behaviours are describable as regular processes. 97

98

No.

3

GAMBLING MUSIC OF THE COAST SALISH INDIANS. Wendy Bross Stuart. 114 p. $1.25

Study of the particular variations of the Slahal game and the music which accompanies i t . Slahal i s an Indian game played on the Northwest coast among the Salish peoples i n British Columbia and Washington State. 1973 No.

4

ETHNOLOGY DIVISION: Annual Review, 1972. Edited by Barrie Reynolds. 52 p., 13 plates, 2 maps, on request.

No.

5

A THOUSAND WORDS OF MOHAWK. Gunther Michelson. $2.00

186 p.

Brief, relatively non-technical introduction to Mohawk grammar followed by a root l i s t from Mohawk to English and English to Mohawk. No.

6

INKONZE: Magico-Religious Beliefs of Contact-Traditional Chipewan Trading at Fort Resolution, NWI, Canada. David Merrill Smith. 21 p. 75Í

Study of the role of supernaturally adept people of a Chipewan group, i n relation to curing, divination, social control, aggression, food quest and leadership. No.

7

THE MIDDLE GROUND: Social Change i n an Arctic Conrtronity, 1967-1971. Joel S. Savishinsky and Susan B. Frimmer. 54 p., 1 map, 2 figures, 2 tables. $1.25

Study which from a holistic perspective examines various stresses, sources and coping techniques within the Colville Lake Community with special emphasis upon the people's response to the social and economic changes which have occurred within recent years. No.

8

A GRAMMAR OF AKWESASNE MOHAWK. Nancy Bonvillain. 249 p. $2.50

Presentation of the general characteristics of Mohawk; definition of the word and word formation, completed by a discussion of the phonemics and morphophonemics. The major part of the grammar i s concerned with the structure and use of the verbs.

99

1974 No.

9

PEOPLE OF TETKLN, WHY ARE YOU SINGING? Marie-Françoise Guédon. 241 p., 6 naps, 14 charts, 26 figures. $3.00

Study of the social l i f e of the Upper Tanana Indians whose l i f e i s based on matrilineal kin groups divided into two moieties. The apparent discrepancies between the different levels of their social organization are discovered to be a normal aspect of the social system. No.

10

PAPERS IN LINGUISTICS FROM 1972 CONFERENCE ON IROQUOIAN $1.50 RESEARCH. Edited by Michael K. Foster. 118 p.

Two of the five papers by N. Bonvillain and H. Woodbury deal with noun incorporation i n Mohawk and Onondaga. The paper by M. Mithun deals with word order i n Tuscarora. The remaining two papers, one on Mohawk by G. Michelson, the other on Erie by R. Wright, pose ethnohistorical questions based on linguistic analysis of primary sources. No.

11

MUSEOCINEMATOGRAPHY: Ethnographic Film Programs of The National Museum of Man, 1913-1973. David W. Zimmerly. 103 p., 22 figures. $1.50

This paper details the history of ethnographic filmmaking at the National Museums of Canada dating from the Canadian Arctic expe­ dition of 1913-17, when George H. Wilkins shot what may be the earliest scenes of Eskimo filmed anywhere, to 1973. A catalogue of films and footage i s included along with biographical notes on the more important filmmakers, as well as detailed shot l i s t s of selected films. No.

12

ETHNOLOGY DIVISION: Annual Review, 1973. Barrie Reynolds. 65 p., on request.

Edited by

No.

13

RIDING ON THE FRONTIER'S CREST: Mahican Indian Culture and Culture Change. Ted J. Brasser. 91 p., 5 plates, 1 map. $1.25

This study contains a detailed summary of the history and changing culture of the Mahican Indians, originally inhabiting the Hudson Valley i n New York State. Since the history of the Mahican i s closely interrelated with that of the neighbouring Iroquois Conference, i t also contributes to a more balance view of Iroquois history.

100

No.

14

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE ATHAPASKAN LANGUAGES. Richard T. Parr. 330 p., 5 naps. $3.50

This bibliography brings together the relevant materials i n linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, folklore, and ethnomusicology for the Athapaskan Indian languages. Approximately 5,000 entries, of which one-fourth have been annotated, as well as maps and census figures. No.

15

SOME ASPECTS OF THE GRAMMAR OF THE ESKIMO DIALECTS OF CUMBERLAND PENINSULA AND NORTH BAFFIN ISLAND. Kenn Harper. 95 p., 1 map. $1.25

This study analyses some of the grammar of two dialectal areas of Central Arctic: Cumberland Peninsula and North Baffin Island. While not dealing i n detail with a l l aspects of the Eskimo grammar, i t concentrates on an analysis of noun and verb structures. I t also includes the use of the dual person. No.

16

AN EVALUATIVE ETHNO-HISTORICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE MALECITE INDIANS. Michael Herrison. 260 p., $2.75

This bibliography aims at a complete coverage of primary sources, both published and unpublished, for Malecite ethnology. Annotations are provided for the student and complete quotations from those inaccessible works which contain l i t t l e that i s relevant. No.

17

PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE CANADIAN ETHNOLOGY SOCIETY. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow. 226 p., $3.00

In this publication, the reader w i l l find ten of the major papers presented during five of the Sessions. Also included are dis­ cussion summaries of three Sessions where no formal papers were presented. No.

18

KOYUKUK RIVER CULTURE. Annette McFadyen Clark. 5 maps. $3.25

282

p.,

The Koyukuk River Culture i s a comparative study of selected aspects of the material culture of the Koyukuk Koyukon Athapaskan Indians and the Kobuk and Nunamiut Eskimos who share contiguous areas in interior Northern Alaska.

101

No.

19

ETHNOBOTANY OF THE BLACKFOOT INDIANS. John C. Hellson and Morgan Gadd. 138 p., 37 plates. $2.00

This study documents Blackfoot plant use as i t was provided by elderly informants living today, schooled i n the tradition of plant uses. Uses of approximately 100 species are described i n topical form: religion and ceremony, birth control, medicine, horse medicine, diet, craft and folklore. No.

20

FROM THE EARTH TO BEYOND THE SKY: An Ethnographic Approach to four Longhouse Iroquois Speech Events. Michael K. Foster. 448 p., 8 tables, 16 figures. $5.00

This study i s an analysis of four structurally related rituals of the Longhouse Iroquois of Southern Ontario: the Thanksgiving Address, the Great Feather Dance, the Skin Dance and the Tobacco Invocation. Transcribed and translated text included as appendices. 1975 No.

21

BELLA COOLA CEREMONY AND ART. 11 figures, 16 plates. $2.25

Margaret A. Stott. 153 p.,

The aim of this study i s to lend ethnological importance to a collection of material culture, by revealing the relationship of Bella Coola ceremonialism and art with other aspects of society, and offering an analytical summary of Bella Coola art style. Contemporary ceremonialism and art are also described and analysed. No.

22

A BASKETFUL OF INDIAN CULTURE CHANGE. Ted J . Brasser. 121 p., 74 figures. $2.00

Analysis of the decorative patterns on aboriginal woven and woodsplint basketry, which reveals the tenacious survival of basic a r t i s t i c concepts of aboriginal origin. The woodsplint technique was adopted by the Indians to adapt their crafts to White Market. Ethnohistorical value of museum collections i s demonstrated. No.

23

PAPERS OF THE SIXTH ALGONQUIAN CONFERENCE, 1974. William Cowan. 399 p., $4.50

Edited by

The Sixth Algonquian Conference was held i n Ottawa, October 4-6, 1974. I t was an inter-disciplinary conference embracing archaeology, history, ethnology and linguistics, and this collection comprises most of the papers presented.

102

No.

24

CANADIAN ETHNOLOGY SERVICE: Annual Review, 1974. Edited by Barrie Reynolds. 71 p., 13 plates, 2 naps, on request.

No.

25

A CONTEXTUAL STUDY OF THE CARIBOU ESKIMO KAYAK. Eugene Y. Arina. 275 p., 3 maps, 31 figures. $3.25

After a discussion of the place of material culture studies i n modern anthropology, the author shows the continuity of the Caribou Eskimo kayak form from the Birnik culture. The reconstruction of general kayak development i s given i n detail as well as a thorough coverage of construction and use of the kayak. No.

26

A PLACE OF REFUGE FOR ALL TIME: Migration of the American Potawatomi into Upper Canada 1830-1850. James A. Clifton. 152 p., 3 maps, 7 plates. $2.25

This monograph contains a study of the movement of a large portion of the Potawatomi Indian tribe from the states of Indiana, I l l i n o i s , Wisconsin and Michigan into Upper Canada i n the period 1830-1850. It also examines the Canadian evidence to shed some light on not well understood features of Potawatomi social organization and ecological adaptations i n the f i r s t decades of the 19th century. No.

27

PROCEEDINGS: Northern Athapaskan Conference, 1971. Edited by A. McFadyen Clark (2 vols). 803 p., 14 maps, 13 figures, 23 tables. $9.25

The seventeen papers on Northern Athapaskan research i n ethnology, linguistics, and archaeology published i n these two volumes were presented at the National Museum of Man Northern Athapaskan Conference i n March 1971. The papers are prefaced by a short introduction which outlines the rationale and accomplishments of the Conference. No.

28

PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND CONGRESS, CANADIAN ETHNOLOGY SOCIETY, VOL. I & II. Edited by Jim Freedman and Jerome H. Barkow. 723 p., 2 maps, 31 figures, 9 tables, 3 plates. $10.75

These Proceedings are of the Second Annual Conference of the Canadian Ethnology Society, held i n February 1975 at Winnipeg, Manitoba. The f i r s t volume includes papers presented at two of the eight sessions: "Myth and Culture" and "The Theory of Markedness i n Social Relations and Language". In the second volume are grouped the papers read at the s i x remaining sessions: "Contemporary Trends i n Caribbean Ethnology", "African Ethnology", "Anthropology i n Canada", "The Crees and the Geese", "Early Mercantile Enterprises i n Anthropological Perspectives" and "Volunteered papers". An abstract i n French and English precedes each paper.

103

1976 No.

29

A PROTO-ALGONQUIAN DICTIONARY. George F. Aubin. 210 p. $3.25

This dictionary contains nearly 2,300 Proto-Algonquian recon­ structions. Each entry contains: the Proto-Algonquian reconstruction, i t s source and English gloss and the forms cited i n support of the reconstruction. An English-ProtoAlgonquian index i s also included. No. O.P.

30

CREE NARRATIVE: Expressing the personal meanings of events. Richard J. Preston. 316 p., 3 figures, 1 photograph. $3.50

Narrative obtained from the Eastern Cree Indians of James Bay, Quebec, are considered i n their various functions within the Cree culture. The author privileges an inductive approach for this study. No.

31

CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANADIAN ETHNOLOGY, 1975. Edited by David Brez Carlisle. 359 p., 127 plates. $4.50

This volume contains 7 papers on ethnological subjects. Four of them are on material culture (Day, Damas, Ariraa and Hunt), one on rituals (Stearns), one on general ethnography (Smith), one on ethnohistory (Gillespie) and one on cultural change (Rogers and Tobobondung). No.

32

ESKIMO MUSIC BY REGION: A Comparative Circumpolar Study. Thomas F. Johnston. 222 p., 38 plates, 9 musical transcriptions. $2.75

Study of Alaskan Eskimo music, as part of a distinct western musical complex, compared with Eskimo music i n Central and Eastern Canada and Greenland.

104

The following papers are being distributed gratis by the Chief, Canadian Ethnology Service, National Museum of Man: No.

33

Les dossiers suivants sont d i s t r i bues gratuitement par le Chef du Service canadien d'Ethnologie, Musée national de l'Homme:

LA CULTURE MATERIELLE DES LNDLENS DU QUEBEC: Une étude de raquettes, mocassins et toboggans. Carole Lévesque. 156 p., 47 figures, 28 planches.

Cette étude sur l a fabrication et l a décoration des raquettes, des mocassins et des toboggans dans les communautés indiennes du Québec concerne à l a fois des objets produits au 19 siècle et d'autres produits actuellement. Elle s'inscrit dans une approche récente de l a culture matérielle oû l a production est étudiée en fonction des rapports sociaux à l'intérieur desquels elle s'insère. e

1977 No.

34

A PRACTICAL WRITING SYSTEM AND SHORT DICTIONARY OF KWAKW'ALA (KWAKIUTL) . David McC. Grubb. 251 p., 1 plate.

The purpose of this work i s to present a phonemically accurate, practical spelling system of Kwakw'ala, the language of the Kwagulh (Kwakiutl) people. The f i r s t section deals with the use of the practical orthography while the second section i s a two-way, cross-indexed dictionary: English - Kwakw'ala. No. O.P.

35

THE INDIVIDUAL IN NORTHERN DENE THOUGHT AND COMMUNICATION: A Study i n Sharing and Diversity. Jane Christian and Peter M. Gardner. 419 p.

The volume reports some of the preliminary findings of a collaborative study of thought and communication among members of one Mackenzie drainage Dene community. Subprojects, on aspects of communication and learning, on shared and diverse c l a s s i f i cations and processes having to do with trapping, fishing, and exploitation of moose, are reported. No. O.P.

36

SHAMATIAWA: The Structure of Social Relations i n a Northern Algonkian Band. David H. Turner and Paul Wertman. 124 p., 12 plates, 8 figures.

This study aims to test a theory of Northern Algonkian social organization developed through a structural analysis of Australian hunter-gatherer societies and a c r i t i c a l reading of Northern Algonkian literature.

105

No.

37

SOME GRAMMATICAL ASPECTS OF LABRADOR INUTTUT (ESKIMO): A Surrey of the Inflectional Paradigms of Nouns and Verbs. Lawrence R. Smith. 98 p., 59 tables.

This grammatical sketch surveys the nominal and verbal paradigms of the dialect i n current usage among the labrador Inuit of the Atlantic Coast. 1978 No. O.P.

38

SWAN PEOPLE: A Study of the Dunne-za Prophet Dance. Robin Ridington. 132 p., 20 plates.

The prophet dance, a complex of beliefs and practices among northwestern native people, i s studied from the myths and oratories collected among the Dunne-za or Beaver Indians of the upper Peace River. No.

39

NEIGHBORS AND INTRUDERS: An Ethnohistorical Exploration of the Indians of Hudson's River. Edited by Laurence M. Hauptman and Jack Carapisi. 285 p., 29 plates, 3 figures.

Utilizing new archaeological, ethnohistorical and linguistic perspectives, the present volume i s aimed as a starting point for future inter-disciplinary research i n the f i e l d of study of the Indians of the Hudson River. No.

40

PAPERS FROM THE FOURTH ANNUAL CONGRESS, 1977. CANADIAN ETHNOLOGY SOCIETY. Edited by Richard J . Preston. 431 p., 15 tables, 14 figures, 3 maps.

This volume contains selected papers presented at the Fourth Annual Congress of the Canadian Ethnology Society i n Halifax, February 23-27, 1977. I t includes papers on subjects such as maritime ethnology, Micmac research, folklore, friendship, property and ownership, wage labour migration, and the concept of stranger. No.

41

THE EFFECTS OF ACCULTURATION ON ESKIMO MUSIC OF CUMBERLAND PENINSULA. Maija M. Lutz. 167 p., 5 maps, 2 tables, vinyl record.

The purposes of this study are as follows: to examine the types of music which are performed and listened to i n Pangnirtung today, to discuss the cultural context of the music, to place present-day music in a historical perspective, and finally to formulate reasons and justifications for changes that have taken place i n music.

106

No. O.P.

42

A PRACTICAL DICTIONARY OF THE COAST TSIMSHIAN LANGUAGE. John Asher Dunn. 155 p.

This Tsimshian/English dictionary of more than 2250 entries gives to researchers practical transcription, morphological information, English glosses and phonetic transcription, showing the local variants. No. O.P.

43

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES OF MATERIAL CULTURE. Edited by David W. Zimmerly. 58 p., 29 figures.

This collection of five papers surveys the general f i e l d of material culture studies and includes specific recent contextual studies of North American Indian and Eskimo material culture. No.

44

ALGONQUIN DIALECT RELATIONSHIPS INNORTHWESTERNQUEBEC. Roger Gilstrap. 70 p., 4 illustrations.

This report examines dialect relationships (lexicon, phonology and grammar) which exist between the five Algonquin communities of Amos, Lac Simon, Winneway, Maniwaki and Rapid Lake of northwestern Quebec. No.

45

A SURVEY OF THE DERIVATIONAL POSTBASES OF LABRADOR INUTTUT (ESKIMO) . Lawrence R. Smith. 128 p.

The core of this work i s a dictionary of derivational postbases in current usage by the Inuit of the Labrador Coast. Each entry includes the Inuttut form i n phonemic orthography, morphophonemic specifications, a semantic characterization i n English, notes on idiosyncratic properties and examples of use. An introduction to Labrador Inuttut word-formation i s also provided. 1979 No.

46

ESKIMO ECONOMICS: An Aspect of Culture Change at Rankin Inlet. William Hugh Jansen II. 162 p., 11 illustrations.

This report i s an investigation into the development of four distinct economic strategies by the Eskimos of Rankin Inlet, Northwest Territories: economic specialization; economic generalization: entrepreneurship; and, dependence upon social assistance. No.

47

INUIT ADOPTION. Lee Guemple.

131 p.

This study offers a description and analysis of the social and cultural aspects of traditional and contemporary adoptive practices among the Inuit.

107

No.

48

SOLSTICE-ALIGNED BOULDER CONFIGURATIONS IN SASKATCHEWAN. Alice B. Kehoe and Thomas F. Kehoe. 73 p., 8 plates, 15 figures.

Eleven Saskatchewan prehistoric boulder configurations are investigated to determine whether their rock cairns and lines are likely to have been aligned to astronomical phenomena. No.

49

CASE AND CONTEXT IN INUKTITUT (ESKIMO). Ivan Kalmár. 159 p., 1 map.

The author investigates the use of the three simple sentence types with both subject and object i n the Inuktitut language. No.

50

(CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANADIAN LINGUISTICS. Eric P. Hamp, Robert Howren, Quindel King, Brenda M. Lowery and Richard Walker. 118 p., 7 tables, 1 figure.

This volume contains five papers on linguistic subjects: three are on the Athapaskan languages of Dogrib (Howren 1968), Central Carrier (Walker 1966), and Chilcotin (King 1968); one on Blackfoot (Lowery 1964); and, one on Algonquin (Hamp 1974). No.

51

CONTES INDIENS DE LA BASSE COTE NORD DU SAINT LAURENT. Rémi Savard. 99 p.

Ce volume contient quatorze contes montagnais provenant de François Bellefleur de La Romaine et de Pierre Peters de Saint-Augustin sur l a Basse Côte Nord du Saint Laurent. I l s ont été recueillis de 1970 à

No.

52

1975.

THE CONTEXT OF THE INFORMANT NARRATIVE PERFORMANCE: From Sociolinguistics to Ethnolinguistics at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta. Ronald Scollon. 80 p., 1 map.

The author demonstrates how narrative structure at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta i s highly sensative to the situation of the narrative performance. No. O.P.

53

HOOPER BAY KAYAK CONSTRUCTION. David W. Zimmerly. 118 p., 84 figures, 89 photographs, 1 map, 5 blueprints.

This illustrated monograph details the construction process of a 4.6 m (15') Bering Sea-type kayak made in the Yupik Eskimo-speaking community of Hooper Bay, Alaska i n October and November of 1976. Instructions and full-size blueprints for the construction of a working reproduction of this kayak are included.

108

No.

54

SUFFIXES OF THE ESKIMO DIALECTS OF CUMBERLAND PENINSULA AND NORTH BAFFIN ISLAND. Kenn Harper. 123 p.

This paper analyzes the derivational suffixes of the two closely related Eskimo dialects of Cumberland Perdnsula and North Baffin Island. The suffixes are presented i n a dictionary format and a l l variants of a suffix are listed i n alphabetical sequence. No.

55

A REFERENCE GRAMMAR FOR THE COAST TSIMSHIAN LANGUAGE. John Asher Dunn. 91 p.

This i s a non-technical introduction to the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Coast Tsimshian as spoken i n Metlakatla, Alaska, Port Simpson, Kitkatla, Hartley Bay, and Prince Rupert, British Columbia. It contains sections on pronunciation, sound changes, word formation (morphology), syntax, basic sentence types and their grammatical relationships and provides an explanation of the practical orthog­ raphy currently in use. No.

56

ASPECTS OF INUIT VALUE SOCIALIZATION. Jean L. Briggs. 63 p.

This volume takes a serious look at "play" i n Inuit society by arguing that "play" contains processes essential to the creation, maintenance and internalization of the central values of Inuit society. No.

57

ATHAPASKAN WOMEN: Lives and Legends. 202 p.

Julie Cruikshank.

This volume contains excerpts illustrating the changing themes i n Athapaskan culture which were taken from individual booklets pre­ viously prepared by the author on the family and personal history and legends of seven Athapaskan women living i n the Yukon Territory. No.

58

CHIPEWYAN MARRIAGE. Henry S. Sharp.

108 p., 17 figures.

This volume investigates the operation of the kinship system of the Mission Chipewyan. I t examines the utilization of kinship terms, and conflict inherent i n this group of Caribou-Eater Chipewyan and an analysis of marriage and the role of affines i s included.