236 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



her there and then. Often the elder at first appeared 

 reluctant, but at length moved by the youth's perse- 

 verance, by his prayers gifts and even tears, yielded 

 to his solicitations, the husband meanwhile standing 

 by, rejoicing at the honour which was being done him 

 and at his dignity thus preserved by acceptance of his 

 offer. 1 The buffalo was the most important animal to 

 the Indians of the Plains. When the buffaloes were 

 absent, want of all the necessaries of life threatened 

 the people. The presence of a herd and a successful 

 hunt meant plenty and wealth and whatever an Indian 

 required to fulfil his ideal of happiness. There can be 

 little doubt that this strange scene, which amazed the 

 explorers beyond measure, was a magical process in- 

 tended to draw the buffaloes back and with the buffaloes 

 the prosperity of which they were the symbol and the 

 substance. Nor was this the only ritual of the kind 

 performed by the Mandans ; but in the other orgy 

 witnessed by the explorers it is stated that all the 

 women taking part were unmarried. In the same 

 way at the great buffalo medicine-feast of the Hidatsas, 

 said to have been instituted by the women, when 

 prayers were offered for success in hunting and in battle, 

 the men and women indulged in something like 

 promiscuous intercourse. 2 



One other example will suffice, The Arapaho, an 

 Algonkin-speaking people, were discovered at the 

 beginning of the last century inhabiting a territory 

 which now forms the eastern half of Colorado and the 

 south-eastern quarter of Wyoming. Their principal 



1 Lewis and Clark, i. 209. 



2 Dorsey, Rep, Bur. Ethn. xi. 505, citing Maximilian, Trav. N. 

 Amer. 419. 



