78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



committed the same offense at Fishhook and under similar circum- 

 stances — killing a clansman while intoxicated^ — -dared flee to a Hidatsa 

 village. Big Wind fled to the Crows and Sitting Elk fled to Fort 

 Stevenson and asked protection of the U.S. Army. It is interesting to 

 observe, and it is important for this study to note, that the custom of 

 village groups to break up whenever irreconcilable internal conflicts 

 arose did not weaken authority of the clan. 



HIDATSA MOIETY CONCEPT 



In contrast with the Mandan, the Hidatsa moiety concept was of 

 less social and economic importance. In this respect the Hidatsa 

 seem to have occupied a position intermediate between the Mandan, 

 who had a highly developed moiety concept, and the Crow where the 

 moiety was unknown. Nowhere in the Hidatsa ceremonialism does 

 one find moiety seating of fasters or participants as practiced by the 

 Mandan in their important summer Okipa ceremony. We find the 

 Hidatsa fasters in their important summer NaxpikE and the Sunset 

 Wolf ceremonies sitting around the periphery of the sacred lodge 

 without regard to moiety. Hidatsa fasters, when participating in 

 the Okipa ceremony, would sit by moieties and, so far as possible, by 

 equated clans. Although the Hidatsa relate the myth of the creation 

 of the earth by two heroes working on different sides of the Missouri 

 River, they obviously borrowed the myth from the Mandan in very 

 recent times. Their ceremonies in no way celebrate the event nor 

 are the culture heroes represented in the rites identified with clan or 

 moiety as did the Mandan ; nor does one find culture heroes responsible 

 for the establishment and naming of moieties as with the Mandan. 

 The concept of the moiety is highly developed and permeates the 

 entire Mandan ceremonial structure and one would conclude from 

 their traditions that the clans came later than the moiety. Eefer- 

 ences to Hidatsa symbolic representation of the moiety is limited to 

 the Eagle Trapping and related ceremonies which, in every respect, 

 show greater similarities to the comparable Mandan rites than any 

 other common ceremonies. In fact, the similarities in the rites and 

 mythological interpretations were so great that in a former paper 

 (Bowers, 1950, pp. 206-254) I treated this aspect of their cultures 

 together, the differences between the two tribes being no greater than 

 between different bundle lines of the same tribe. I interpret this 

 similarity of Eagle Trapping rites, techniques, and beliefs as pointing 

 to recent diffusion from the Mandan. This similarity seems also to 

 substantiate Hidatsa traditions of an eastern origin from a wooded 

 region not suited for eagle trapping by the techniques in vogue on the 

 Plains. If we eliminate those moiety concepts associated with eagle 

 trapping and related economic activities, little or nothing of the moiety 



