Omaha Secret Societies 9780231887458

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. General Sketch of Omaha Society
III. The Sacred Amongst the Omah
IV. The Secret Societies
V. Further Individual Accounts of Religious Experience
VI. Further Societies
VII. Religious Practices
VIII. Tales and Legends Bearing on the Religion or the Secret Societies

Citation preview

©oluraWa Mntôcraitç (¡IoníriímttonB to (Äntipropolügg Volume XIV OMAHA SECRET SOCIETIES BT R. F. FORTUNE

OMAHA SECRET SOCIETIES BY

R. F. F O R T U N E

AMS PRESS NEW YORK

Reprinted with the permission of Columbia University Press From the edition of 1932, 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:

A M S PRESS, INC. New York, N. Y. 10003

70-82351

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Chapter Chapter

Chapter

Chapter Chapter

Chapter

i. Introduction n. General Sketch of Omaha Society HI. The Sacred amongst the Omaha i. Doctoring Societies n. Fundamental Concepts of the Sacred in. The Search for a Supernatural Patron . . . . iv. Clean and Unclean: Protection and Exposure v. Religious Types and Use of the Solitary Revelation iv. The Secret Societies i. The Buffalo Society n. The Ghost Society HI. The Grizzly Bear and Rattlesnake Society iv. The Water Monster Society and the Midewiwin v. The Water Monster Society and the Midewiwin (cont.) iv. Initiation in the Water Monster Society . . vii. Midewiwin Initiation VIII. Rituals of the Cognate Societies v. Further Individual Accounts of Religious Experience vi. Further Societies i. The Thunder Bird Society IT. The Night Blessed Society or Potlatch Society with some consideration of Chieftainship and Potlatch III. The Modern Peyote Cult in its Omaha Setting VII. Religious Practices i. Unusual Ways of Initiation ii. Feeding the Medicine Bundle III. Taboos Observed in Tipi or Lodge of a Medicine Bundle Owner iv. General Outline of Doctor's Formal Procedure in Treating a Patient

1 9 25 29 35 47 53 58 75 81 85 90 103 109 110 133 146 148 159 163 164 165 166

VI

Table of Contents v. vi. VII. vili. ix.

Love Magic Gambling Magic Priests, Doctors and Chiefs Details of Membership in the Secret Societies Remarks on Society Dances and on Widow Killing x. Soapweed and Plants xi. Tattooers of the Night Blessed Society . . . . Chapter vai. Tales and Legends Bearing on the Religion

167 168 169 170 174 175 175 176

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION In an introduction it is permissible to state the claims of the study introduced, and that I shall proceed to do. The Omaha tribe have always been of interest as a people with an elaborate social organisation which was at the same time an organisation of elaborate formal ritual functions. Hereditary rights to priestly rituals were known to be gentile privileges. I show that Omaha society was stratified into four classes, priests, chiefs, doctors and doctoring society members and nonprivileged persons. These four classes were distinct and did not overlap. Membership in one class or another was determined by title held in the paternal line, allowing for some selection amongst possible heirs to privileged place, and occasional sister's son and son-in-law succession. By chiefs in this sense I mean the head chiefs only, the greater political functionaries. Below these, with much less political function, were lesser chiefs who gained title by potlatch, in the sense of the giving away of wealth to attain rank. I examine the conditions of potlatch in detail in Chapter VI, Section II, and the details of major and minor chieftainship. By the term chief as used prior to Chapter VI, Section II, I mean only the head chiefs, the Council of Seven, the real leaders. I do not prove definitely that the lower five of the Seven had succession on the hereditary and selective principle, rather than on the potlatch principle, but T do prove definitely that the leading two had such succession, and there is some fair circumstantial evidence for the same being true of the following five. It is shown further that while priestly function was nominally a gentile privilege, actually it was a right of a particular patrilineal line within the nominally privileged gens. Another blunt1 contribution of this study is the demonstration that rights to membership in the secret societies were determined by title in hereditary disposal. This was known for the Midewiwin. But the other sacred2 societies were previously described as vision societies. Thus it was said that the Grizzly Bear Society was entered 1 I am beginning with the blunter contributions. Naturally there are others, not so blunt. 2 Sacred and also secret.

1

2

Omaha Secret

Societies

by all who had had vision of the Grizzly Bear Supernatural Beings, entered by right of hallucination or supernormal experience; and so it was said for the Buffalo, the Ghost, the Water Monster and other societies. I t is true that this is a manner of Omaha speech. It is true again that the actual facts are not easily drawn from any Omaha. A similar difficult}' is encountered if one attempts to discover whether an Omaha ever obtains a subsequent return present for any gift that he gives away. He does very often, far more often than not. B u t no Omaha will admit the bare possibility, except perhaps under the rack. Fortunately for my work on the secret societies I had some informants literally under the rack of extreme privation and want, and so I was able to penetrate into secrets that are not usually admitted. One such secret, and a very important one, is that supernormal hallucinatory experience or vision of Supernatural Beings is strictly irrelevant to membership rights in the so-called vision societies. No individual Omaha knows this absolutely as a generalisation; but each person knows his or her own family affairs, and knows that they are in contravention of the general manner of dogma used inflexibly in speech — as in the equally inflexible dogma of no returns ever being made for gifts given away. From the results of this study it is now possible to see Omaha society as an elaboration of the one ground plan, firm based throughout on class distinction and the hereditary transmission of privilege. The culture now appears well integrated, tight formed, not amorphous in the slightest. Apart from the absence of former description of the bare ground plan, the Omaha secret societies, the Midewiwin included, have been described as if they were amorphous enough in their very elaboration, and even less than amorphous in the apparent absence of unifying theological ideas behind their forms. 1 have had considerable pleasure in working out the forms and the ideas, which actually are all there, and very importantly there. I have not been excessively tender in my handling of the previous authorities: but although I should be much less in their debt had Omaha culture still been functioning in full vigour, since the vigour is partly gone I am actually considerably in their debt — even if more as a foothold in the past than as a present guide to the vigour that actually still remains in Omaha culture. I speak only of where the authorities are deficient. Naturally I worked especially on the secret societies because I found that there and there alone was a system not adequately attacked or described, and yet still workable. The .social organisation and the mythology have been very adequately handled

Introduction

3

by the Rev. J. 0 . Dorsey1, the former impeccably in its formal structure. Further content to the social organisation and description of the general tribal rituals has been well done by Miss Alice Fletcher and Dr. Francis La Flesche in collaboration2. The Rev. J. 0. Dorsey has also described much of the old material culture3. The subjects best handled by the Rev. J. 0 . Dorsey can still be checked; but the subjects best handled by Miss Alice Fletcher and Dr. Francis La Flesche embody ethnological material now lost beyond the range of check owing to the deaths of the last priests. Therefore while I checked the social organisation, and the mythology, adding somewhat to the latter, I could not check the treatment of the great tribal rituals. The fact that both the Rev. J. 0. Dorsey and Miss Alice Fletcher and Dr. Francis La Flesche treat the secret societies without adequate understanding or adequate knowledge of form or of idea, is no comment upon their treatment of other aspects of Omaha culture, for the reason that Omaha retentiveness reaches its deepest on the subject. Not only is my especial subject that of deepest Omaha retentiveness, but it is also that about which the deepest emotions are centered. The subject of my enquiry, pursued and pushed hard and consistently, led me into a very real emotional maelstrom. However, I can and I have set down how these people feel as well as what they think and do, or rather what they did; for in these days feeling and thinking are still curiously of the old quality, and action only has suffered a very considerable transmutation from the influence of White contact. They are very distinctly as dissociated personalities, in mind and in emotion moulded by one culture, in what their hands and feet are compelled to do to keep their bodies from hunger and privation not exactly moulded, but hewn and battered into some apology of shape by a radically differing culture. Touching now more particularly on the results that I here present I may perhaps be allowed to comment on some of the aspects of them that strike me particularly. In the first place it is striking that the quality of the emotion centered about the religion is, on the whole, distinctly painful. The system reflects a fundamental pessimism, 1

Third Annual Report of the Bureau of (American) Ethnology. 1881—2, for the social organisation. Other topics are also there treated, less adequately. U. S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. VI, for the mythology. 2 Twenty Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1905—6. ; Thirteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1891—2. 1*

4

Omaha Secret Societies

and all the religious piety and prayer for long life is but the obverse of an obsession centred on illness and death. It is distinctly a worldly religion, and the secret societies are no escapes, no monastery equivalents, no refuges in supernormal or in subnormal experience, although there is some cult of the supernormal — but at high human cost, it is believed. The second point of interest requires some foreshadowing. The members of the culture are divided into those initiated into secrets, and secret societies, and those not so initiated. There is a fairly hard and fast divergence in religious belief between these two great classes. Those initiate practise shamanistic tricks as a great mark and showing of their power and prestige. Those uninitiate do not recognise these as tricks, but accept them as miracles, as the initiates give them out to be. The whole divergence depends upon skill in sleight of hand on the one side, ignorance that there is such a possibility as skill in sleight of hand on the other side. This situation is familiar in nearly all North American Indian cultures, although in some cultures the trick magicians are in small social place, whereas in Omaha they are four of the six most important sacred societies; all Omaha chiefs 1 had to be in one of the four, all Omaha doctors or medicine men except wound treaters in at least one of the other three, never possibly in the same one as that of the chiefs. The interesting points in connection with the Omaha situation were first the use of awe to make the trick appear a miracle specifically to its practisersj as I show in detail of functioning, and second the fact that, apart from feeling, the esoteric explanation and spiritualising of the trick to its practisers was not really any esoteric lore specifically taught as such, but a non-esoteric belief known to everyone, taught to all Omaha in infancy. Only this non-esoteric belief in an unseen influence, bathon,w&s capable of furtherextension. Non-initiates were brought up to believe in bathon, the unseen, limited by the seen miracles, or tricks, of the initiates. The initiates, limited by no conceptions of "materialisations" of the unseen influence, realising that their affected "materialisations" were not material miracles but solemn dramatisations only, a fact unknown to and strictly kept secret from the non-initiates, were free to believe that all was bathon, unseen influence, unlimited by the material. How this comes about I show, and how also in some initiates the process led to a heightening of the religious feeling, how in others it led to a degradation, how also the Omaha realised the importance of religious pre-disposition as a pre-requisite for initiation. 1 In the sense announced — of the Council of Seven, the leaders and political functionaries.

Introduction

5

I show that the term wakanda in Omaha is not to be compared with the Oceanic term mana, as a religious concept, except most loosely. The characteristic concepts involved in Omaha religious ideas are all wide and deep in connotation. The term for smell or odour is extended to mean all unseen supernatural emanation or influence, the term for imaginative recall is extended to mean all divinatory vision of the absent present and future, secular as well as supernatural, the term for dream imaging is extended to mean all hallucinatory or visionary experience awake as asleep. Is a man stricken by sorcery, he is said to be stricken by odour. Is a supernaturally empowered diviner divining a far distant present situation or a future situation, he is said to be recalling in imagination, or more exactly his action is described in exactly the same term as is used of the action of an Omaha in Nebraska say, calling up the visual memory of Coney Island where he once went as part of a spectacle. Is a man wide awake on a misty dawn seeing a Supernatural Being, the term used is that used for mere any — night dreaming, the same term for experiences incomparable in their effect upon the experiencer. Having said this here I shall not need to say it again in the body of the work. I use it to show the width that may be found also in other religious concepts than those of bathosmell and supernatural influence, wathigathoimaginative recall and all divination, with a belief in the real efficacy of the imagination or of the divination, if of the absent present or of the future, as a real contribution or a vera causa towards effecting the material end divined or imagined. This belief in a vera causa holds even for non-supernaturally empowered people in umthigatho". The point about dream and vision equivalence is familiar, but is typical of other terms. This terminology is not weak because of its wide connotation, of its crowded denotation. It is really an expression of a philosophy of religion. The immaterial is based on odour and on mental imagery; the old philosophical puzzle that the past is telescoped into the present in the imagery of imaginative recall, but not in material form so that it can be acted upon materially (except through the brain) is invoked in that term wathigathoand the use that is made of it (without allowance for the brain basis, of course). Then religious concepts are but extensions of the psychologically immaterial, but valid facts, in an outworld the borders of which are delicate to define. All this is but implicit philosophy, of course, taught to babes with their mothers' milk by the barest uses of language. But it is surely a remarkable basis for the religious ideas.

6

Omaha Secret

Societies

Turning now from the especial subject of the secret societies and reverting to a point about the culture as a whole I show how throughout there is a remarkable divorce between social theory and social fact. Social theory is democratic, social practice, essentially aristocratic — but definitely secretively so, as if it were a matter of bad social conscience, to use an analogy. In the old authorities on Omaha the democratic social theory was presented as authoritative — secret society entrance by open vision, chieftainship, head chieftainship by potlatch, priestly functions of gens determination — all open and free. In practice, as I show, the aristocratic transmission of privilege in hereditary lines prevails largely, but not completely, throughout, in striking contradiction to Omaha theory. I put this theory in its functional setting, treating the divergence between social theory and social fact as one of the cultural traits, as it is, and a peculiar trait. Now that I have outlined a few of the points of this study, mostly out of attire and context, I may add that Chapter II is very general on Omaha society: Chapter I I I is on the general principles of the Omaha secret societies. I have omitted two nondoctoring secret societies from specific mention in Chapter III, although not from generalisation there. Generalisations that apply to all four doctoring societies apply fairly well to the Midewiwin and to the Thunderbird Society, apart from doctoring and rules of membership. And where the case is exceptional I say so in later discussion of the two non-doctoring secret societies. Chapter IV. discussing society by society is in less even style as there I refer fairly often to the previous writers on the subject. Citation bulks lightly in sections I, II, and III, as the previous writers had not over much recorded, and does not come at all in sections IV, V, VI, and VII. But section VIII is somewhat involved. I may explain that sections IV to VIII of Chapter IV demonstrate a rather interesting fact, the fission in Omaha of a central Alogonkian institution introduced into Omaha from without, the Midewiwin. Chiefs and medicine men or doctors, as distinct classes, could not belong to the one institution, just as recently no one could combine the two offices, no chief could be a member of a doctoring society, and vice versa. Neither class could do without the Midewiwin, it appears; for as the Midewiwin was found in its Omaha form it was two societies, not one. Doctors belonged to one, chiefs to the other, and the two societies had complete autonomy, met entirely separately, and so on. But one was "made over" slightly from one class bias, one from another class bias. The working out of these facts

Introduction

7

is my own. But in Section VIII a large body of former work, too large and too beside any point other than a painstaking demonstration of ritual elaborateness, to warrant reprinting, had to be foot-noted and corrected in detail by page reference only, and at the same time my own point had to be driven home. This does not make easy reading, but I beg the patience of my readers for any difficulty that there may be in that section. The Midewiwin, itself, I am able to treat in a light that I have not found in former discussion of it from any tribe of the general area, and by such light to throw into relief new aspects, even to redefine the institution. In Chapter V I take up the point of individual experience with the religious system, a discussion leading to considerations some one or two of which I have outlined above, others not. I discuss there religious types that I found. In Chapter V I I discuss the Thunderbird Society briefly, not a great deal being known about it. I discuss also the Night Blessed Society, that with which the potlatch customs are connected, as also with chieftainship. This is not a secret society, but it is connected with the secret societies terminologically. It has been fairly well, but not completely described before, and I add a little. I go as thoroughly as possible into the relationship between potlatch and chieftainship. In Chapter V I I I take up a number of matters seriatim, all connected with religion and many with the secret societies. The latter are general to all the societies, but were not dealt with in Chapter III where I took up only a selection of the generalities in detail, those most necessary to subsequent exposition. Chapter V I I rounds off the treatment as adequately as possible, together with some tales and legends mostly bearing on the religion treated in Chapter V I I I . The field work upon which this study was based was completed in three months spent in Macy, Nebraska. It was rendered possible by a grant given by the Research Council of Social Science of Columbia University to which body I owe my gratitude for the opportunities afforded, and the realisation of them here presented. In more particular acknowledgement this work was done under an especial fund termed the Acculturation Fund administered by Dr. Ruth Benedict, to whom I am greatly indebted. This study is the first in publication of a number to be done under this direction. I owe my especial gratitude to Professor Franz Boas, and to I>r. Ruth Benedict for my preparation for North American field

8

Omaha Secret Societies

work in general, and for critical reading of this work in manuscript in particular. For kindly introduction to the Indian Service authorities in Nebraska I am indebted to Mr. M. W. Sterling, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and I am indebted to the authorities in Nebraska and particularly to Mr. and Mrs. J. Ritchhart for such efficient help and hospitality as could not have been surpassed. I also owe more than I could pay to some few of my Omaha informants, who prefer to remain anonymous, and whose actual names I do not use here or later.

CHAPTER I I

GENERAL SKETCH OF OMAHA SOCIETY The Omaha are a tribe of the group commonly known as the southern Sioux, a group abutting on the Plains area but culturally in contrast to that area. The cognate tribes are the Ponca, who speak the same language and have approximately the same institutions, and the Osage, the Kansa and the Quapaw who speak the same language with dialectical differences. This language is of the Siouan stock, and the most complex of the stock. Similarly the culture is the most complex and the richest Siouan culture known. The cognate tribes were spread over a wide territory. The Omaha to the northwest were roughly four hundred and fifty miles up the Missouri from its confluence with the Mississippi. Near the confluence of the two great rivers were the Osage. Almost directly south of the Omaha and directly west of the Osage were the Kansa. Then some two hundred miles down the Mississippi, directly on the confluence of the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers were the Quapaw. We know enough of the Omaha cognates to realise that theirs was once a very considerable culture, much of which has been lost. They were situated on the great waterway, the channel into the interior used by the early European explorers, and probably by some earlier seepage of aboriginal civilisation from Mexico. Further down the river and about half as far from the Quapaw as the Quapaw were from the Omaha, was the seat of the Natchez, by all accounts a people of high culture, but of a different linguistic stock. The Quapaw were found in the sixteenth century in a strongly fortified village, "very great, walled, and beset with towers", and "in the town was great store of old maize, and great quantity of new in the fields. Within a league were great towns all walled."1 They were mound builders and manufacturers of fine pottery. 2 The more northern tribes once had but have lost the art of pottery making, according to report. They did not fortify their villages, store maize communally or build mounds, as far as we know. And all four, Omaha, Ponca, Osage and Kansa, hunted the buffalo, as well as practising agriculture. We know very little of 1 Cited from the Chronicles of De Soto's expedition. 1539—43, in the Handbook of American Indians, ed. by F . W . Hodge, Part 2, p. 333. 2 Ibid. pp. 334—5.

10

Omaha Secret

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the Quapaw and Kansa (owing to their early decay under foreign influence) except that they were organised in patrilineal gentes of an order common to all five cognates. And we only know the Osage from certain confined aspects. Nevertheless the rituals that have been collected from the Osage are so much more elaborate than any ever known to have existed amongst the more northern Omaha and Ponca that all our knowledge gives but the one impression. We find a people not organised as effectively for war as for peace, disliking war and avoiding it as much as possible, thrust northwest into the buffalo hunting area and competing with other tribes in the endless wars over buffalo hunting territories. At the southeastern base we find agriculture dominant and the arts of peace in full vigour. Midway, amongst the Osage, we have evidence of a very elaborate ritual and "totemistic" religion1. In the northwest we find less elaboration of agriculture, religion and the arts, but more hunting and more war — amongst the Omaha and Ponca. Nevertheless Omaha and Ponca political theory preserves some evidence of possible former complexity. The Omaha discuss war in terms of offensive and defensive war, a terminology incongruous on the unfortified open plains, but well enough adapted to the old Quapaw organisation. In Omaha there are some slight traces of the Osage full developed rituals that are connected with the Osage social organisation 2 , and the social organisation, without the rituals, is also Omaha, with slight differences only. In Omaha the traces of Osage-like rituals are disconnected from the social organisation entirely. These rituals amongst the Osage concern a mystical relation of the individual to the totemic object of his gens. In the beginning all the ancestors were pure spirit, disembodied. They obtained bodies from the animals or objects that then became their "totems", the "totems" of their respective gentes. Such is a summary of what was a very considerable cult. The Omaha culture still holds a considerable complexity in its own right, a great part of which must probably be understood against this southeastern background. The division of the society into distinct classes, chiefs, priests, doctors and doctoring society members and the unprivileged is a great point. Admission to the former three privileged classes was by title transmitted usually in the paternal line. The desire for social privilege was extreme. I may illustrate this by one account here. There was in one paternal line 1 Francis La Flesche. 36th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 1914—15. 2 For the Omaha traces see A. Fletcher and F. La Flesche 27th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1905—06. p. 570.

General Sketch of Omaha Society

11

of the I n kecabe gens a priestly office called wathoLeader of the Buffalo Hunt. The wathon went out to the hunt behind the hunters, barefoot, fasting from food and drink, apart from his wife and children. He selected camping sites on the way, he could order a diviner to divine where the buffalo were to be found and he led the ritual descent on the buffalo when they were found, not as a descent of hunters merely, but as a descent of an entire group observing special religious rites — even with the long sought for herds under their eyes. For an account of the rites of the wat.hon the previous record is good1. But the same authorities' account of the watho11 position as a right of the I n kecabe gens must be understood with reservation2. It is said to be a gens right. It is said, "If the lastl n kecabe were an infant in its mother's arms it would be carried to lead the people in the surrounding of the buffalo herd." That is true report of what is said. The same authorities, however, mention it as an "ancient and hereditary office." In practice it was hereditary in one line of the gens. If that line ceased it would go to a close collateral line. The insistence upon the office as a gens right actually means that succession must be absolutely patrilineal. There must be no sonin-law succession to father-in-law's place, as sometimes happens as an alternative to patrilineal succession in the chiefly and doctoring successions, never in the priestly. The last ivathon was named I n shtathabi. He was the younger son of the previous wathon, by a second wife. One day while his father, the ivatho", was seated with the members of the sacred society, the Midewiwin, he called for his small son by his second wife, then a boy of five years old. His twenty year old son by his first wife was already present. When the five year old boy was brought to him the father announced solemnly that he willed that his office as leader of the buffalo hunt should descend to this, his second son, after his death. Immediately the first son was on his feet, the father was on his feet, son drew knife against father and father against son. When the two were separated both were mortally wounded. Both lingered on. Several times a day the dying father sent a messenger to see if his son was dead, several times a day the son sent a messenger to see if his father was dead. Both swore separately not to die before word came back that the other was dead. For several days unsatisfactory word of the other's surviving went between them. Then finally word came to the father of his son's death. He said, "I can die now," turned his face away, and died almost immediately. 1 A. Fletcher and F. La Flesche 27th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 276 et seq. 2 Ibid. pp. 146—7.

12

Omaha Secret Societies

This account is from the family that would hold the wathon position, did it still exist. I t illustrates well the jealousy for privilege, and sets a note that will be illustrated further later in my account. The temperament involved is akin to that of the Natchez mothers who sacrificed their infants to gain rank. And, as we shall see. there was what was regarded as human sacrifice to gain privilege of position in Omaha. There was more than an individual cultural base in Omaha society. In the northwesterly thrust away from the southeast, where some of the cognate tribes remained, the Omaha came in touch with Algonkian and Plains influences. The Midewiwin institution was taken from the Algonkian and put into a characteristic Omaha setting, as we shall see later. The Sun dance was taken from the Plains and reworked without torture, into the Hedewachi ceremony, under the care of a hereditary priestly line of the I n kecabe gens. There are many other such influences that might be enumerated, but almost all that are of any complexity show evidence of having been reworked to suit Omaha forms of organisation, which must therefore be taken as being fundamental. I may detail the social organisation somewhat more minutely, relying on the accounts of previous authorities, checked by myself. I have some new points to make in this connection, and I present some old material also more compactly. When the Omaha were on the march they always camped in a circle of fixed formation, in the following order: — Numbers 1 to 10 of the diagram represent each a gens; gentes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were W one moiety, while gentes 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 were another moiety. The former moiety had as its general name the particular name of gens 3, the latter moiety, as its general name, the particular name of gens 10. But the northward camping moiety was also called the Sky moiety while the southward camping moiety was also called the Earth moiety. The special marks A, B, and C represent tipi shrines, A, the Sacred Tent of War, whose priest was of gens 1. B and (J, the Tents of the 'Sacred Pole and of the Sacred White Buffalo Skin respectively,

General Sketch of Omaha Society

13

their respective priests being both of gens 3. Other priests did not have special sacred tents pitched away from the living quarters, and within the circle enclosed by the living quarters. The moieties are said to have perhaps regulated marriage. A Sky man should perhaps marry an Earth woman and an Earth man a Sky woman. But this was a theory, rather than a fact, as far as can be determined. Fletcher and La Flesche mention it without conviction. Dorsey, who made a thorough study of the rules of mariage, does not mention it, so it evidently had no basis. It certainly has none now, whereas the rules of exogamy as laid down by Dorsey are still considered binding. There was evidently not moiety exogamy, but only a tradition that the Sky represented the male, the Father, 3

A

=

o 4a

o

7

44

A 7*

o j A e 0=

IT A

i

=

A = O

r

O il z A=0

1 a O = A

Fig. II.

while the Earth represented the female, the Mother, and perhaps, but J think doubtfully, a tradition that marriage should be between Sky moiety person and Earth moiety person. Fletcher and La Flesche say: "It is possible that this symbolic arrangement throws light on the force which made possible the artificial practice of exogamy. In this connection it is interesting to know that of the marriages in existence among the Omaha twenty-five years ago, a good majority represented a union between members of gentes belonging to two rather than to one of these grand divisions1, (moieties)." This statement is not worth much as evidence. Exogamy as carefully observed and described by Dorsey had nothing to do with moiety exogamy. The term "a good majority" is loose, and why the qualification "twenty-five years ago" ? Naturally there would be 1

27th Annual Report of the American Bureau of Ethnology, p. 135.

14

Omaha Secret Societies

a majority of marriages between Sky and Earth over those not so arranged, because, other restrictions apart, and taking only the restriction that a person must not marry in his or her own gens, the chances are as 6 / 9 versus 4/g that a person will marry into the opposite moiety. We have no evidence that the "good majority" in question is greater than the chances, and we have evidence from Dorsey to scout it. A type genealogy (Fig.II,p. 13) given by Dorsey works out in terms of the above gens numbers as given in Figure I (adding a, b, c, d, to a number for subdivisions of the gens so numbered on occasion). Thus of eight marriages here four are inter-moiety, four are extra-moiety. I t is a typical enough genealogy. I take one of mine at random (Fig. I I I ) . i

A

I A

I A

bachelor.

A = O

=

4 O

9

A = 0

=

e

O

O = A

A = O

A = O

a Sioux

. r A = O

A

A = 0

=

O

A f

3l

A =

Fig. I I I .

Here we have seven extra-moiety marriages and five intramoiety marriages, (one extra-tribal and one bachelor). Both Dorsey's genealogy cited and mine cited date back well, mine ending at old people living, not at their living grandchildren and not including their children's marriages. I have not many statistics, for I soon found the above condition everywhere repeated. Amongst the Osage a man of the Sky moiety always hung his medicine bundle (repository of sacred objects) on the left side of his lodge or tipi, a man of the Earth moiety (in Osage, strictly speaking, the Earth and Water Moiety) on the right side of his lodge or tipi1. I t will be recalled that the Sky moiety is to the north, the Earth moiety, to the south. The circle in formation is conceived for ceremonial purposes as always facing the East. So a North or Sky 1 Francis La Flesche, "'Right and Left in Osage Ceremonies", W. H. Holmes Anniversary Volume — Anthropological Essays.

2!

O

General Sketch of Omaha Society

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moiety man is a Left side man while a South or Earth moiety man is a Right side man. A Sky moiety man put on his left moccasin first, an Earth moiety man put on his right moccasin first, and there were many other like observances1. The most interesting point for our present need is that it is recorded that when a man married out of his moiety his medicine bundle hung on one side of the lodge and his wife's burden strap on the other side of the lodge. But when there was a marriage within a moiety a man's medicine bundle and his wife's burden strap both hung on the same side of the lodge. Both practices are recorded without any discrimination, such as one marriage being good or another bad2. It appears as truly for the Osage as for the Omaha that the moieties were not exogamous, or any regulator of marriage. Ceremonial games, such as shinney, were played by one moiety against the other. I may add that we have no record of Omaha ritualism of right and left connected with the moieties. The gens contrasted strongly with the moiety in being a unit of importance, just as the paternal family line contrasted strongly with the gens in being a unit again with still more importance. A man's standing as priest, chief, secret or doctoring society member, or unprivileged person depended on his family line, and on his place in it. The family was of individual importance; the gens was rather like the moiety in being largely a social gesture. But the gens was absolutely exogamous, so bearing directly on the individual. Each gens had its own set of personal names. It is possible in Omaha to arrange an alphabetical dictionary of names of males, then to affix a gens signature to each name. Thereafter whenever a name is mentioned reference to the dictionary will infallibly disclose the gens of the man named. There is not overlapping of names between any two gentes. I used the above system in the field, so I know that it works perfectly. The average old Omaha has the associations in his head that make quite a large dictionary such as the field worker must use to keep pace with his informant. This applies to names of males only. It does not apply, except in minor degree only, to names of females. Each gens used to have its own individual style in hair tonsure for children (illustrated in the 27th Annual Report.) Gifts made within a gens could not be counted as potlatch gifts — that is for raising a man in rank, and in this agreed with gifts made to affinal 1 In mixed society, not in camp circle, women sat to the left, men to the right. But a left side man in terms of the camp circle, belonged to the Sky or male moiety. 2 Francis La Flesche in article above referred to.

Omaha Secret

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