94 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 194 



women's societies had a "pal" society which assisted during the 

 performance of their organized social and ceremonial functions. 



The Hidatsa treated the Whites married into the tribe as a single 

 clan of male "brothers." 



Ordinarily, adoption of a child took place when parents separated 

 or the mother died. Usually the mother's relatives adopted and 

 cared for the child. The first responsibility for the care of an orphan 

 rested with the child's mother's sisters. If one of these was childless, 

 she would invariably adopt the child and care for it; the husband's 

 opinions were not solicited. If the child had no close "mother's 

 sister" the responsibility rested with the father's sister; she commonly 

 asked for the child even when there was a mother's sister to care for 

 it, but to relinquish a child under those cu'cumstances was considered 

 improper and one so doing would be the subject of severe criticism 

 by the other members of the child's clan. 



In extreme crisis situations, such as the occasional destruction of a 

 large part of the village population by warfare or epidemic in which a 

 number of the households were broken up, extreme measures of 

 reorganization were necessary. During the smallpox epidemic of 

 1837, when more than half of the Hidatsa died, children were cared 

 for by their nearest kin — the first responsibility rested with the 

 mother's own sisters and the maternal grandmothers; second were the 

 father's brothers' wives or the father's sisters. Those having none of 

 these relatives were cared for by women of the clan. A few instances 

 were cited where orphans were adopted by women not of the above 

 groups because of unusual circumstances such as being left childless 

 with no child of the clan available for adoption. In cases such as the 

 latter, the child so reared invariably disregarded his blood kin and 

 clan and adopted the clan and kin of the person raising him. Should 

 such a person endeavor to marry one of his own blood, however, he 

 would be advised not to do so. Adoption of children of aUen tribes, 

 when the parents were unable to care for them or they had been 

 abandoned by their parents while trading at the Hidatsa villages, 

 was of common occurrence. The cases usually involved children whose 

 father had been killed or died and whose mother was unable to travel 

 with and care for a small child. These children when adopted 

 frequently assumed the position of a child who had died, while the 

 kinship bonds with the blood relatives were never broken. They 

 could return to their own tribe when grown and nothing would have 

 been done to prevent it. In fact, it was a common occurrence to 

 return to visit the blood relatives, and no war party would have 

 knowingly attacked a band from another tribe coming to the village 

 to visit relatives. 



