PERSONAL LAW.
§ 300. A large part of personal law belongs to gentile or family law. Certain degrees of consanguinity and affinity are considered as bars to intermarriage. The marriage of kindred has always been regarded as incestuous by the Omahas and kindred tribes. Affinities were forbidden to Self in certain places which are explained in the description of the kinship system and the marriage laws.
Marriage by elopement has been practiced, but marriage by capture or by duel are not known. (See § [82].)
Nage, quarreling and fighting.—It used to be a custom among the Omahas, when two men engaged in a fight, that he who gave the first blow was beaten by the native policemen.
T´e¢ai, accidental killing, and "t´eki¢ai," intentional killing or murder, are also crimes against religious law, which see in §§ [310], [311].
Witchcraft.—When the supposed victim has died and the offender has been detected his life may be taken by the kinsman of the victim without a trial before the assembly or any other tribunal.
Slavery was not known. Captives taken in war were not put to death. (See § [222].)
§ 301. Social vices (a), Adultery.—Sometimes a man steals another man's wife. Sometimes he tempts her, but does not take her from her husband. The injured man may strike or kill the guilty man, he may hit the woman, or he may deprive the offending man of his property. If a woman's husband be guilty of adultery with another woman she may strike him or the guilty female in her anger, but she cannot claim damages. In some extreme cases, as recorded by Say, an inexorable man has been known to tie his frail partner firmly upon the earth in the prairie, and in this situation has she been compelled to submit to the embraces of twenty or thirty men successively; she is then abandoned. But this never happened when the woman had any immediate kindred, for if she had any such kindred in the tribe the husband would be afraid to punish his wife in that manner. A woman thus punished became an outcast; no one would marry her.
(b) Prostitution.—In 1879 there were only two or three women in the Omaha tribe that were known as minckeda or public women. Of late years, according to La Flèche and Two Crows, there have been many minckeda, but it was not so formerly, when the Indians were the only inhabitants. A father did not reprove his daughter if she was a minckeda. He left that to her elder brother and her mother's brother, who might strike her with sticks. Sometimes, if very angry with her, they could shoot an arrow at her, and if they killed her, nobody could complain.
(c) Fornication.—This is not practiced as a rule, except with women or girls that are minckeda. So strict are the Omahas about these matters, that a young girl or even a married women walking or riding alone, would be ruined in character, being liable to be taken for a minckeda, and addressed as such. No woman can ride or walk with any man but her husband or some immediate kinsman. She generally gets some other woman to accompany her, unless her husband goes. Young men are forbidden to speak to girls, if they should meet two or more on the road, unless they are kindred. The writer was told of some immorality after some of the dances in which the women and girls participate. This has occurred recently; and does not apply to all the females present, but only to a few, and that not on all occasions. When girls go to see the dances their mothers accompany them; and husbands go with their wives. After the dance the women are taken home.
(d) Schoopanism. or pæderastia.—A man or boy who suffered as a victim of this crime was called a min-quga, or hermaphrodite. La Flèche and Two Crows say that the min-quga is "g¢an¢in," foolish, therefore he acts in that manner.
(e) Rape.—But one Omaha has a bad reputation in the tribe for having frequently been guilty of this crime. It is said that one day he met the daughter of Gianze-¢iñge, when she was about a mile from home, driving several ponies. He pulled her off her horse, and though she was not over seven or eight years old, he violated her. The same man was charged with having committed incest with his own mother.
§ 302. Maiming.—This never occurs except in two cases: First, by accident, as when two men wrestle, in sport, and an arm is broken by a blow from a bow or stick; secondly, when the policemen hit offenders with their whips, on the head, arms, or body; but this is a punishment and not a crime. La Flèche and Two Crows never heard of teeth being knocked out, noses broken, eyes injured, etc., as among white or colored men.
Slander is not punishable, as it is like the wind, being "waniajĭ," that is, unable to cause pain.