ble and,
with greetings commensurate to the occasion, proceed to wash her
face, comb her hair, and attire her person with new apparel, and
otherwise demonstrating the release from her vow and restraint.
Still she has not her entire freedom. If she will still refuse to
marry a relative of the deceased and will marry another, she then
has to purchase her freedom by giving a certain amount of goods and
whatever else she might have manufactured during her widowhood in
anticipation of the future now at hand. Frequently, though, during
widowhood the vows are disregarded and an inclination to flirt and
play courtship or form an alliance of marriage outside of the
relatives of the deceased is being indulged, and when discovered the
widow is set upon by the female relatives, her slick braided hair is
shorn close up to the back of her neck, all her apparel and trinkets
are torn from her person, and a quarrel frequently results fatally
to some member of one or the other side.

Thomas L. McKenney[87] gives a description of the Chippewa widow which
differs slightly from the one above:

I have noticed several women here carrying with them rolls of
clothing. On inquiring what these imported, I learn that they _are
widows_ who carry them, and that these are badges of mourning. It is
indispensable, when a woman of the Chippeway Nation loses her
husband, for her to take of her best apparel--and the whole of it is
not worth a dollar--and roll it up, and confine it by means of her
husband's sashes; and if he had ornaments, these are generally put
on the top of the roll, and around it is wrapped a piece of cloth.
This bundle is called her husband, and it is expected that she is
never to be seen without it. If she walks out she takes it with her;
if she sits down in her lodge, she places it by her side. This badge
of widowhood and of mourning the widow is compelled to carry with
her until some of her late husband's family shall call and take it
away, which is done when they think she has mourned long enough, and
which is generally at the expiration of a year. She is then, but not
before, released from her mourning, and at liberty to marry again.
She has the privilege to take this husband to the family of the
deceased and leave it, but this is considered indecorous, and is
seldom done. Sometimes a brother of the deceased takes the widow for
his wife at the grave of her hu