Bowers] HIDATSA SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL ORGANIZATION 475 



the clansmen of Hidatsa and Awaxawi until after the building of 

 Fishhook Village. In the case of this important sacred bundle, 

 believed by both the Mandan and Awatixa to be very old, there were 

 distinct village versions of the origin myth. 



The two sacred bundles containing male human skulls were both 

 clan bundles. As far as it was possible to determine, of all the 

 earth lodge village groups on the Upper Missouri, only among the 

 Mandan are other human skull bundles found. The Hidatsa and 

 Awaxawi seem to have made more universal use of earth burials near 

 the villages than the Heart River Mandan and Awatixa. The 

 latter two employed scaffold disposal with secondary disposal through 

 bundle burials of the bones, other than the skulls of males which were 

 placed at Sun Bundle shrines situated at the edge of the village. 

 Women, on the other hand, were more frequently buried in cache 

 pits under or near their lodges. 



When the bundle systems of the three Hidatsa villages are examined 

 trait for trait, the Awatixa occupied a position intermediate to the 

 Mandan with their highly developed clan-inheritance system on the 

 one hand and the Hidatsa-Awaxawi on the other with a father-to-son 

 system. It is interesting to note that it was only with the union 

 of the three Hidatsa village groups at Fishhook Village that clans 

 from the three village groups participated in these clan rites. 



