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SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMOISTIAL, LIFE 127
a gun or a fishing rod, when a family was moving. To cure children
of laziness they made them play ball and run races. Sometimes
they scratched them with a nettle to improve their circulation and
cure them of laziness by forcing them to scratch themselves. But
some became infected in that way and died, and the doctors told
them to stop it.
The captain of Simpson's band recommended him to Mashulatubbi,
last great chief of the Choctaw, to be made chief when he was
40 years old, Wlien he was 10 months old they bathed him in a
pond of cold water in the month of January, and Mashulatubbi said
that he was to eat only " wild food." This was about a year before
the chief died. For a year Simpson was fed on the flesh of small game
animals, and after that, on big game animals, but when he was 18
he joined the white men's church.
MARRIAGE
Our anonymous French authority says regarding this:
Wheu a youth wishes to marry, he goes to find the father and the mother
of the girl whom he desires. After having made his request he throws before
the mother some strings of glass beads, and before the father a breechclout.
If they take the presents it is a sign of their consent, and then the youth
leads the girl away to his home without other ceremony. From this moment
the mother can no longer appear before her son-in-law ; if they are obliged
to remain in the same room they make a little partition between them for
fear lest they see each other. . . . They may abandon their wives whenever
they wish, and take many of them at a time. I saw one who had three sisters.
When they marry a second time they take the sister of the dead wife, if she
had one, otherwise a woman of the family.**
Romans merely remarks:
They take wives without much ceremony, and live together during pleasure,
and after separation, which is not very frequent, they often leave the second
to retake the first wife.*"
The Rev. Israel Folsom, a native Choctaw missionary, is thus
quoted by Cushman on this subject
When the young Choctaw beau went the first time to see his " Fair One,"
after having resolved upon matrimony, he tested his own standing in the
estimation of his anticipated bride by walking indifferently into the room
where she was seated with the rest of the family, and, during the general
conversation, he sought and soon found an opportunity to shoot, slyly and
unobserved, little sticks or small pebbles at her. She soon ascertained
the source whence they came, and fully comprehended the signification of
those little messengers of love. If approved, she returned them as slyly
and silently as they came. If not, she suddenly sprang from her seat,
turned a frowning face of disapproval upon him and silently left the room.
That ended the matter, though not a word had been spoken between them.
" Appendix, pp. 248-249 ; Mem. Am. Anth. Association, v. pp. 60-61.
« Romans, B. and W. Fla., p. 86.