English: Title: Bulletin

Identifier: bulletin3011907smit Year: 1901 (1900s) Authors: Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology Subjects: Ethnology Publisher: Washington : G. P. O. Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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Text Appearing Before Image: LOCO—CHIRICAHUA CHIEF Uttle with wooden implements, obtaining corn and melon seeds from the INIexicans. In their clans all were equal. Bands, according to White, were formed of clans, and chiefs were chosen for their ability and courage, although there is evidence that chiefship was sometimes hereditary, as in the case of Cochise, son and successor of Nachi. Chiefs and old men were usually deferred to in council. They used the brain of the deer in dress- ing buckskin. It is said that they charged their arrows with a quick deadly poison, obtained by irritating a rattlesnake with a forked stick, causing it to bite into a deer's liver, which, when saturated with the venom, was allowed to putrefy. They stalked the deer and the antelope l^y covering their heads with the skull of the animal and imitating with their crouching body the movements of one grazing; and it Mas their custom to ap- proach an enemy's camp at night in a similar manner, covering their heads with brush. They signaled war or peace by a great blaze or smoke made by burning cedar boughs or the inflammable spines on the giant cactus. Of their social or- ganization very little is definitely known, and the statements of the two chief au- thorities are widely at variance. Accord- ing to White, the children belong to the gens of the father, while Bourke as- serts that the true clan system prevails. They married usually outside of the gens. according to White, and never relatives nearer than a second cousin. A young warrior seeking a wife would first bargain with her parents and then take a Imrse to her dwelling. If she viewed his suit with favor she would feed and water the animal, and, seeing that, he would come and fetch his bride, and after going on a hunt for the honeymoon they would re- turn to his jjeoj^le. When he took two horses to the camp of the bride and killed one of them it signified that her parents had given her over to him without re- gard to her consent. Youth was the (juality most desired in a bride. After she became a mother the hiisband might take a second wife, and some had as many as five, two or more of them often being sisters. ^Married women were usually faithful and terribly jealous, so that sin- gle girls did not care to incur their rage. A woman in confinement went off to a hut by herself, attended by her women relatives. Children received their earli- est names from something particularly noticeable at the time of their birth. As among the Navaho, a man never spoke to his mother-in-law, and treated his wife's fatherwith distant respect; and his broth- ers were never familiar with his wife nor he with her sisters and brothers. Faithless wives were punished by whip- ping and cutting off a portion of the nose, after which they were cast off. Little

Text Appearing After Image: TSHAI-KLOGE—CHIRICAHUA WOMAN gii'ls were often purchased or adopted by men who kept them until they were old enough for them to marry. Often girls were married when only 10 or 11 years of age. Children of both sexes had perfect freedom, were not required to obey, and

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