siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

138 BUREAU OF AMERICAN" ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 103
present, he would not speak to her sisters and only to her father
or mother if he were spoken to. Mother-in-law avoidance was common
in old times, but it is said that the husband spoke more freely
to his wife's mother than to her father, because when his wife had
a message to send to her parents it went more often to her mother
than to her father, and so the husband had more occasion to meet
the former.'^^
Some white men who have witnessed native ceremonies furnished
confirmation of details of the above, though with minor variations.
They said that on the morning of the wedding day the youth, accompanied
by a number of his male relatives, started toward the
home of his intended bride and she at the same time, with a party
of girl companions, set out to meet him. When the two parties had
come within a short distance of each other, the girl and her company
began running, and the young man, followed by his own com-
pany, gave chase until he caught her. Very often the girl carried
a pack basket on her back filled with corn or with biscuits and as
she ran the contents were scattered along the way and those who
were present scrambled for them. After having overtaken his intended
the groom brought her back to an open space where the
ceremony was to be completed. They sat down side by side, and
the headman usually made a speech. A feast, followed by a dance,
concluded the day's program, but on the next day there was usually
a ball game. Some of these ceremonies are also remembered by
the Choctaw in Oklahoma.
Nowadays it is said that the Choctaw of Bok Chito, the only
band in Mississippi which is not formally Christianized, simply
have a meeting between the two parties, a speech, and a feast.
Regarding widowhood and remarriage Claiborne says:
When a Choctaw husband dies the wife lays aside her jewelry or ornaments,
and suffers her hair to fall dishevelled over her shoulders. Some six
months after the cry for the dead is over the husband's mother (or if she be
dead, his nearest female relative) ties up and dresses the widow's hair, and
she is then at liberty to marry again. If she marries prior to this ceremony,
or danoes or flirts, she is discarded by the family of the deceased."
What I myself learned was practically the same. It was that the
widow or widower had to wait until the mortuary ceremonies were
completed, when the people of the iksa to which the deceased be
longed dressed the bereaved in good clothing and said, " You are
now free." However, if there were little children, they usually
preferred that the widower should espouse his wife's sister, and
similarly, a woman was more apt to marry her husband's brother.
''*'> This must represent a later custom, for we have many references to mother-in-law
avoidance in early times.
'5 Claiborne, Miss., i, p. 516.