44 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



To reinforce their positions, Crows Paunch and Poor Wolf selected 

 from the council four men older than themselves to serve as "pro- 

 tectors of the people" according to ancient custom, but many of 

 the younger group ridiculed these four men, calling them, "protectors 

 of our chiefs who are no good." About this time, the Government 

 estabhshed Fort Buford near the mouth of the Yellowstone and 

 younger men from the village served as scouts. Trouble broke out 

 at the village when the Government rations were being distributed; 

 some younger men accused Crows Paunch and Poor Wolf of showing 

 favorites and retaining too large a share for their own famihes. Fights 

 broke out, but Bobtail Bull quickly asserted himself as leader of the 

 opposition and urged moderation. He promised that if his supporters 

 would take no drastic steps or resort to j&ghting, he would serve as 

 their peace chief, take them upstream, and ask the Government for 

 permission to build a village near the fort. Since there were many 

 buffaloes farther west and the young men could get positions as scouts, 

 he felt that the people would be happier there. The next day his 

 followers commenced packing and left the village shortly thereafter. 

 Some Mandans discovered that they too had not been treated fairly 

 by their chiefs in the distribution of goods and decided to go along 

 also. At this time, the Mandan had two sets of head men: those 

 representing the Nuitadi Mandan who came to Fishhook in 1845 

 when the village was first built, and those of the Nuptadi Mandan 

 who arrived in the early 1860's. Flying Eagle, the chief of the 

 Nuitadi Mandan, also decided to go upstream, for the people no 

 longer recognized his authority and talked about him when he was 

 not present, saying that he was selfish. A few Mandan famihes went 

 with him. 



The character of this conflict expresses numerous situations which 

 would have taken a different form in former times. In the first 

 place, it was wrong for younger men to question the authority of the 

 older men, irrespective of their relative ceremonial and military 

 achievements. This questioning of authority led to the fast break- 

 down of the age-grade structure. A drift away from the organized 

 and formal public rites was indicated by the willingness of young men 

 to go to war with one who had not obtained his full military authority 

 in the customary way. Although the practice of seeking personal 

 supernatural guidance was characteristic of the Crow and numerous 

 other adjacent tribes, the Hidatsa had gone one step further and had 

 made supernatural quests a prerequisite for entrance into the formal 

 bundle rites having group recognition and participation. A final 

 point was the length of the feud and the unwilhngness of either group 

 to take the customary steps to separation into a separate camp, either 

 permanently or until the differences had been corrected, knowing that 



