Birds of a Feather

The old Blackft did more than travel together. Besides belonging to a band of fellow travelers and the complex of extended families that traveled with it, boys belonged from a young age to cohort groups. Girls tended to stick to their families and learn from their mothers and aunties, but boys ran with each other. It seems a natural development in many societies. McClintock gives his account of some cohort groups in “The Old North Trail.”

The Sinopaix (Society of Kit Foxes) was known for giving dances, but this hasn’t happened for a long time. In fact, in most places on the prairie, kit foxes (a smaller version than the red fox) had completely died out until the last few years when they were restored on the reservation. In the old days, the Sinopaix would not hurt kit foxes, though they wore their skins, but today the skins are illegal to have and every human being is forbidden to kill the clever little creatures. Sinopaix dances weren’t war dances, but imitations of kit foxes. Maybe after the people have seen them enough and learned what they are like, the dances will return but without kit fox skins.

Tsin-Ksi-six (Society of Mosquitoes) was a pesky bunch that were supposed to have originated with a man who, being pursued by mosquitoes, bared himself and let them suck out all the blood they wanted. They taught him a dance -- naturally, imitating mosquitoes. The gimmick was that these fellows had eagle-claw bracelets and after they did their dance four times, they ran through the camp “biting” people by scratching them with the claws. If a person resisted, they scratched him or her all the harder, but if a person just said, “Go ahead. Take what you need!” they only scratched a little. If someone really got mad and resisted, then the whole Mosquito Society would descend on that person and really scratch.

Kuko (Society of Doves) would hardly be associated with what we consider the symbolism of doves: peace and love. Instead, it was an organization invented by an old man named Change Camp, who organized all the young men and boys who had no status or importance in the tribe. Change Camp taught them if they stayed in a mob, everyone would have to obey them. If they were not obeyed, they played mean tricks. They shot arrow holes in the buffalo paunch water pouches when the women carried them from the stream and dumped on the ground the berries they had gathered. The powerful older societies who could have disciplined them just said it was best to ignore them -- they were too much trouble otherwise. No doubt if they got too bad, people would change camps! But it’s interesting that this group appeared about 1850 or so, when disease and horses had upset the old ways, so that family ties were loosened and chiefs were missing. They sound like ghetto gangs, created by the need to form some kind of powerful group to identify with, determined to make people pay attention to them.

Muto Ka-iks (Buffalo Society) was a women’s group and is the other extreme from the bad doves. They were the women of most importance and virtue and their ritual was one of the key religious ceremonies. Basically, they pretended to be cow buffalo and acted out going to water, grazing, chewing their cud, and being run over a cliff. Some descriptions include calving. They wore distinctive headdresses and revered the digging sticks with which they gathered food.

Knut-Some-Taix (Society of Mad Dogs) is the group sometimes called “Crazy Dogs” or “Warrior Dogs.” At one time it consisted of the most powerful chiefs and was very prestigious.

The Mutsaix (Society of the Brave Dogs) was started by Red Blanket, so powerful that the hill where he was put into a burial tree is still called “Red Blanket Hill.” His wife Generous Woman was also buried there and it is a sign of her importance that when she was very old and toothless, she was still cherished enough to have been taken along on a travois. Red Blanket invited only men he really respected into his society -- they were rule-makers and rule-keepers. If people didn’t do what was right, they would beat them, tear down their lodge and disperse their belongings, and even kill them. But they used this power for good rather than for their selfish amusement like those mosquitoes.

These groups were fluid and membership crossed through bands and maybe even over into other tribal groups. New ones would spring up and old ones would die out. When the last of the “Old Bulls,” the most powerful of the oldest men, finally died out on the reservation, then people knew the life of self-governance and travel on the prairie was truly gone.

The self-governance of the bands was organized around force of personality, the respect an individual had acquired by actual deeds whether in war or in the camp or while hunting. No one “took minutes” but people listened and remembered and repeated their narratives of who had come to importance, how and why so that they weren’t forgotten. There were no elections, but there were probably -- as there are now -- popularity contests. And as in all cultures, probably some people were too brave for their own good and others were too clever at insinuations and false tales. This is being human.

Today many modern societies are growing back. The Moose, Elks, Kiwanis, Rotary and Lions might not be as active in Browning, but the 4-H and Scouting movements are re-grouping. The churches are strong. War in the Middle East has meant a new generation of American Veterans to meet and tell tales at their club -- but with female veterans the stories will be different, not even considering the difference in ages between these young, tanned, technologically hip warriors in desert camo and their WWII veteran great-grandfathers and Korea or Vietnam grandfathers. So far they haven’t sponsored many dances, but they are present at every parade.

These are the myriad small connections that hold a society together until it can be called a “culture.”