84 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 195 



elder brother of the woman says to the husband "You have made her suffer; you 

 shall not have her for a wife any longer." This they do when he has beaten her 

 several times, or has been cruel in other ways. 



As mentioned earlier, the henpecked husband could divorce his 

 wife by "giving her away" to the young men of the tribe at a Heduska 

 dance. 



Husband-wife relationships which I observed, with but few excep- 

 tions, appeared to be very close, and often small signs of affection were 

 exchanged by the two when they thought themselves unobserved. 

 Nevertheless, quarrels do occasionally occur. The humorous term 

 "coffee nerves," derived from comic-strip advertisements of the 1930's, 

 is used to describe a man and wife who have been quarreling. When 

 parents separated, the children were sometimes taken by the wife's 

 mother, sometimes by the husband's (Dorsey, 1884 a, p. 262). 



Very often, ceremonial obligations were undertaken jointly by a 

 man and his wife. Skinner writes that a man and his wife usually 

 joined the Medicine Lodge society at the same time (1920, pp. 306- 

 307). This old Gegiha pattern has now been transferred to the Peyote 

 rite. Thus, a Southern Ponca, upon learning that I had "eaten 

 peyote" (i.e., was a member of the Peyote religion), immediately 

 inquired if my wife also belonged, and was surprised when I informed 

 him that she did not. 



Relationships between parents and children of the same sex were 

 very close. J. O. Dorsey (1890, p. 291) records, in the folktale "The 

 Bear Girl," the following illustrative instance: "Her mother combed 

 her hair for her, although she was grown. This was customary." 

 At the present time when a Ponca girl decides that she wishes to dance 

 in local powwows, she asks her mother to help her make a dance dress. 



Whitman (1939, p. 187) describes the father-son relationship of 

 Black-eagle and his father as quite restrained, but this was apparently 

 a special case, for those father-son relationships which I observed, and 

 which informants described to me, were very close. Most of the 

 stories told me by JLR, PLC, and AMC had been learned from their 

 fathers. Both sons and daughters were customarily disciplined by 

 reprimand rather than by physical means. 



The Ponca, like other Central Siouan tribes, honored the eldest 

 child in the family above the rest. Whitman (1939, p. 182, note 14) 

 writes: "Among the Ponca the Beloved Child was usually the oldest, 

 either male or female. Such children were not scolded; they were 

 given the best of everything." This child, if a boy, was the one who 

 inherited the sacred bundles and ceremonial responsibilities of the 

 father, and hence was given preferential treatment. That the special 

 treatment of the Beloved Child was not considered quite fair by the 

 younger siblings is indicated by WBB's statement, recorded by Whit- 

 man (ibid., p. 182): "He always scolded me, and never my older 



