Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 95 



Another group adopted into the villages was composed of prisoners, 

 comprising women, small children, and even babies, when it was 

 possible to bring them back safely without danger from counterattack. 

 A woman sometimes would ask a brother leaving for war to bring 

 her a child, to replace one that had recently died, instead of a horse. 

 Women prisoners were taken as wives and their children captured 

 with them lived in their mother's household. Motherless children 

 were adopted and cared for by other households. If a girl was ap- 

 proaching marriageable age, she was usually taken into a household 

 without formal adoption and assisted the women of the household 

 until she could be married to some young man who would assist in 

 the hunting. The most illustrious prisoner to become a member of the 

 tribe was Bird Woman, the Shoshoni guide for Lewis and Clark in 

 1805-1806. By residence at Awatixa village, she became a member 

 of the Itisuku clan. 



Within the village, those men owning ceremonial rights that included 

 a buffalo skull were collectively spoken of as "fathers." Women of 

 comparable status were addressed as "father's sister." The kinship 

 system also comprised the culture heroes and various sacred objects. 

 Woman Above, Old- Woman- Who-Never-Dies, the field mice, the corn 

 mill, and the Holy Women were referred to as "grandmother." Fire 

 and Missouri Kiver clan bundle deities were "grandfathers." Sun, 

 Moon, Two Men, Buffalo Bull, and many others were "fathers." In 

 every situation of a sacred character, there existed a kinship relation- 

 ship between the sacred characters and objects on the one hand and 

 the bundle owner and purchaser on the other. 



The numerous methods of extending kinship within the village 

 invariably brought about situations in which a Hidatsa had a choice 

 of two or more relationship terms for the same person. A few case 

 records will indicate the general underlying rules for determining kin 

 not in the direct bloodline. Chart 10 illustrates several alternate 

 relationships between Bears Arm and Walks. Bears Arm always 

 called Woman-in- Water a "father" because Woman-in- Water and 

 Old- Woman-Crawling were of the same clan and were presumed to be 

 related through "clan sisters" further back, although they could not 

 trace out actual blood sister relationships since Woman-in- Water's 

 female lineage was of Awatixa village while Old-Woman-Crawling's 

 mother's lineage was from Awaxawi village. Bears Arm explained 

 that Medicine Robe was, by the extension of his mother's lineage to 

 include those of her clan, actually an "older sister" since he and 

 Medicine Robe were of the same clan and that would have made 

 Woman-in-Water a "brother-in-law." Bears Arm placed greater 

 emphasis on the "sibling" relationship existing between males, in this 

 instance Woman-in-Water and Old- Woman-Crawling, than a similar 



