Volume 2
Contributions to Fox ethnology / Truman Michelson.
- Truman Michelson
- Date:
- 1927-30
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Contributions to Fox ethnology / Truman Michelson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Fox Indians; it has probably simply not been recorded. [An inform¬ ant in the summer of 1929 has stated that this feature is lacking.] There are a few other features that presumably exist but have not been mentioned. The situation on pages 21 and 23 is only intelligible when it is known that among the Fox there exists a “joking relationship” between brother-in-law and sister-in-law; between maternal uncle and nephew and niece. Between the former set the jesting is frequently obscene; but between the latter set it is innocent enough; a maternal uncle con¬ ventionally often jollies his niece about sweets, while she will banter him about his gluttony for meat. [Although a man has the right to use obscene language toward his brother’s wife as well as his wife’s sister, an informant has told me that if a man thinks much of his brother he will not exercise his prerogative. See also Fortieth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 340, 344. For the general subject see Lowie, Primitive Society, p. 99. For the Winnebago consult the Thirty-seventh .Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 134, 174; for the Sauk, Skinner, Observations on the Ethnology of the Sauk Indians, p. 32 (“uncles and aunts” are not sufficiently accurate); for the Prairie Potawatomi, Skinner, The Mascoutens or Prairie Potawatomi Indians, part 1, p. 36 (where inexact terms are given); among the Delaware near Dewey, Okla., brother-in-law and sister-in-law may jest with each other only within circumspect limits; similarly the “Delaware” (who speak a Munsee dialect) of the Grand River Reservation, Ontario, Canada.] It may be stated that the red feathers are on the south side of the mound of earth and the white feathers on the north side (p. 11); this is also the case in the Wapxnowiweni, but it is exactly the opposite of what occurs in the Buffalo-head dance of the Thunder gens (see Bull. 87, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 13). Observe on page 9 it is said that Feathered (Thunder) and War Chiefs gentes serve as ceremonial attendants to the Bear gens. This requires a brief explanation. It is a general rule that the Eagle and Bear gentes function this way reciprocally (and similarly the War Chiefs and Wolf gentes, etc.); but in any given ceremony this may be altered, provided the alteration is always consistent (so, too, as regards other gentes): thus, in the festival connected with the Sagima'kwawA pack of the Bear gens one of the head ceremonial attendants belongs to the Eagle gens, the other to the War Chiefs gens (Bull. 85, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 140); and also in the Thunder dance of the Bear gens (Bull. 89, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 29, 43, 57, 61). Observe that on page 19 the Dirty Little Ani, a society, are made coordinate with various gentes in the feasting; so also in the Buffalo- head dance of the Thunder gens (see Bull. 87, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 29). The last is even more surprising, for the Dirty Little Ani belong to](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29828004_0002_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
