192 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



on this enemy group; custom required that the Black Mouths afford 

 the Assiniboin protection as long as they were in the village. However, 

 in at least one case, the Hidatsa advised the Knife River Mandan 

 of the impending attack, informed the Mandan in Fishhook Village 

 of the enemy's proposed course, and entertained the enemy whde 

 warriors sneaked out of the village to prepare a trap for the Assiniboin. 



From earliest times, the Black Mouths served an important role 

 in preserving good feelings and relations with the White trades. 

 Chardon (1932, p. 125) mentions that the society had found horses 

 belonging to the traders and had offered to return them. In another 

 instance he refers to sending tobacco to the Black Mouths and ad- 

 vising them to keep the village quarantined as smallpox had not 

 broken out there (ibid., p. 129). We also find references in traders' 

 accounts to the practice of employing a member of the Black Mouths 

 as policeman around the trading post, serving as an intermediary 

 between the traders and the Indians in preserving order. On the 

 other hand, when traders went into the winter camps to live or had 

 their trading posts near the summer villages, they were restricted in 

 their movements just the same as the Indians were. They learned 

 very quickly that when orders were given out that no hunting or 

 woodcutting was permitted while the herds moved into the river 

 bottoms, it was to their best interest to comply, and that the Indian 

 police meant business when they said "no hunting." 



From the foregoing discussion of the functions of the Black Mouth 

 society, we see that they performed roles not characteristic of the 

 lower societies. 1 have not indicated the roles of the Black Mouths 

 in the ceremonies since a section of this study is concerned with 

 Hidatsa ceremonial organization. It is needless to say that the 

 Hidatsa, like the Mandan, were unwilling to entrust so important a 

 matter as police functions to inexperienced youths. Instead they 

 reserved those functions for mature men who had been to war, had 

 participated in numerous ceremonies, had given many feasts, and 

 understood tribal history and values. In their advancement, they 

 had eliminated the cowardly, the lazy, and the incompetent. 



The Hidatsa placed the duties of the Black Mouths in the same 

 class as other services performed for the good of the society at large. 

 They emphasized the importance of fasting for the younger men of 

 the Stone Hammer and Crazy Dog societies to be followed by general 

 participation in the buffalo-calling ceremonies or those formal rites 

 providing group fasting and individual purchases of sacred bundles 

 for males of the Kit Fox, Little Dog, and Lump wood societies. 

 In general, the Hidatsa disapproved of young men assuming the 

 leadership of war expeditions until they had reached the Half-Shaved 

 Head and Black Mouth societies. My case histories show numerous 



