Bowerel HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 175 



organized groups to which he belonged, chief of which were his clan 

 and the age-grade societies. 



MEN'S SOCIETIES 



The Hidatsa do not consider the men's societies as sacred, and speak 

 freely of their participation in society activities or even of societies 

 to which they never belonged — unlike the sacred ceremonies which 

 are never discussed except under rigidly prescribed conditions. Still, 

 the men's societies have many patterns characteristic of the sacred 

 ceremonies. The societies have traditional and mythological origins, 

 as do the sacred ceremonies, and when no myth was known and the 

 symbols of the society did not conform to the general cultural pat- 

 terns, the Hidatsa invariably ascribed the presence of the society to 

 recent borrowing from alien groups. 



Table 4, — Age-grade societies by villages 



Society 



Stone hammer 



Notched stick 



Little dog 



Crazy dog 



Lumpwood 



Crow imitators- _- 



Kit fox 



Half-shaved head. 



Black mouth 



Dog 



Old dog 



Bull 



Hidatsa Awatixa Awaxawl 



X 



X 

 X 

 X 



X 



X 

 X 



X 



X 



? 

 ? 



X 



The age-grade grouping seems to have been characteristic of all 

 Hidatsa village groups for some time prior to A.D. 1800. Since most 

 of the societies comprising the system were also represented by the 

 Mandan village groups, there existed an area along the Missouri 

 River from the vicinity of the Knife River to the region of the Can- 

 nonball River occupied solely by Mandan and Hidatsa village groups, 

 comprising in all about 13 distinct and permanent village groups, in 

 which age-grade groupings occurred. As late as 1833, Maximilian 

 (1906) recognized slight cultural differences between these village 

 groups, although a basic social and economic pattern prevailed which 

 distinguished them from even the culturally related Arikara and the 

 linguistically related Crow. 



The smallpox epidemics which began in the last quarter of the 18th 

 century sharply reduced the total population of these peoples and 

 the number of village groups. This tended to introduce inconsisten- 

 cies into the system and to introduce competition between some so- 



