During her periods, a girl or woman will protect men against herself if she can. For example, if a boy starts to wrestle with a girl—to fuss her, as you say, only it is not done your way, a boy wrestles and throws a girl down, and tumbles about, it is much gayer and more lively—the girl, if she is in her period, will claw his face to make him leave her alone. The old people see him scratched up and they know why, and they laugh at him.... Once when Cries-for-salmon’s mother was in the kadjim at a ceremonial, she was called upon to dance on the skin she was giving to the shaman for a deceased relative. We saw her hesitate. “Go ahead. What’s the matter with you?” some one said. She was in her period. “That’s all right,” they said to her. “Stand on one corner of the skin. We’ll fix it up.” She took her place with Cries-for-salmon next to her, and they went through their own dance, their eyes on the ground, and making the motions with their arms that belonged to the dance.... In this way, you see, Cries-for-salmon learned the dance that belonged to her mother.
Like all dancers, the girl and her mother faced the doors of the kadjim—there are two doors, the outer of bearskin, meaning strength, the inner, about four feet away, of wolferene, meaning speed and skill. The space of about four feet, between the doors, allows for the first door to close on the person entering on all fours, and shut out Li, the Evil One, before the second door is opened. When masks are set out under their covers they, too, face the doors. The smoke hole of the kadjim has a cover of bear gut. Below it, in the center of the floor, is the fire. The kadjim is always warm. After the fire flares up, it is killed with split logs.
There is a ceremonial in the kadjim for a girl after she comes out from the corner. I know that she wears a new parki given to her by her parents or by her suitor; but I have never seen the ceremonial and I can’t tell about it.
As I said before, a girl may have a suitor while she is in the corner or before—that is a young man, who has noticed her and knows he wants her, has set to work for her family. He cuts wood for them and fetches water and gives them the bulk of his game. If he does enough to create an interest in him on the part of the old people, they will accept him. The girl herself has no say. Even if she likes him, if the old man does not like him, thinking he has not done enough, the young man can not get the girl. On the other hand, the girl may not like the young man whom the old man likes. As soon as she came out of the corner Cries-for-salmon was married to a man her father liked because he had done so much. This man, Thleg’athts’ox, Fish-skin-hat, after giving loftak, had also to get the consent of the shaman, or perhaps it was the chief of the village. Cries-for-salmon did not like Fish-skin-hat; and yet although his father is a miser, Fish-skin-hat himself is a good man of ability and power—songs had been bought for him and his name was one no ordinary fellow would have. (For such a name a man must have powers and must live up to them.)
Cries-for-salmon’s parents knew that since Cries-for-salmon would be a woman of ability, a good snarer and fisher, a woman who would be highly esteemed for the amount of fish she could cut up in a day, and for the skill and rapidity of her sewing, she should get a husband equally competent, one who would run his chase well, who would save his furs and trade. The old people knew, too, that unless Cries-for-salmon got a good husband, it would be a slave’s life for her. She would have to work for her husband’s relatives as well as for him. For the first two or three years, a girl will live on with her man in her parents’ home; but then he builds his own house and takes her to this house. It may be near her parents’ house, but it belongs to her husband. She will leave it, if she quarrels with him, and is scolded or beaten up by him, and she will return to her parents’ house, or to her grandmother’s or nearest relative’s, to stay there until he comes for her.
Fish-skin-hat belonged to Anvik, but Cries-for-salmon had seen little of him before he began to come in at night to visit her. Older boys and girls do not go about together in the day time; you never see them paddling together in a canoe. A girl would not speak to you on the road. If she wants to talk, it must be in the dark or under the cover of a roof—under cover because, as people say, “There is some one watching you.”
After the ice breaks up and people live in tents, when a man wants to take a girl, he will slip in at night under the tent wall to the side where he knows she sleeps, and he will slip out again when the birds begin to make noise. People of position see to it that nobody visits their daughter this way, except the man she is to live with openly after a while, i. e. marry. Parents would say to a girl, “You watch yourself.” If the wrong young man came in, the girl would know because he would not make the signs agreed upon, holding her perhaps in a certain way, and parents would expect the girl to cry out and wake up the family. But—some people are careless, and there are young men who do browse about. Sometimes the family will so embarrass the young man that he has to marry the girl; they will say that the girl has conceived by him—“from him she has man inside.” A man who persisted in not marrying in these circumstances, would be shunned by the other girls.
At the ceremonies, young men see the girls in a formal way. The chief will appoint a girl to be a man’s partner, sohaldid. When I returned home in 1917, the chief appointed three girls to be my partners, and two of the three girls, Cries-for-salmon and one other, accepted. During the intervals of the ceremonial, your partner invites you to her house, and sets out, for you to eat and drink, tea and whatever the season has produced, bear, caribou, etc. What you can not eat you are expected to carry away, and you judge the girl according to the generosity of her service. Always there is great lavishness in setting out food. At bear feasts, for example, the woman serving would set out ten times more than I could eat. (Never forgetting at the conclusion to give me a bowl of water to wash with and a cloth, that I might not take out carelessly any waste particle.) The dance leaders call out for the presents. When you give them, you go through a short dance. Once when it was my turn, two women, thinking I did not know the dance, got up, without being asked, and danced in my place. One woman was gifted with bear songs, the other, with hunting songs. I had given some tea in bulk. A cupful was given to every one present except to me, the giver, and then of what was left over they gave first to the shaman, and then to the elders and so down. On another occasion I received a skein of twine, an ax, a saw, a steel trap, two large white fish, and some ice cream of seal oil, berries, boneless fish and snow. Somebody made a joke. “We have given him things as if he were married. He ought to go and take some of these old women around here who are looking for old men.” I did not like the ice cream, so I gave it to Cries-for-salmon who saw to it, as a partner is always supposed to do, that my presents were taken out and put away. Women give feasts to men, where the women dance and give out presents, inviting the men between dances to eat. The day following, the men give the feast to the women, seeing to it likewise that the women get all they can eat. I may say here that it is the interest a man expresses in the feasts, in the ceremonials, that helps to make him a chief. Who helps most at these times and at other times (whenever one man can help another, help is expected of him) qualifies as a chief.
The sohaldid or partner relationship lasts. Whenever you return to the village where your partner lives, she will provide for you. Married women as well as unmarried are assigned as partners, and this sometimes makes trouble with the husband. But I remember one case where all the trouble was made by the missionary. Two men had each the other’s wife as partner, and after a while they agreed each to take his partner as his wife, that is they exchanged wives. Five years later the missionary heard about it and, although by that time one of the women was dead, he decided to make the other woman go back to her first husband.
With the marshal and me he went at night to Myuli’s house. They knocked. “Who’s that?” called Myuli.... “Why don’t you come in the light as we do when we want to speak to any one?”... The woman went to the door. A woman always goes to the door, as the newcomer might be an enemy, and she goes to protect her husband. The missionary wanted the marshal to arrest Myuli on the spot. “Do you think I am a white man to run away?” asked Myuli.... Myuli got sixty days, the other man thirty days, and the woman six months. “I can’t see through this,” Myuli said to me, “the other man was satisfied, I was satisfied, and she was satisfied, and now they come and break up things for us.”... Myuli sent in food to her after he got out, and after she got out they lived together again.