Shortly after I saw the Smoking-star, I took a woman. My uncle and my grandparents had often hinted of marriage. I was particularly fond of a girl in the Small-robe band, but could not court her openly because that was my band by right of my father, though I lived with the band of my mother, the Fat-roasters. It is not good for a man to marry in his own band where most of his relatives live, but he can freely marry a woman of his mother’s band, if not too closely related to her. I could have joined my mother’s band, as my uncle urged, and then married the girl, but that seemed to me like evading my duty to uphold the honor of my father and to take revenge for his untimely death. People would talk about it. So I courted a girl in my mother’s band. As she was not closely related to me, there was no hindrance. Our courtship was secret, as is often the custom; when I led out my first war party she slyly passed me a pair of moccasins. I think no one knew of our attachment. You see my mother’s people all looked upon me as one of their band, though they should not have done so, and so looked elsewhere for my future woman. Long afterward I learned that they had picked a woman for me from the Blood band, the widow of a young warrior, a good woman some ten years older than I, but it turned out otherwise.