Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
Most councils have this feature and termination, that is, if the
measure is not at once visibly popular, it is abandoned. This precludes
the necessity of vote and none is taken. Besides, except for camp
regulations, hunting, etc., they are not obliged to decide. Time is
not valuable to them. There is no constituent power in the rest of the
band, whose voices are not asked, nor required, to force a decision,
nor actual power to operate against any measures, that may be decided
upon by their parents, and soldiers of the camp. Wherever force is
necessary, however, to carry out these decisions, as in hunting
regulations, the soldiers are pledged to act in a body to effect it,
even at the risk of their lives. But should the decision be for a peace
and afterwards a war party be raised to go against the nation with
which peace has been made, the soldiers would not use force to prevent
it. They have too much good sense to strike or kill any of their own
people to benefit their enemies, and in this case the peace party being
the most numerous, and consequently the richer, would pay the partisan,
or leader of the party, to remain at home and a collection of horses,
guns, and other property made among them for that purpose, which being
handed the partisan and by him divided among his warriors, stops the
expedition.
This is done often among them, particularly at this time when “peaces”
have become tolerably general through the Laramie treaty. There are
cases, however, where force is necessary, and the soldiers are brought
to act, which we will shortly mention. To present any idea of their
government so that it can be understood, we must first proceed to
describe the component parts of a large camp, after which it will be
easy to perceive their principles of government. The regulations kept
up in the following description is only in large camps: Smaller ones,
from 10 to 20 lodges, hunt, every man when he pleases, and, as there
are but few persons to feed, they can always have meat in this way; but
where the camp is composed of from 50 to 100 or 200 lodges this is not
the case, as will presently appear.
COMPONENT PARTS OF A LARGE CAMP
1. The leading chief.
2. The other chiefs.
3. Chief of the soldiers.
4. Cook of the soldiers’ lodge.
5. The soldiers.
6. The elderly men.
7. The haranguer.
8. The master of the Park.
9. Warriors and hunters.
10. Partisans.[13]
11. Doctors and conjurors.
12. Very old men.
13. Young women.
14. Old women.
15. Middle-aged women.
16. Boys and girls.
17. Very small children.
[13] Denig employs the word partisan in the sense of “a leader of a war
party.”
The ordinary occupations of these several divisions of the camp will
now be taken up in order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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