The Crows have a custom with respect to marriage, which I have found in at least forty other Indian tribes, which may be mentioned here, because some use will be made of it in a subsequent chapter. If a man marries the eldest daughter in a family he is entitled to all her sisters as additional wives when they attain maturity. He may waive the right, but if he insists, his superior claim would be recognized by her gens. Polygamy is allowed by usage among the American aborigines generally; but it was never prevalent to any considerable extent from the inability of persons to support more than one family. Direct proof of the existence of the custom first mentioned was afforded by Meldrum's wife, then at the age of twenty-five. She was captured when a child in a foray upon the Blackfeet, and became Meldrum's captive. He induced his mother-in-law to adopt the child into her gens and family, which made the captive the younger sister of his then wife, and gave him the right to take her as another wife when she reached maturity. He availed himself of this usage of the tribe to make his claim paramount. This usage has a great antiquity in the human family. It is a survival of the old custom of _punalua_.
1. Muscokees or Creeks. The Creek Confederacy consisted of six Tribes; namely, the Creeks, Hitchetes, Yoochees, Alabamas, Coosatees, and Natches, all of whom spoke dialects of the same language, with the exception of the Natches, who were admitted into the confederacy after their overthrow by the French.
The Creeks are composed of twenty-two gentes as follows:
1. Wolf. 2. Bear. 3. Skunk. 4. Alligator. 5. Deer. 6. Bird. 7. Tiger. 8. Wind. 9. Toad. 10. Mole. 11. Fox. 12. Raccoon. 13. Fish. 14. Corn. 15. Potatoe. 16. Hickory Nut. 17. Salt. 18. Wild Cat. 19. (Sig'n Lost). 20. (Sig'n Lost).[162] 21. (Sig'n Lost). 22. (Sig'n Lost).[163]
The remaining tribes of this confederacy are said to have had the organization into gentes, as the author was informed by the Rev. S. M. Loughridge, who was for many years a missionary among the Creeks, and who furnished the names of the gentes above given. He further stated that descent among the Creeks was in the female line; that the office of sachem and the property of deceased persons were hereditary in the gens, and that intermarriage in the gens was prohibited. At the present time the Creeks are partially civilized with a changed plan of life. They have substituted a political in place of the old social system, so that in a few years all traces of their old gentile institutions will have disappeared. In 1869 they numbered about fifteen thousand, which would give an average of five hundred and fifty persons to the gens.