Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 309 



the epidemic, there usually were intervals of from 2 to 4 years between 

 successive performances. Good Bear was the last to perform the 

 ceremony in 1879. 



Good Bear, Waterbuster clan, bought from his father. No Milk of 

 the AwaxEnawita clan from Hidatsa village; Rabbit Head, Prairie 

 Chicken clan, bought a year earlier from his stepfather Snake Cane, 

 AwaxEnawita clan, of Hidatsa village (Rabbit Head's own father 

 was a Mandan); Sitting Elk, Itisuku clan, bought a few years earlier 

 from his father. Narrow Nose of the AwaxEnawita clan of Hidatsa 

 village; Puts-Away-his-Hair, Itisuku clan, bought from his father, 

 Owns-Many-Spotted-Horses, Knife clan of Hidatsa village; Crows 

 Paunch, Prairie Chicken clan, bought from his father, Twisted Wood, 

 Knife clan of Awatixa village; Crying Dog, AwaxEnawita clan of 

 Awatixa, bought from his deceased father but the line died out when 

 his descendants did not keep up the rites; and Knife of the Prairie 

 Chicken clan bought rights from his classificatory father, Porcupine 

 Pemmican, AwaxEnawita clan oi Awatixa village. 



Except for the last bundle line, all sacred bundles were of equal 

 status. Since one relinquished his own rights only when the fourth 

 sale was made, there were 10 equal bundles at Fishhook. Porcupine 

 Pemmican's bundle was superior in status to the other for, in addition 

 to having rights in Two Men by virtue of performing the NaxpikE, 

 he had bought the sacred ax symbolic of Long Arm whom he 

 impersonated each time the rites were performed. The Long Arm 

 rights were piu*chased separately by means of a medicine feast to the 

 NaxpikE bundle owners to give the purchase social recognition. 

 In theory Long Arm rites could lil^ewise have been sold four times 

 with a new ax prepared each time but there is no evidence that there 

 was ever more than the one bundle which was kept at Awatixa, the 

 group which traditionally founded the ceremony. Whenever the 

 ceremony was performed in other villages, the Long Arm impersonator 

 from Awatixa officiated. During the years preceding the abandonment 

 of the three independent villages on the Knife River, the Awaxawi 

 occupied an intermediate position between the Hidatsa-proper- 

 Awatixa and the Mandan, both territorially and ceremonially. 

 Awaxawi informants had no knowledge that the NaxpikE was ever 

 given at their village although they recalled that their young men 

 participated actively in the Okipa due to intermarriage with the 

 Mandan after 1782, when they united for about 20 years with one 

 Mandan village group. The Awaxawi had other summer ceremonies, 

 concerned chiefly with agriculture, that were not celebrated by the 

 other Hidatsa village groups. 



Theoretically, one could give the ceremony only when his father 

 had also, but native informants believed that should one receive 



710-195—65 ^21 



