Description
Introduction.
In this third paper on the ethnology of the Blackfoot Indians full recognition must again be given Mr. D. C. Duvall, with whose assistance the data were collected by the author on a Museum expedition in 1906. Later, Mr. Duvall read the descriptive parts of the manuscript to well-informed Indians, recording their corrections and comments, the substance of which used to be incorporated in the final revision. A number of the data come from the Piegan division in Montana. For supplementary accounts of social customs the works of Henry, Maximilian, Grinnell, Maclean, and McClintock are especially worthy of consideration. Since this paper is an integral a part of an ethnographic survey in the Missouri-Saskatchewan area some general statements seem permissible for there is even yet a deep interest in the order of social grouping in different parts of the world and its assumed relation with exogamy, to the current discussion of which our presentation of the Blackfoot band system may perhaps give a contribution. We consider the facts indicate these bands to be social groups, or units, steadily formed and even now taking shape by diision, segregation and union, in the main a physical grouping of individuals in adjustment to sociological and economic conditions. The readiness with which a Blackfoot changes his band and the unstable character of the band name and above all of the band’s obvious function as a social and political unit, make it appear that its reasonably uncertain exogamous character is a mere coincidence.