Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 211 



Theoretically, everyone ought to belong to a society — in practice, 

 many did not join in or were in and out through life. If an individual 

 belonged to a society, both he and his society members were subject 

 to the ridicule of his "joldng relatives." The societies reached a 

 smaller percentage of women. Although theoretically noncompeti- 

 tive, some evidence of rivalry for position existed among the societies 

 after 1845 due to the union of the remnants of three village groups 

 with slightly different age-grade systems. 



One owned rights in a society until he sold out. If regular purchases 

 were not made, accumulation of ceremonies occurred. For instance, 

 if the Half-Shaved Heads bought the Black Mouth society before 

 selling their rights to the Lumpwoods, they would own two societies. 

 Temporarily, the Half-Shaved Head dances would not be performed 

 since a group expressed its position in the system by the highest 

 society owned. The same situation frequently developed when the 

 Dogs bought the Old Dog society before selling out to the Black 

 Mouths. If a society was not bought by the younger group, owner- 

 ship was retained by the existing members as long as they lived. In 

 recent years, societies went together to purchase other dances such 

 as the Grass and Night Grass dances brought to the tribe by the 

 Sioux. This destroyed the age-grade character of the system and the 

 societies quickly died out through failure of the younger men to 

 continue the purchases. 



Each village group had independent societies and, as seen in table 

 4 (p. 175), slight differences existed between villages because of their 

 different histories and group contacts. Although the membership 

 of a society was limited to the village group, a "friend" relationship 

 existed between the same societies of different villages. There were 

 two Hidatsa concepts of property transfer. The first, or "father-son" 

 transfer, provided for an actual transfer and relinquishment of rights 

 (as when one organized group sold to a group of "sons") and was the 

 pattern of society sales within the village. The second transfer 

 pattern was known as "taking in friends" and was the method of 

 transferring society rights to another village or tribe without relin- 

 quishing original ownership. Thus, if a group from another village 

 or tribe wished to buy a society owned by the Hidatsa, after the 

 details of the purchase price and time for the sale had been arranged, 

 the buying group was considered "friends." The buying group then 

 selected individual "friends" of the sellers who were, in the case of 

 two groups having common clans, individuals of the same or related 

 clans. There was nothing unique in this system since Hidatsa 

 commonly adopted either a "son" or a "friend" of other village or 

 tribal groups. The buying group paid their individual "friends" 



