2fi(J OMAHA SOCIOLOGY. 



girl directly this is unnecessary. Then be gives what he pleases to her 

 kindred, and sometimes they make presents to him. 



When men reach the age of forty years without having courted any 

 one the women generally dislike them, and refuse to listen to them. 

 The only exception is when the suitor is beneficent. Such a man gets 

 his father to call four old men, by whom he sends four horses to the 

 lodge of the girl's father. If the latter consents and the girl be willing 

 he consults his kindred, and sends his daughter, with four horses from 

 his own herd, to the lodge of the suitor's father. The latter often calls 

 a feast, to which he invites the kindred of the girl, as well as those of 

 his son. When the girl is sent away by her parents she is placed on one 

 of the horses, which is led by an old man. There is not always a feast, 

 and there is no regular marriage ceremony. 



A man of twenty-five or thirty will court a girl for two or three years. 

 Sometimes the girl pretends to be unwilling to marry him, just to try 

 his love, but at last she usually consents. 



Sometimes, when a youth sees a girl whom he loves, if she be willing, 

 he says to her, " I will stand in that place. Please go thither at night." 

 Then after her arrival he enjoys her, and subsequently asks her of her 

 father in marriage. But it was different with a girl who had been 

 petulant, one who had refused to listen to the suitor at first. He might 

 be inclined to take his revenge. After lying with her, he might say, 

 "As you struck me and hurt me, I will not marry you. Though you 

 think much of yourself, I despise you." Then would she be sent away 

 without winning him for her husband; and it was customary for the 

 man to make songs about her. In these songs the woman's name was 

 not mentioned unless she had been a " mi n ckeda," or dissolute woman. 



One day in 1872, when the writer was on the Ponka Reservation in 

 Dakota, he noticed several young men on horseback, who were waiting 

 for a young girl to leave the Mission house. He learned that they were 

 her suitors, and that they intended to run a race with her after they 

 dismounted. Whoever could catch her would marry her ; but she would 

 take care not to let the wrong one catch her. La Fleche and Two 

 Crows maintain that this is not a regular Ponka custom, and they are 

 sure that the girl (a widow) must have been a " mi n ckeda." 



§ 82. Marriage by elopement. — Sometimes a man elopes with a woman. 

 Her kindred have no cause for auger if the man takes the woman as 

 his wife. Should a man get angry because his single daughter, sister, 

 or niece had eloped, the other Omahas would talk about him, saying, 

 "That man is angry on account of the elopement of his daughter!" 

 They would ridicule him for his behavior. La Fleche knew of but one 

 case, and that a recent one, in which a man showed anger on such au 

 occasion. But if the woman had been taken from her husband by an- 

 other man her kindred had a right to be angry. Whether the woman 

 belongs to the same tribe or to another the man can elope with her if 

 she consents. The Omahas cannot understand how marriage by cap- 



