Flathead chief, Two Tongues LeBeau, giving away his daughter

This was one of my favorite scenes in JEREMIAH JOHNSON.

You'd have to have some inkling of Native American indian warrior culture to understand.

As Del Gue explains to Jeremiah, Flathead tribal chieftain, Two Tongues LeBeau invited Jeremiah back to the tribe to honor such a great warrior who had slain three, enemy Blackfeet indian warriors. Actually Jeremiah had killed but one. Jeremiah, not understanding Native American indian warrior culture, including that of the Flathead tribe, had offered his host a gift of incredible, almost unmeasurable value to chieftain LeBeau.

The gift were the scalps of the three, enemy Blackfeet warriors. This was like offering the lives of three warriors to LeBeau. On top of that, Jeremiah gives chieftain LeBeau the three Flathead ponies. Such animals were highly valuable to all indians. The gift of the three scalps plus the valuable, three ponies added up to an incredible value to the indian chieftain that probably couldn't be matched. You could see the worried look on chieftain LeBeau's face. The value of Jeremiah's total gifts, meaning the immense intangible cultural value of the scalps and the high value of three healthy ponies could probably not be matched by any amount of chieftain LeBeau's personal wealth. An inability of chieftain LeBeau to match the priceless value of such unsolicited and unasked for gifts would mean a tremendous loss of face to not only to the chief himself but possibly in the eyes of his own tribe.

Ah, but what can a man possess that exceeds putting any numerical value upon it? It's his own flesh and blood; his own children, which are equally priceless. Chieftain LeBeau could match Jeremiah's near-priceless gifts with a priceless one of his own, his grown daughter, Swan. You see for yourself how different cultures possess values and social mores that are incomprehensible to other cultures. What man would give away his own maiden daughter to a stranger who had just given him near priceless gifts? The sense of tribal warrior honor, face, and cultural integrity meant that chietain Two Tongues LeBeau felt he had no choice in honoring his own tribe's customs and values and warrior culture but to offer his own daughter to the strange white man warrior who had slain three enemy Blackfeet warriors in single, hand-to-hand combat.