INTRODUCTION. 



Before offering a detailed account of the Tobacco society it seems 

 desirable to give a brief sketch of Crow ceremonialism. Contrary to 

 opinions sometimes expressed in print, the Crow Indians cannot be 

 characterized as a preeminently ceremonial people. In chis respect 

 they do not even remotely approximate the Village tribes of the Upper 

 Missouri, let alone the Pawnee or Hopi. For example, organizations 

 like the military societies, which elsewhere are charged with a distinctly 

 religious flavor even when they are placed in a lesser category of sacred- 

 ness, are among the Crow so predominantly secular that they are best 

 treated as purely social clubs; at best they display on]y the outward 

 trappings of ceremonialism. Nor do we find a calendric series of festivals 

 or any other attempt at systematic elaboration. 



This does not mean that there is any dearth of set observances. 

 The elements of ceremonialism pervade Crow life probably to as great 

 an extent as they do the life of other Plains tribes; but they are rarely 

 synthetized into impressive wholes. This may become clearer by a 

 comparison with the Blackfoot. Crow culture shares the mystical 

 accentuation of four, the altar, the use of incense, the ritualistic song. 

 More important still, it is characterized by the dominance of the vision 

 and the concept that its beneficial results are transferable by sale. 

 With the Blackfoot, however, these features- developed into an elab- 

 orate scheme of bundle rituals. Among the Crow there are comparable 

 phenomena but they seem inferior both quantitatively and in point of 

 integration. The Crow have not only fewer and on the whole less com- 

 plicated rituals but their rituals do not conform to a pattern so definitely 

 as Blackfoot bundle procedure conforms to the Beaver bundle standard. 

 The contrast is even greater when the Crow are compared with the 

 Hidatsa. The latter have a long series of bundles, including, e.g., the 

 Bird, Missouri River, Soldiers' Sticks, Old Woman, and Wolf bundles, 

 all of which manifestly represent a single ceremonial type. On the other 

 hand, the Crow have very few pretentious bundles standing out from the 

 host of individually owned charms and other lesser medicines; and of 

 these few the Horse and Pipe medicines are demonstrably features bor- 

 rowed in recent times from the Assiniboin and Hidatsa respectively. 

 Further, the bundles of fairly long standing the Sun Dance Doll, the 

 Medicine Arrows, the Tobacco medicine have each a marked individu- 

 ality, thus hardly forming a well-defined group of ceremonial complexes. 



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