Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 171 



and set them in a rough cu-cle surrounded by buffalo skulls. This 

 practice was abandoned a few years prior to 1932. 



Occasionally a small child was buried at the outer edge of the 

 lodge, believing that a child would be lonely away from his close 

 relatives. In other instances, children were placed in bundles beside 

 their relatives on scaffolds. The Hidatsa appear to have no traditions 

 of cache-pit burials within the village. They do, however, have 

 references to the separation of the skull and the other bones, the 

 skull becoming a part of a skull circle while the other bones, wrapped 

 in a bundle, were buried in a soft place along the river bank or within 

 the fortification. There are also traditions of earth burials made in 

 mounds or mounds built over the burial in the outline of the indi- 

 vidual's "spirit god." 



Regardless of the method of disposal employed, the same sets of 

 relatives participated. The principal official was the one designated 

 to "bring the robe." Other people of the father's clan assisted in 

 building the scaffold or digging the grave. Both men and women 

 assisted and received generous payment for their services. They 

 likewise were viewed as the principal mourners. When a person 

 died, most of his personal property usually was already willed away 

 and it was the duty of the relatives to see that those promised different 

 things received them. A man might promise his favorite buffalo 

 horse to his "pal" or his gun to another person. When death occurred, 

 it was the right of the brothers and sisters and the closer members of 

 the person's clan to come in and take possession of his unwilled 

 personal property. They, however, were obliged to put up the 

 goods to pay those of the father's clan who had performed various 

 services and/or others of the father's clan and certain distinguished 

 people of the village whom they felt were entitled to special recognition. 



A man's ceremonial bundles were treated in two ways. Those that 

 were of a personal nature and that had been established by the 

 deceased on the basis of his dreams or as gifts from a near relative were 

 generally wrapped in the bundle with the body or hung on one of the 

 posts of the scaffold. In no instance were they kept around the 

 lodge or treated lightly by the survivors. Tribal bundles associated 

 with the long-standing ceremonies were viewed as tribal property and 

 were kept by the nearest relative. Here two subpatterns prevailed. 

 A widow who had participated with her husband in the initial acquiring 

 of the bundle usually held custodianship of it until it was either sold 

 to someone in the village standing in the "son" relationship to the 

 deceased or it was preserved and kept until the man's own sons reached 

 proper age. 



The Hidatsa did not tend to place much personal property with 

 the bodies; a man's favorite firearms, bow and arrows, pipe, personal 

 sacred bundle, and paints of various colors were the most common 



