Ojibwa Sociology 9780231887427

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter I. Political Organization
Chapter II. Kinship Organization
Chapter III. Gens Organization
Chapter IV. Marriage
Chapter V. Property
Bibliography
Errata

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Columbia Pmfreraitg Contribution« to ,AntipropoIogg Volume X X I X OJIBWA SOCIOLOGY BY RUTH LANDES

OJIBWA S O C I O L O G Y BY

RUTH L A N D E S

AMS PRESS NEW YORK

Reprinted with the permission of Columbia University Press From the edition of 1937, New York First A M S E D I T I O N published 1969 Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 79-84467

A M S PRESS, INC. N E W Y O R K , N Y. 10003

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I Political Organization I I Kinship Organization I I I Gens Organization IV Marriage V Property

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The field work upon which the present study is based was done during the summers of 1932 and 1933 and the fall and winter of 1935. Funds were provided by appropriations from the Rockefeller Foundation to the Department of Anthropology, and by the Council for Research in the Social Sciences of Columbia University. For training and much assistance I am indebted to Professors Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, and I wish particularly to thank Mrs. Maggie Wilson of Emo not only for kindness and hospitality in the field but for many biographies of Ojibwa men and women which she has written out and sent to me. Columbia University New York City

Ruth Landes

PREFACE This study of Ojibwa tribal life began in the summer of my first year as a young graduate student at Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Ruth Benedict, of Columbia, and Dr. John M. Cooper, of Catholic University, Washington, D.C., chose for the study the Ojibwa location at Emo, Ontario, near Fort Frances. Father Cooper also directed me to seek the aid of Mrs. Maggie Wilson, a bilingual tribeswoman who became my great informant. A t this writing, over thirty years after the initial research and the first edition of the book, I find myself living again in Ontario, although now at the province's eastern corner, in the industrial city of Hamilton. During the three years since my return to Canada, I find that provincial leaders of the Ojibwa seize upon English-language communications media to protest against their impoverished circumstances, which they link to violations of their civil rights as Canadian citizens. Yet before the Second World War, they scorned the "Law," the term by which they referred to Canada's restrictive supervision of their lives on reservations. A t that period they did not think seriously of entering the dominant life, though young men had fought and died for Canada in the First World War. A son-in-law of Mrs. Wilson's had died in battle overseas, and I heard much, thirty-odd years ago, of the famous "Star Dance" she had created, based on a number of sacred visions, to save the lives of other Ojibwa combatants abroad. Today in Canada many, perhaps most, Ojibwa speak English well or adequately. Formerly this was rare, and interpreters, like my Mrs. Wilson, were valued. Actually, Maggie came of a line of forebears, on her father's side, who had served Scottish missionaries, spoke English, and wrote the missionary's version of Ojibwa and Cree. To me the most dramatic contemporary change is that Ojibwa people, along with other Amerindians and Eskimos, now demand an integrated part in the Canadian world, upon which they lay primordial claims. They repeat that they were in North America before Columbus and any prior European or Icelandic explorers, and their voyageurs carried French and British trappers and clergy through the wilderness. This year a young Ojibwa named Peter Kelly, who told me he was born in Emo, attends the University of Toronto and requests authority to learn and offer Ojibwa "as a second [academic! language," instead of Spanish. (His wife explains this, as reported by the Toronto daily newspaper The Globe and Mail, November 28,1968.) The position resembles that of the French Canadians, who demand linguistic parity with English.

Yet the Ontario Ojibwa have not abandoned the aboriginal culture. Dr. E. S. Rogers, of the Royal Ontario Museum at Toronto, has observed Ontario Ojibwa locations during the past several years and described at length the continuing vitality of traditional ways. The social institutions and values that I described in the 1930's still persist in outline and detail. Such continuity is not unique; it occurs among all known peoples with long histories, recorded or not. Folklore, mythology, and religion are among the rich soil-beds that feed a culture's traditional roots and encourage the springing of new, younger roots that support flowerings responsive to new influences. Ruth Landes 1969

OJIBWA SOCIOLOGY I. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION Ojibwa-speaking groups have occupied territory from the Niagara River to North and South Dakota and for many miles inland from the north and south shores of the three Great Lakes they girdle. Typically they confine themselves to woodlands, except for sparse Plains settlements on the western extremity. The group studied in the present memoir belongs to the most western woodlands. It is made up of people who until twenty years ago were scattered through seven villages along the Canadian side of the Rainy River, and who to-day are assembled on the Manitou Reserve at Emo in southwestern Ontario. The Ojibwa lived in clusters, or villages (ode.na) of from three to fifteen families. The village was the largest social unit. It existed in spring and summer when the various small families came in from the scattered hunting grounds. It was held together by little more than the consciousness of neighborhood, for no official activities characterised its existence. 1 Around any one large body of water, such as Rainy Lake in Ontario, the Rainy River, and the numerous lakes in Minnesota, were a number of these villages. Each village was independent, but shared with its neighbors designations and sentiments which distinguished it (or, them) from other water-groups of villages.2 To these distinctions has recently been added a third: the feeling that the Canadian Indians are different from those of the United States. 3 The most important person in any village of Canadian Ojibwa is the medicine man. In his aspect as a village dignitary, or as a village character, such a man is called n'gittci anicina:beminan 1

The Government calls this unit a band. Each group of villages was known to the outsiders by a name taken from some prominent geographical feature, for example the Rainy Lake people, or the Red Lake people. The members of each water-group made similiar distinctions among themselves, or named one another after relative positions in the water-group. 3 The conventionality of this distinction is the more striking because the Emo and Minnesota villages are about as closely related by blood as is the population of Emo itself. 2

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Ojibwa Sociology

"our wise man". He is recognized as pre-eminent because he is on favored terms with the supernatural, whose aid he can enlist indifferently for good or evil. The people accord him honor consciously through fear. But it is a matter of individual recognition, and the medicine man held no official position. There is a recognized rivalry among medicine men themselves, and those who were at odds with each other used to found new villages. The only check upon such establishment of new groups was in the old days the fear of enemy attacks. The office of ni:ga:ni:ziminan, "our conductor," is of a different character. This is truly an official position, and comes into existence with each new enterprise, and disappears when the enterprise is over. It refers to the leader of any enterprise, who plans its course and is responsible for its outcome. The undertaking is of any character, whether a war-party or a visit to a near-by village. The office is uniformly of a public nature, as opposed to the highly personal role of the medicine man. Anyone could at one time or another "conduct" something, whether a giddy boy leading a group to romantic conquests, or a fasting visionary f u l f i l l i n g a feud on the war-path. The roles of medicine man and of "conductor" are not mutually exclusive, but the nature of each is distinct. The "conductor," of course, has more authority if he is also a "wise man". The tangible rewards of medicine man and of "conductor" are as distinct as the parts they play. The former commands "lots of wealth, goods and furs" for his services; the latter "just gets the name". All old men are called 'gittci amcma :be, "ancient, elder," and are accorded a conventional respect. Along with all the mature males of the village, they constitute the council, the "smoking place." Councils are called by any interested citizen to discuss anything that may appeal to him as of communal import. Formerly it was called annually by a visionary desirous of assembling a war party; it was called at irregular intervals to organize the boy's puberty fast; in a legend, it was called to sanction the murder of a bad medicine man of the village. The council arrives at some general agreement, but it can discipline dissenters in no other way than by tacit ostracism. A persistent dissenter can break away with impunity, living isolated or establishing another village. There is no social instrument to pursue him; only the medicine of the jealous "wise man." In attempting to strengthen what was considered a hazy aboriginal government, Canada appointed hereditary chieftains to each band. The Indians have never understood this kind of "chief", though

Political

Organization

3

such institutions were native to their congeners south and east. Na'mepok (Sturgeon) of the Manitou Reserve on Rainy River inherited such a title from his father but he is recognized only by the Government, not by the Indians, because he does not qualify as an Ojibwa "wise man" or "conductor." The Indians had recommended his father for the honor, but they do not therefore respect his heir. They have given the "wise m a n " title, instead, to Namepok'8 brother, twenty-five years his junior, "because he does a lot of Grand Medicine and he takes care of funerals." The Government chief is called o gi'ma K a n . 1 In keeping with aboriginal conditions, he has two assistants, called ocka'bewis (young man) or ji'ma.ganic'ci K a n (soldier, lancer), whom he appoints from among his sons, or brothers, or nephews. A "conductor" also has these assistants. There is also a hereditary Government magistrate, called ti ba'konigewunm; and an Indian mounted policeman called takuniwewinini (man who seizes). Both these latter are foreign to the aboriginal Canadians, and the Ojibwa make the prosecution of their duties extremely difficult by a marked lack of cooperation which is often equivalent to ostracism. Until the Canadian government forbade it about twenty years ago, important men practised polygyny. While this form of marriage was proper, it was highly impopular among the women. A man could not secure more than one wife except by the lure of wealth or through awe of his shamanistic accomplishments. Even then it was questionable whether he could retain them. The aboriginal village was not stable in numbers or location over any considerable period. The nucleus of the village is usually a varying number of closely related families of parents and offspring. Accretions come through marriage, collateral relatives, friends, and any accidental neighbor. One village near the mouth of the Rainy River, and another at Leech Lake, Minnesota, consisted preponderantly of one old couple and their married sons and daughters. Almost any circumstance may cause people to drift to a given village or to leave it. Couples leave to visit the parents of the woman and remain. Hostilities and even murder may result from the refusal of a medicineman's offer of marriage, with consequent removal of one of the parties concerned. A village may be heavily depleted through war, a blood feud, or a succession of marriages which carry villagers elsewhere. Locations may be abandoned for sanitary reasons or for supernatural reasons or 1 Kan is said to connote that the ogi'ma title — or any other title t h a t K a n modifies — was not earned according to native standards, but is a factitious white title.

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Ojibwa Sociology

because the land is worn out. People may simply not return from their wintering grounds for a season. People may at any time (though not to-day due to the regulations of the Canadian Government), become citizens of any village where they have cordial relatives or friends. Despite so much mobility, the villages often have strong local sentiments, expressed chiefly as hostility to other villages. Longstanding feuds have been carried on between families of different villages, and a medicineman of village X secretly conjures to death the soul of medicineman of village Y . Early travelers often mention the alliance of several Ojibwa villages against the Dakotas, but this probably refers to the cooperation of various related families of different villages. The same family line was often represented in a considerable number of different villages, so that through these kinship bonds, villages, or parts of villages, felt a mutual sympathy. The same mechanism operated sometimes to bring about peace among enemy villages.

II. KINSHIP ORGANIZATION Categories: Except for a few short-lived summer enterprises, social conduct is governed only by the conventional obligations of kin. Nearly all of the kinship terms are classificatory, so that from the point of view of any one individual considerable sections of the population come within the reach of its conventions.1 Through three generations of the kinship system, terminological identifications are made in accordance with the cross-cousin form of marriage. This marriage is actually a preferred form2 among the Ojibwa of Buffalo Point in southeast Manitoba, and occurs too among the neighboring Cree;3 but it is proscribed among the Emo Ojibwa, whose relationship system is our present subject of discussion.4 As told below (pp. 18etseq.) relationships function at Emo precisely as they do in the localities which practice crosscousin marriage, although the actual marriage is tabued at Emo. Consequently this discussion of the kinship categories holds alike for the regions which practice the cross-cousin marriage and for Emo, where the actual marriage is forbidden. (1) In Ego's generation two groups are recognized terminologically, one sexually tabued, the other the group of prospective mates. The first consists of classificatory siblings, as specified in the table of terms; the second consists of classificatory "sweethearts", i. e. cross-cousins and siblings-in-law. (2) In the first ascending generation there is a corresponding division. One group consists of the parents of classificatory siblings, to whom Ego may not 1 Not all of the population of any local group is related by kinship; but most of it is related by sib ties, and especially by sib exogamy. See Chapter I I I . 2 See Chapter on Marriage. Terminology reflecting cross-cousin marriage is found among several Algonkian peoples of Canada, who consistently practice this form of marriage. For summary of this material, see Hallowell, A. I., 1932 pp. 171—199. 3 Author's field notes. Kinship terminology is identical among the Cree and the Ojibwa. 4 That is, in the former localities there is a perfect correlation between the system of relationship terms and the organization of society; in the latter locality the terminology is identical, but the social usages associated with it are modified and will be the subject of this discussion.

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Ojibwa

Sociology

become a son (daughter)-in-law; the other group consists of the parents of "sweethearts" or cross-cousins to whom Ego may become a son (daughter)-in-law; i. e. mother's brother and father's sister. Further, Ego's father may exchange the sibling address with Ego's mother-in-law. (3) The first descending generation division is reciprocal to that of the first ascending. That is, the terminology of these three generations sorts relatives into two great classes; the class into which Ego marries, and the class into which he has been bom and cannot marry. There are no specifically affinal terms, but affinal relationships are indicated by the consanguineal terms for aunt-uncle, cousin, and nephew-niece. The terminology is associated with consistent traditional behavior. In this preponderantly classificatory system, there are four terms that are incapable of extension. These single out the small biological family ; father, mother, son, daughter. These terms are given only to individuals who biologically occupy these positions; and their social significance is that these individuals make up an independent domestic family, the only typical household.1 In the occasional instances where more than one such group share a common roof there is no pooling of household affairs but a reduplication of all activities as though in so many apartments. 2 Sex distinctions — for person addressed, and in Ego's generation also for the speaker—are made, from the first descending generation up through the third ascending; but these are lacking in second and third descending. I t is curious to note how carefully the sex differences are defined for the second and third ascending generations, but not for the corresponding descending. These fine distinctions in the ascending generations are slighted only when the third ascending and third descending exchange the sexually undifferentiated term ndani'kobidjigan. Sex differences or identity can make considerable modifications in conventional behavior, as is discussed below. Seven generations are terminologically distinguished. Seniority terms are used within Ego's generation; but this distinction is very slightly reflected in behavior. These terms are sexually differentiated for person addressed. The juniority term is sexually undifferentiated; it can be replaced by the usual relationship term plus a diminutive suffix. Terminological reciprocity obtains within Ego's generation, and between the third ascending and third descending generations. In these cases it is the address of equals, as contrasted with the complementary address of the other generations. 1 2

See Chapter I I I on Marriage. See discussion of plural marriage, p. 69.

Kinship K i n s h i p

Organization S c h e d u l e :

7 1

All ascending generations above the first can be called "old people" kete (or, kitci) anicina.'bek Great Orandfather, or males of third and beyond ascending generations, regardless of line. 1. ndanike' nimico'mis our grandfather 2. ki dede nan our father plural Great Grandmother, or females of third and beyond ascending generations, regardless of line. 1. ndani'ko" n o " komis' our grandmother 2. kiganan' our mother 3. ni.qga' nan our mother 4. nima.manan our mother Great Grandparent and Great Grandchild, regardless of line and sex. ndani , ko"bidjigan (-ninabani.k) our link plural Grandfather, i. e. males of second ascending generation regardless of line. These include father's father, father's father's brother, mother's father, mother's father's brother. nimtco"mis Grandmother, i. e. females of second ascending generation regardless of line. These include mother's mother, mother's mother's sister, father's mother, father's father's sister. n