DOMESTIC ETIQUETTE—BASHFULNESS.
§ 87. A man does not speak to his wife's mother or grandmother; he and she are ashamed to speak to each other. But should his wife be absent he sometimes asks her mother for information, if there be no one present through whom he can inquire.
In former days it was always the rule for a man not to speak to his wife's parents or grandparents. He was obliged to converse with them through his wife or child, by addressing the latter and requesting him or her to ask the grandparent for the desired information. Then the grandparent used to tell the man's wife or child to say so and so to the man. In like manner a woman cannot speak directly to her husband's father under ordinary circumstances. They must resort to the medium of a third party, the woman's husband or child. But if the husband and child be absent, the woman or her father-in-law is obliged to make the necessary inquiry.
A woman never passes in front of her daughter's husband if she can avoid it. The son-in-law tries to avoid entering a place where there is no one but his mother-in-law. When at the Ponka mission, in Dakota, the writer noticed the Ponka chief, Standing Buffalo, one day when he entered the school-room. When he saw that his mother-in-law was seated there, he turned around very quickly, threw his blanket over his head, and went into another part of the house.
Another custom prevails, which Dougherty described thus: "If a person enters a dwelling in which his son-in-law is seated, the latter turns his back, and avails himself of the first opportunity to leave the premises. If a person visits his wife during her residence at the lodge of her father, the latter averts himself, and conceals his head with his robe, and his hospitality is extended circuitously by means of his daughter, by whom the pipe is transferred to her husband to smoke." He also said that if the mother-in-law wished to present her son-in-law with food, it was invariably handed to the daughter for him; and if the daughter should be absent, the mother-in-law placed the food on the ground, and retired from the lodge that he might take it up and eat it." (Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Vol. I, pp. 253, 254.) The Dakotas have this custom and call it "wiśtenkiyapi."