2. Minnitarees. This tribe and the Upsarokas (Up-sar´-o-kas) or Crows, are subdivisions of an original people. They are doubtful members of this branch of the Ganowánian family: although from the number of words in their dialects and in those of the Missouri and Dakota tribes which are common, they have been placed with them linguistically. They have had an antecedent experience of which but little is known. Minnitarees carried horticulture, the timber-framed house, and a peculiar religious system into this area which they taught to the Mandans. There is a possibility that they are descendants of the Mound-Builders. They have the seven following gentes:
1. Knife. 2. Water. 3. Lodge. 4. Prairie Chicken. 5. Hill People. 6. Unknown Animal. 7. Bonnet.[159]
Descent is in the female line, intermarriage in the gens is forbidden, and the office of sachem as well as property is hereditary in the gens. The Minnitarees and Mandans now live together in the same village. In personal appearance they are among the finest specimens of the Red Man now living in any part of North America.
3. Upsarokas or Crows. This tribe has the following gentes:
1. Prairie Dog. 2. Bad Leggins. 3. Skunk. 4. Treacherous Lodges. 5. Lost Lodges. 6. Bad Honors. 7. Butchers. 8. Moving Lodges. 9. Bear's Paw Mountain. 10. Blackfoot Lodges. 11. Fish Catchers. 12. Antelope. 13. Raven.[160]
Descent, inheritance and the prohibition of intermarriage in the gens, are the same as among the Minnitarees. Several of the names of the Crow gentes are unusual, and more suggestive of bands than of gentes. For a time I was inclined to discredit them. But the existence of the organization into gentes was clearly established by their rules of descent, and marital usages, and by their laws of inheritance with respect to property. My interpreter when among the Crows was Robert Meldrum, then one of the factors of the American Fur Company, who had lived with the Crows forty years, and was one of their chiefs. He had mastered the language so completely that he thought in it. The following special usages with respect to inheritance were mentioned by him. If a person to whom any article of property had been presented died with it in his possession, and the donor was dead, it reverted to the gens of the latter. Property made or acquired by a wife descended after her death to her children; while that of her husband after his decease belonged to his gentile kindred. If a person made a present to a friend and died, the latter must perform some recognized act of mourning, such as cutting off the joint of a finger at the funeral, or surrender the property to the gens of his deceased friend.[161]