92 BUKEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



to the Hidatsa purchase pattern, if the sellers were treated as "fathers" 

 then the sale was outright, as in the instance of the age-grade transfers. 

 The Hidatsa therefore treated the Santee Sioux as "friends"; a 

 relationship that existed between groups of individuals of the same 

 age or that prevailed when one earth lodge group transmitted a 

 society dance to another earth lodge group not having the society. 

 The same year that the Grass Dance was bought by the Hidatsa 

 and a few Mandans, visiting Crows watched them dance and invited 

 them to visit the Crow for the purpose of selling the right to dance. 

 Before selling to the Crow, oflScers of the Hidatsa Crazy Dog Society 

 sold them the right to use certain emblems of that society for the 

 dances — even before the dance rights were sold to the Crow the same 

 year. When the visiting Crow invited the Hidatsa to return the 

 visit and bring the Grass Dance to them, the matter of sale was 

 discussed. The Hidatsa were unwilling to sell in the sense of re- 

 linquishing their rights, which would have happened had a "father- 

 son" relationship been established. The Crows, therefore, agreed 

 to a "friend-friend" relationship so that the Hidatsa could transmit 

 the right and the information while still holding their own rights. 

 Then each member of the society selected a friend to whom he supplied 

 a duplicate set of the society equipment. Another instance of cul- 

 tural borrowing between the Assiniboin and the Hidatsa is evidenced 

 in the case of the Horse Ceremony. Before the rites were transmitted 

 to individual Hidatsas, a "father-son" relationship had existed for 

 some time; then on the initiative of the Assiniboin "father" the rights 

 to doctor horses and to perform the ceremonies were sold. In the 

 two instances of sale to Holding Eagle and to Big Black, the cultural 

 borrowing (buying in this instance) was through the medium of an 

 existing intertribal kinship relationship. 



Marriage resulted in the acquisition of an additional set of relatives 

 and altered the previously established classification of relatives. 

 Marriage between persons of the same clan regardless of village 

 residence and between close blood relatives was disapproved of. 

 Dm-ing the last century, the members of the Mandan Prairie Chicken 

 clan have come to be viewed as "related" to the Hidatsa Prairie 

 Chicken clan and marriage between Prairie Chicken members has 

 been imiversally disapproved. Also in recent years, the Xura clan 

 has been reduced to a lineage of the Waterbuster clan and marriages 

 between the two are discouraged. It has not been considered proper 

 for the Speckled Eagle clan to marry with the Prairie Chicken clan 

 although a few have done so. Other than these restrictions, there 

 were no clan limitations to marriage and there is no evidence that the 

 moiety in any way regulated marriage. An additional set of relation- 

 ships through marriage with persons of other tribes, particularly the 



