Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community

A Giving Heritage

Daniel C. Swan, Jim Cooley

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253043054
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de nativos americanos

An exploration of how gift exchange serves as a critical component in the preservation and perpetuation of one Native American tribe. Upon winning the CMA Book Award, Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community was praised as "a book that transcends its subject matter and helps us all see the possibilities of museum anthropology." This study of the Osage Nation's foundational cultural practice begins with an in-depth examination of the Mízhin form of marriage, which bound two extended Osage families together for economic, biologic, and social reasons intended to produce value and community cohesion for the larger society. Swan and Cooley then follow the movement of Osage bridal regalia from the Mízhin form of marriage into the "Paying for the Drum" ceremony of the Osage Ilonshka—a variant of the Plains Grass Dance, which is a nativistic movement that spread throughout the Plains and Prairie regions of the United States in the 1890s. The Ilonshka dance and its associated organization provide a spiritual charter for the survival of the ancient Osage physical divisions, or "districts" as they are called today. Swan and Cooley demonstrate how the process of re-chartering elements of material culture and their associated meanings from one ceremony to another serves as an example of the ways in which the Osage people have adapted their cultural values to changing economic and political conditions. At the core of this historical trajectory is a broad system of Osage social relations predicated on status, reciprocity, and cooperation. Through Osage weddings and the Ilonshka dance the Osage people reinforce and strengthen the social relations that provide a foundation for their respective communities.

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MÍZHI^N WEDDING CEREMONIES

IN THIS CHAPTER, WE PRESENT A SYNTHESIS OF HISTORICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL sources to reconstruct the Osage wedding ceremony and discuss its variations over time. A proposal of marriage and its acceptance or rejection incorporated social, biological, and economic considerations. While a traditional Osage wedding is generally conceived by Anglo observers as a nonreligious ceremony, the underlying philosophy for the Osage institution of marriage is highly spiritual in nature. The Osage people consider marriage a holy union, largely based on its ability to produce an environment in which children are raised in a specific manner. This is a major element in the reproduction of Osage society. The actual wedding ceremony, while lacking direct religious reference, had a strict protocol that reflected a clear set of moral standards. The proper conduct of the Mízhiⁿ, or sacred form of marriage, invoked spiritual intervention for the health and long life of individuals married in this manner and the children born to them.

The evidence we consider in this chapter is particularly rich, based on the broad attention that Osage weddings have garnered from observers of their elaborate ceremony and spectacular material culture. Of all the sources available on Osage marriages, the most important are interviews with the participants in Osage weddings during the first decades of the twentieth century. Most relevant are accounts of the experiences of women who were married in this manner and the men and women who arranged the weddings. Our work benefits greatly from community-based oral history projects and the publications of community and tribal historians. The richness of this record was a major factor in our decision to pursue this project.

The chronological scope of the research reported in this book and the community narrative that supports our interpretations is anchored in the first half of the twentieth century. It is important to provide a historical overview of the physical conditions that frame this period in Osage history because the political and economic nature of the Osage Nation and its citizens inevitably impacted the social and material topics we address.

The Osage suffered a pattern of forced dislocation and territorial erosion as a consequence of the American colonial period. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Osage repeatedly ceded territory in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas through a series of treaties with the United States. One provision of the Treaty of 1825 was further restriction to a limited reservation in southeastern Kansas (Wilson 1985, 8–10). In 1872, the Osage made a final move to a reservation in Indian Territory that today constitutes Osage County, Oklahoma. The Osage people established their villages in accordance with the traditional physical divisions of the tribe. The Osage Indian agent, the local authority of the Department of Indian Affairs, responded by dividing the reservation into five administrative districts that correlated to these concentrations of villages across the expansive territory (Swan 1990, 211). These districts correspond to the five traditional physical divisions of the tribe (La Flesche 1921, 45).¹ The Waxakoliⁿ settled in the area that today comprises the city of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. The Zonsoliⁿ are located in Hominy, Oklahoma, and the Pahsoliⁿ in the community of Gray Horse, close to the present-day town of Fairfax, Oklahoma. The Thoⁿtse washpe and the Utseta divisions settled in the area around Barnsdall, Oklahoma (Bailey 1970, 42–45; Bailey and Swan 2004, 145–46).²

In 1906 the Osage people were forced to adopt individual homesteads through the coerced allotment of their reservation (Bailey 1973, 157–60; Wilson 1985, 88–98). The Osage Allotment Act called for division of the Osage reservation, into tracts for individual ownership. Every man, woman, and child listed on the official tribal role as of July 1907 received 640 acres of land and a trust account of $3,000. A total of 2,229 individuals were listed as Osage on the final roll and received allotments.³

A provision of the Osage Allotment Act was the creation of three reserves of 160 acres each in Pawhuska, Hominy, and Gray Horse to accommodate those who desired to continue communal life. Today several families continue permanent and seasonal residence in these “villages” often in houses that have been in their lineage for several generations (Bailey and Swan 2004, 145). An elected board of five directors set standards and provisions for local governance of the 160-acre villages. These villages are the sites of the annual Iloⁿshka dances and contain chapels and community buildings used for other community events.

Another significant element of the Osage Allotment Act was the provision that the subsurface mineral rights to the former reservation would be held in common, with proceeds divided in equal shares among the original 2,229 allottees, each receiving what became known as a “headright.” In 1926, these headrights paid each holder the sum of $16,000 (Bailey and Swan 2004, 141–42; Wilson 1985, 121–47). The perception of the Osage people during this period by the larger American public was one of the “oil rich Indian.” In actuality, the Osage were one of a very few American Indian tribes who achieved affluence in the early twentieth century due to the discovery of a huge oil reserve beneath their reservation. As petroleum became a major asset in the early part of the century the Osage gained the reputation of being “The Richest People in the World” (Bailey and Swan 2004, 137–41).

This wealth reached its zenith in the 1920s when oil payments to the Osage were at an all-time high. As a result, journalists from newspapers and the popular magazine media flocked to Oklahoma writing stories about the Osages’ fabulous wealth and their lavish and extravagant spending of it on fine automobiles and red brick mansions. These articles were often highly exaggerated and emphasized the absurd in their accounts of Osage spending with sensational titles such as “Where Everyone Is Wealthy” and “Lo, the Rich Indian, How He Blows His Coin!”(Layng 1927, 404; “Lo, the Rich Indian” 1920, 62). This wealth also attracted a segment of the non-Indian population who arrived on the former Osage Reservation with the specific intention of separating the Osage from this wealth by whatever means necessary. This included murder, resulting in what became known as the “Osage Reign of Terror,” which was chronicled in a 2017 New York Times best-selling book, Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann.

The relative affluence experienced by the Osage people in the first decades of the twentieth century had a tremendous impact on the evolution of Osage society. It is clear that many Osage people used their wealth to support the traditional activities and observances important to community and family life. This affluence contributed to the development of a set of standards and expectations that are critical components in the modern identity of the Osage people (Bailey and Swan 2004, 142–47; Harmon 2010, 180, 186–87; Thompson, Vehik, and Swan 1984, 47–50). We will return to the discussion of relative wealth and Osage society later in chapter 5 of this work, particularly with regard to its subsequent erosion through a decline in the productivity of the mineral estate and partible inheritance of the original 2,229 headrights, now fractionated into tens of thousands of partial shares (Bailey and Swan 2004, 149). In response to this situation, the Osage community developed new strategies and mechanisms to maintain established conventions of generosity and hospitality.

Osage Weddings

Francis La Flesche, an Omaha student of pioneer ethnologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher, spent the majority of his career documenting the ritual practices of Osage tribal religion, which was largely moribund at the time of his fieldwork in the early twentieth century. La Flesche provides the first academic assessment of Osage marriage practices in both their idealized and practical forms, discussing the sacred form of arranged marriage:

The marriage customs of the Osage are clearly defined, well established, and are observed to this day by the full-bloods…. There are two forms of marriage that are recognized as legal [in terms of Osage social mores] one which takes place between a youth and a maiden and is called Mízhiⁿ, and another in which one or both parties had been married before and is called Omíha. The marriageable age is reached shortly after puberty and those who have attained that period of life are known as Tsé-ganon, or newly grown. These young people, unless near relatives, are not allowed to mingle or even speak to one another. All are strictly guarded so that none can arrange their own marriage affairs and open courtship. (1912, 127–28)

In describing the ceremony La Flesche (1912, 128–29) documents reciprocal gift exchanges that are focused on the distribution of horses and blankets to the extended kin of the bride and groom. He makes no mention of the elaborate bridal regalia discussed in this work, which suggests La Flesche never attended an Osage wedding, more likely from lack of interest than from lack of opportunity. His focus was on Osage society in the past, and he rarely mentions the reality of life in the Osage communities he visited in 1910–20.

In one of his larger works documenting the evolution of the formal social organization of the tribe and its ritual expression, La Flesche (1921, 48–49) places Osage marriage practices within the larger worldview of the Osage people and underscores the philosophical foundation of Osage incest rules:

It would appear from the story handed down by the old men, in mythical form, of the origin of the people, that the Noⁿ’-hoⁿ-zhiⁿ-ga [tribal elders] arrived at the idea that life was conceived between two great fructifying forces—namely, the sky and earth—and continued forever to proceed therefrom. This conception the Noⁿ’-hoⁿ-zhiⁿ-ga not only expressed in the mythical story mentioned above, but also in dividing the tribe into two parts—one to represent the sky and the other the earth—they further emphasized this symbolic expression by requiring the men belonging to one division to take wives from among the women belonging to the other division. This tribal arrangement did not arise from an idle thought, but from a belief, born of a long study of nature, that such was the means employed by Wa-koⁿ’-da to bring forth life in bodily form.

In accordance with the religious significance of these two great divisions, a rule was prescribed that required the men of one division to take wives only from the women belonging to the opposite division. The rule was strictly and religiously observed.

Conversations in the early twentieth century with the Noⁿhoⁿzhiⁿga led La Flesche to conclude that they modeled Osage marriage on the same order that Wakoⁿ’da used in his creation of life on earth. They divided Osage society into two groups: the Tsizhu, or sky, and the Hoⁿga, or earth, with each comprising several clans and extended lineages. The requirement that men from each group marry only women from the other was grounded in the moral values of the Osage people and viewed as a sacred obligation.⁴ The mention of disruptive forces in this order is a rare consideration by La Flesche of the contemporary contexts in which his Osage consultants lived at the time of his field research.

Historical Accounts

A diverse range of historic and ethnographic sources provides consistent notice and varying degrees of documentation of Osage weddings. The earliest published account of an Osage wedding appears in Paul Vissier’s Histoire de la Tribu des Osages, published in Paris in 1827 (Heat-Moon and Wallace 2013, 94). The volume was released to coincide with the visit of a delegation of Osages to Paris the same year.⁵ The content of Vissier’s work was derived largely from the existing literature of the day, and in particular the works of Nicolas Perrin and Conrad Malte-Brun, who both published their works in the 1820s (Heat-Moon and Wallace 2013, 65, 67).⁶ Through Malte-Brun, Vissier provides an amazingly detailed description of an Osage marriage ceremony that coincides closely with the practices documented in the early twentieth century.

Vissier provides important details of the diverse social and economic relations involved in Osage marriages, including a desire to marry within or above one’s social station (Heat-Moon and Wallace 2013, 95). He identifies a set of “privileged families [who] form a patrician caste surrounded by a certain distinction” and the important role of uncles on both sides of the marriage proposal, whose approval is required for the wedding to proceed.⁷ Vissier identifies a group of men that he calls “cooks” as central to the process:

Once the young man receives his uncles [sic] approval, he announces the marriage to the rest of his family who limit their reactions to congratulations. Then he calls in the cooks and, according to his wealth, gives them a number of horses. This can be as many as twenty—the greater the number the more his future wife is honored. The young man instructs the cooks to lead the horses to the doorway of the woman he wants to marry and to tie them there. The cooks’ mission is limited to securing the horses to the entrance of the girl’s lodge and saying they come on behalf of so-and-so. (Heat-Moon and Wallace 2013, 95)

Vissier’s use of the term cooks to describe these men follows Malte-Brun’s usage to describe a class of men who would be viewed today as shamans or healers. Vissier felt that cooks (cuisinier) better captured the nature of these individuals and their activities than the term juggler, a term commonly used in the nineteenth century to describe Native Americans engaged in shamanic curing rituals. The duties of these individuals included cooking at ceremonies and service “as a sort of town crier, master of ceremonies and arranger of marriages” (Heat-Moon and Wallace 2013, 77).

Vissier describes the important role of the prospective bride’s relatives, particularly uncles, in the deliberative process and discusses the reciprocal exchange of gifts as critical components in Osage weddings: “She understands what that means and tells her uncle or her brother, who gives his consent—if he approves of the marriage. If he refuses to consent, the horses are sent back to the domicile of the young man, who is then forced to renounce the marriage. If the request is accepted by the girl and her family, the horses are distributed among her relatives who are quick to offer the future groom presents of comparable value. These gifts consist of horses, scarlet cloth, guns, jewelry and household utensils” (Heat-Moon and Wallace 2013, 196–97). Here Vissier introduces the pattern in which the horses gifted by the groom are distributed among the bride’s relatives, cementing social relationships throughout an extended network of lineal kin.

Vissier describes the gift exchange process in great detail:

This exchange takes place by means of the cooks the day before the arranged marriage ceremony. The following day, between 4 and 5 o’clock, the relatives of the bride, after having adorned her in her best finery, lead her, mounted on one of their best horses, to the young man’s lodge. She is preceded by the cooks who announce the marriage as they go along. The mother and sisters of the groom hurry to meet and compliment her, help her dismount, and greet her with titles of “daughter” and “sister-in-law.” They ask her to come in to their home, inviting her family as well, and they have her sit on a new mat—a most beautiful one—spread out in the middle of the room to receive her. There they quickly remove all her clothing and ornaments, and immediately replace them with others equally fine and new. Those she wore will become property of the mother and sisters of the groom because everything remains in their lodge. The ...