Note 518 — Chapter IV · RISE OF THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT
Reading edition
Clarke, Travels, I, 433; McLennan, op. cit., I, 15, 16. Cf. Koehne, "Das Recht der Kalmücken," ZVR., IX, 462; Dargun, op. cit., 89; Lubbock, op. cit., 116, 117.
With the Kalmuck case may be compared the following, communicated by Dawson: "One day in 1872, when the writer was on the Ponka Reservation in Dakota, he noticed several young men on horseback, who were waiting for a young girl to leave the mission house. He learned that they were her suitors, and that they intended to run a race with her after they dismounted. Whoever could catch her would marry her; but she would take care not to let the wrong one catch her. La Flèche and Two Crows maintain that this is not a regular Ponka custom, and they are sure that the girl (a widow) must have been a 'mickeda,' or 'dissolute woman.'"—Dawson, "Omaha Sociology," in III. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 260.