While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Of any clanship system White Moon had never heard, and,
whatever approach to the subject we made, he remained consistently unaware of
clan groups. White Moon was born in 1897, and it seemed not improbable that his
ignorance of clanship was characteristic of the younger generation of the tribe;
but Ingkanish20 and Pardon were equally ignorant of any clanship is system, present or past. And yet, in 1890-1891, Mooney
recorded among the Caddo the existence of clans, the names of which, as words
merely, were verified by White Moon as follows:
Mooney
White
Moon
Sun
Thunder
Eagle
Panther
Raccoon
Beaver
Crow
Bear
Wolf
Buffalo
or
Alligator
Sako
adihanin
iwi'
kishi
ut'
t'ao'
kak'aih
nao'tsi
tasha21
tanaha
kohuh
White Moon
himself suggested that these names might have been the names of supernatural
helpers, a relationship merely personal, entirely unrelated to kinship."
Possibly White Moon's theory of Mooney's data is correct.22" Yet it is not
unlikely that a clan system once existed. From as intensive study of the
localized groups as can be made at a distance, it appears quite plainly that in
several cases the principle of grouping is that of the maternal family24 and the
kinship nomenclature points to matronymy.25
______________________________________________ 21 Also called tsudachittsi, sharp nose. 22 Compare the account Ingkanish has given of the Beaver doctor, p.
34. 23 Just as, analogously, the names of Pueblo Indian societies have
sometimes been recorded as clan names. The Isletan Tiwa regularly refer to their
matrilineal, non-exogamic, ceremonial groups as "clans."
No clanship system has been found among other Caddoan tribes. Among Shawnee
it once existed but is now lost (Voegelin). Matrilineal clanship is general in
the Southeast. 24 Spier writes: "There are said to be no exogamous groups, but in
conversation with my informant maternal affiliation seemed to be stressed." 25 In 1912 Once-in-white-house (Caddo Jake) assured Swanton that
there were several exogamic maternal clans. On the other hand White-bread stated
that the clans which were Buffalo, Bear, Panther, Wolf and Beaver (in this order
according to the strength of the animal) were neither exogamic or endogamic; if
one married outside the clan the children all belonged to the woman's clan if it
was "stronger," but if "weaker" then only the girls belonged to the maternal
clan. Swanton suggests that the different bands may have had different usages,
the eastern or Louisiana Caddo to whom Caddo Jake belonged having had strictly
matrilineal clans, perhaps borrowed from the Creeks, and the western Caddo to
whom White-bread belonged having had non-exogamous clans, in case of
intermarriage not all the children inheriting from the same side (Swanton 4:
204-206).
