Photographs and paintings were considered “bad-medicine” by most tribes, and I had no success whatever in persuading the Mokis to pose for me when I was there. One who finally consented ran away when it came to the test. I was permitted to use my snap-camera and to sketch buildings freely, but when it came to painting persons they rebelled. They believed that the possessor of a likeness held power over the person represented.

Murder in most tribes was settled by property atonement, or by the assumption by the guilty one of the victim’s duties, and when once settled the matter could never again be reopened. No controversy was ever permitted, and to terminate it there were three methods: 1. When controversy arises in relation to ownership, the property is usually destroyed by the clan or by the tribal authorities. This is one reason why property is found buried with Amerinds. By thus disposing of it all controversy is avoided. Or the property may be completely abandoned by all concerned, as in the case mentioned by Powell, where a war party of Sioux surprised and killed a squad of sleeping soldiers at the first volley. “Their arms, blankets, and other property were untouched because the attacking party being large, it could not be decided by whose bullets the soldiers were slain.” 2. If two persons come to blows, it is, unless serious injury be done, considered a final settlement. Appeal to authority is thereby forever barred in that matter. 3. Establishment of a day or festival once a month, usually once a year, beyond which crimes do not pass. Marriage is by what is called legal appointment. In this way controversy over the women of a tribe is largely avoided, for little is left to personal choice. But kinship groups allowed to intermarry do not remain stationary in numbers, hence, one set of men may have many wives to choose from, another few, which, says Powell, leads to modification of the principle and three additional forms of marriage are the result, by elopement, by capture, and by duel. That is, if a pair elope and can evade their pursuers till the day limiting controversy has passed, they are safe from molestation. We once met an interesting example of this class in the Uinta Valley, Utah, and with our boats put the runaways across Green River, thus obliterating their trail, though at the time we did not so well understand the situation. A group of men who have but a limited class to choose wives from sometimes combine to capture for one of their number a wife from some other group within their own tribe. A fight is often the result, but without weapons. A second battle for the same woman at that time is not permitted.[345] Or one man, if he feel strong enough, may deprive some other fellow in his own tribe of his wife. In southern Utah, Tom came to our camp one night weeping bitterly, and when I could get at his statement it was to the effect that someone had deprived him of his wife. Our men were indignant and wished to proceed forthwith to the Amerind camp and compel the thief to restore the wife to Tom, but they finally decided to abandon him to the established customs of his people.

Sometimes a woman is assigned to a man who already has a wife, while some other man has none, because the group into which he is permitted to marry is exhausted. He then challenges the man who is entitled to more than one and endeavours to win the woman by success in battle. On one occasion in southern Nevada a white man’s sympathies were so aroused by one of these affairs, in which the girl was being roughly pulled about, that he threw off his coat and, taking an active part in the struggles, rescued her. Then he was amazed at the information that the girl belonged to him and he must keep her. This he declined to do and turned her over again to their tender mercies. These three forms of marriage become roundabout methods of personal choice. When the supply of wives is normal the young man in some tribes goes out into the woods by a certain trail, and if the girl of his choice follows him, it is considered a marriage, and is celebrated with prescribed ceremonies. Polygamy was practised by most tribes. Among the Navajos, who buy their wives, it is very common, but there a wife can depart at pleasure, and as the husband acquires no right to her property, she takes it with her.

Totemism is an important custom in vogue among all the stocks of the continent, and it was probably a custom the world over when tribes were in a certain stage. The word totem is derived from the Ojibwa, and is said to have first been introduced into literature by one Long, an interpreter. Totems are of three kinds: clan totems, sex totems, and individual totems. The first are the most important.[346] Totemism is at the same time a religious and a social system. The totem is usually an animal, as a frog, bear, bat, etc. The Amerind believes that between these objects and himself there is a particular bond, and he has for them the most profound respect. From them he believes himself descended. Therefore he would not harm an animal that was his totem. The Bear clan would not kill a bear, the Red Maize clan would not eat red maize, and so on. Totemism existed among the Israelites, and the objection to eating pork is supposed by some to rest on the pig having been one of their totems. The Amerind also generally derived his name from some animal or object, and he represented this as his individual totem mark. In the totem poles of the North west coast, these various representations of totems were combined and set up before the door to indicate the relationships of the persons who lived there.[347]

Cleanliness varies among the tribes, and is sometimes in proportion to the ease or difficulty with which water can be procured. The Mokis who live in an arid country and have to carry water long distances seldom waste it in bathing or washing, though I did once see an old Moki fill his mouth with water and blow it out in instalments over his hands. The Omahas, according to Dorsey, generally bathe twice every day in warm weather. They used to help women and children to alight from horses, and sometimes carried them over streams on their backs. Old men and women were never abandoned by them. Some men were not wanting in gallantry. Dorsey tells of a young woman who wished to halt at a spring. Her brother was with her. The ground was muddy and she would have soiled her clothes had she knelt to drink, but another man rode up at the moment, and, jumping from his horse, he pulled a lot of grass, placing it on the wet ground so that she could drink without soiling her dress.

When he died the Amerind was disposed of in a number of different ways. There were burials in pits, graves, mounds, cists, caves, and so on; there was cremation; there was embalming; there was aërial sepulture in trees or scaffolds; there was burial beneath water, or in canoes that were turned adrift. The Navajos leave the dead in the place where they die, or throw them into a cleft in the rocks and pile stones upon the corpse. In Tennessee graves are found which were made by lining a rectangular excavation with slabs of stone. These are ancient and resemble the graves of the reindeer period in France. Yarrow[348] speaks of them as being almost identical. I found graves of similar description in southern Utah near the Arizona line, but in the two or three that I opened there were no bones, only on the bottom a shallow layer of what appeared to be fine dark earth with thin slabs upon it; doubtless the slabs once forming the top.[349] Some tribes wrapped their dead in fine furs or in grasses and matting;[350] others buried in urns. In the North-west a living slave was buried with the deceased. If the slave were not dead in three days, he was strangled by another slave. In Mexico the custom of burying slaves with the dead was common.