Of Marriage And Fidelity In The Tribe..Hermann's Observations

Howdy folks, greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

We're in a series about the Wild West and the incredible story of an 11 year old German boy, Hermann, who was captured by an Apache war party from his family's farm in 1870 in Central Texas.

He's now 17 years old at this point in the story and has become a full blown warrior who hates and fears the White man. And in fact, has taken many a scalp.

Yesterday's post

In the last post Hermann got himself a girlfriend but the girl's father shot him in the knee with an arrow. That ended his courtship and kept him scared of being around girls for a awhile. lol.

Today's story

Now, there were many tribes, about a thousand, all with different rules and traditions. I'm only talking about what Hermann learned while with the Apache and Comanche and how they conducted themselves in regards to courtship and marriage.

He said the women didn't have strict codes of behavior before marriage. In other words they could have sex with whomever they wanted as long as neither partner was married. They considered that to be nature taking it's course.

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When a brave wanted to marry a maiden he would approach the father with an offer of a number of horses and that number could be negotiated. Two horses seemed to be the minimum value.

Or, if a father wanted his daughter to marry a certain brave he could go and tell the brave he could have his daughter for a certain number of horses and that number could be negotiated also.

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So the agreement of marriage was totally up to the father and the suitor, the final decision was up to them and not the girl, but usually the girl had influence and they tried to make good matches.

When a deal was struck, then the brave would escort the maiden to his tepee and she now had a "master." Not my words, believe me... that's the term Hermann used.

Obviously it could be good for the girl, or a nightmare if the man was a brute or a pig. In Hermann's experience though, the men usually worked to find a good match and most of the time it was a couple who were courting or spending time together.

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Sometimes the man was just trying to gather enough horses together to make the deal. I almost said make the purchase but he wasn't really purchasing the girl in his mind, he was purchasing the agreement or the right to be with her.

Surprisingly, there was no ceremony of any kind, just the transfer of horses which meant they were married. Once they were married though, cheating on your squaw or your husband was strictly forbidden.

The marriages were very strong though and the family units kept the tribes strong.

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I don't know if there was any punishment for braves who cheated on their squaws besides tribe members talking about them and loss of honor but for squaws cheating...they had their noses cut off.

In addition they were shunned, forced to live outside or on the edge of the camp or forced to live with the brave they had the affair with. This was a very rare occurrence though.

And there were no such thing as divorces. The other rare occurrence was out of wedlock births, which was practically unheard of.

Check out this original, hand-made Native American basket I found, this beauty is in a museum, it's probably worth 50K.

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In the next post the action continues in Hermann's adventure.

Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas