PREFACE Vn 



Without the help of these older Hidatsa informants, this study 

 could not have been made. All of them were born about 1850-60 

 and were adults at the time of the Custer massacre. They had 

 been participants in their ancient ceremonies. They were the 

 last survivors sufficiently informed to provide an accurate picture of 

 their former culture. Other weaknesses in this study are due to my 

 own shortcomings; I never observed the culture I was studying. 

 When such a wealth of information is at hand, it is not always easy 

 to extract the most pertinent patterns of a culture for analysis or to 

 see life as the informants did without actually living it. 



I have had much assistance from many people. I am deeply 

 indebted to the late Dr. George L. Collie of the Logan Museum, Be- 

 loit College, for starting me off into the field of Plains researches. 

 The late Dr. Fay-Cooper Cole followed my progress in the field and 

 guided me skillfully toward the attainment of my objectives in the 

 Hidatsa studies. Dr. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown guided me toward an 

 understanding of the synchronic approach to the study of society as 

 a system, which was essentially the image of the Hidatsa that Bears 

 Arm was always describing for me. Dr. Radcliffe-Brown would have 

 been greatly impressed with Bears Arm. Nor had I gone far in 

 my field investigations before I discovered that theoretically, under 

 the Hidatsa kinship system, an individual might stand in several 

 different relationships to another. At first I was inclined to believe 

 that there were errors in my recording or that informants were con- 

 fused. I drew these matters to the attention of the late Dr. Robert 

 Redfield. He called for examples and was able to demonstrate to 

 me that, in fact, individuals could stand in a number of different 

 relationships, each social situation determining the relationship that 

 would prevail. 



In January 1947, I went to Chicago to prepare manuscripts from 

 my field notes on the social and ceremonial organization of the Man- 

 dan and Hidatsa and Great Plains archeology under the direction 

 of Dr. Cole. When he retired from the faculty of the University 

 of Chicago, the supervision of these researches went to Dr. Fred 

 Eggan with whom I worked until July 1, 1949, when I joined the 

 faculty of the University of Idaho. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Eggan 

 for his assistance. During my first years on the University of Idaho 

 faculty, it was difficult, because of my heavy teaching load and large 

 classes, to devote much time to this report. Three years ago my 

 teaching load was reduced by one-fourth so that I could devote time 

 to the preparation of this report and other researches in the Plains 

 which the University of Idaho had sponsored. 



Dr. Robert L. Stephenson, chief of the Missouri Basin Project, 

 River Basin Surveys, Smithsonian Institution, suggested the incorpo- 



