Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 169 



would have greater freedom of action. The same applied to a young 

 married woman living in her husband's lodge. 



The Hidatsa tried to anticipate the moment of death and to have the 

 person painted in his distinctive designs and dressed in his burial 

 clothing before death. The duty of attending to this fell to the 

 members of the father's clan. In the case of little children, this duty 

 usually fell to some well-known father's clans-woman selected by 

 the child's mother. There was a formal way of addressing the woman 

 so selected in which the mother would go to her and say "your 

 brother's child is about to die. You are to bring the robe." When 

 this was done, no one could refuse. It was her duty to select a robe 

 in good repair, one of the best that she had, or go out through the 

 village and find a well-decorated robe that she thought the child 

 would have liked. She would then go to the lodge, dress the child in 

 appropriate clothing, and wrap him tightly in the robe. Other 

 brothers and sisters or clan brothers and sisters might bring additional 

 robes and ask that the child be buried in them or give them to some 

 member of the father's clan who in turn was expected to provide an 

 additional robe. Whether child or adult, it was customary, if 

 possible, to bury or to place the dead on a scaffold or in a tree during 

 the day of death. If, however, the person died late in the day and 

 it was not possible to complete the burial arrangements that day, 

 it was customary to leave the corpse in the lodge overnight. Old mocca- 

 sins with hot coals in them were placed in the entrance of the lodge to 

 keep away the evil spirits and to protect the people from the Ul-effects 

 of having a dead person in the lodge overnight. When this happened 

 people would stay up all night awaiting the break of day for the 

 funeral services. 



It was the duty of the people of the father's clan to take care of and 

 handle all of the funeral arrangements. First of all there was the 

 preparation of the body. The manner of disposal was largely a family 

 custom inherited from their family lines going back to the three 

 original village groups on the Knife River. The Hidatsa recognized 

 that there were a number of different traditional methods of disposing 

 of the dead. They were well aware of the fact that more people were 

 buried in the ground at Hidatsa village on the Knife River than at the 

 other villages. This was evident to the Hidatsa themselves for, after 

 leaving the Knife River and up until a few years ago, the Hidatsa 

 commonly made trips downriver to their ancient villages. They had 

 seen the many burial mounds and depressions at Knife River, at 

 Hidatsa village, and the few that were found around Awatixa and 

 Awaxawi villages. The Hidatsa-proper claimed that this difference in 

 disposal practices dated back to their first appearance on the Missouri 

 River and they have many traditions dealing with burial in the ground. 



