Descent is in the female line, intermarriage in the gens is forbidden, and the office of sachem as well as property is hereditary in the gens. The Minnitarees and Mandans now live together in the same village. In personal appearance they are among the finest specimens of the Red Man now living in any part of North America.

3. Upsarokas or Crows. This tribe has the following gentes:

1. Prairie Dog.2. Bad Leggins.
3. Skunk.4. Treacherous Lodges.
5. Lost Lodges.6. Bad Honors.
7. Butchers.8. Moving Lodges.
9. Bear’s Paw Mountain.10. Blackfoot Lodges.
11. Fish Catchers.12. Antelope.
13. Raven.[160]

Descent, inheritance and the prohibition of intermarriage in the gens, are the same as among the Minnitarees. Several of the names of the Crow gentes are unusual, and more suggestive of bands than of gentes. For a time I was inclined to discredit them. But the existence of the organization into gentes was clearly established by their rules of descent, and marital usages, and by their laws of inheritance with respect to property. My interpreter when among the Crows was Robert Meldrum, then one of the factors of the American Fur Company, who had lived with the Crows forty years, and was one of their chiefs. He had mastered the language so completely that he thought in it. The following special usages with respect to inheritance were mentioned by him. If a person to whom any article of property had been presented died with it in his possession, and the donor was dead, it reverted to the gens of the latter. Property made or acquired by a wife descended after her death to her children; while that of her husband after his decease belonged to his gentile kindred. If a person made a present to a friend and died, the latter must perform some recognized act of mourning, such as cutting off the joint of a finger at the funeral, or surrender the property to the gens of his deceased friend.[161]

The Crows have a custom with respect to marriage, which I have found in at least forty other Indian tribes, which may be mentioned here, because some use will be made of it in a subsequent chapter. If a man marries the eldest daughter in a family he is entitled to all her sisters as additional wives when they attain maturity. He may waive the right, but if he insists, his superior claim would be recognized by her gens. Polygamy is allowed by usage among the American aborigines generally; but it was never prevalent to any considerable extent from the inability of persons to support more than one family. Direct proof of the existence of the custom first mentioned was afforded by Meldrum’s wife, then at the age of twenty-five. She was captured when a child in a foray upon the Blackfeet, and became Meldrum’s captive. He induced his mother-in-law to adopt the child into her gens and family, which made the captive the younger sister of his then wife, and gave him the right to take her as another wife when she reached maturity. He availed himself of this usage of the tribe to make his claim paramount. This usage has a great antiquity in the human family. It is a survival of the old custom of punalua.

III. Gulf Tribes.

1. Muscokees or Creeks. The Creek Confederacy consisted of six Tribes; namely, the Creeks, Hitchetes, Yoochees, Alabamas, Coosatees, and Natches, all of whom spoke dialects of the same language, with the exception of the Natches, who were admitted into the confederacy after their overthrow by the French.

The Creeks are composed of twenty-two gentes as follows:

1. Wolf.2. Bear.3. Skunk.
4. Alligator.5. Deer.6. Bird.
7. Tiger.8. Wind.9. Toad.
10. Mole.11. Fox.12. Raccoon.
13. Fish.14. Corn.15. Potatoe.
16. Hickory Nut.17. Salt.18. Wild Cat.
19. (Sig’n Lost).20. (Sig’n Lost).[162]21. (Sig’n Lost).
22. (Sig’n Lost).[163]

The remaining tribes of this confederacy are said to have had the organization into gentes, as the author was informed by the Rev. S. M. Loughridge, who was for many years a missionary among the Creeks, and who furnished the names of the gentes above given. He further stated that descent among the Creeks was in the female line; that the office of sachem and the property of deceased persons were hereditary in the gens, and that intermarriage in the gens was prohibited. At the present time the Creeks are partially civilized with a changed plan of life. They have substituted a political in place of the old social system, so that in a few years all traces of their old gentile institutions will have disappeared. In 1869 they numbered about fifteen thousand, which would give an average of five hundred and fifty persons to the gens.