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Agriculture Of The Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation

Waheenee

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STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

1. Thompson and Warber , Social and Economic Survey of a Rural Township in Southern Minnesota. 1913. $0.50. 2. Matthias Nordberg Orfield , Federal Land Grants to the States, with Special Reference to Minnesota. 1915. $1.00. 3. Edward Van Dyke Robinson , Early Economic Conditions and the Development of Agriculture in Minnesota. 1915. $1.50. 4. L. D. H. Weld and Others , Studies in the Marketing of Farm Products. 1915. $0.50. 5. Ben Palmer , Swamp Land Drainage, with Special Reference to Minnesota

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STUDIES IN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS

STUDIES IN THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS

1. Frankforter and Frary , Equilibria in Systems Containing Alcohols, Salts, and Water. 1912. $0.50. 2. Frankforter and Kritchevsky , A New Phase of Catalysis. 1914. $0.50....

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STUDIES IN ENGINEERING

STUDIES IN ENGINEERING

1. George Alfred Maney , Secondary Stresses and Other Problems in Rigid Frames: A New Method of Solution. 1915. $0.25. 2. Charles Franklin Shoop , An Investigation of the Concrete Road-Making Properties of Minnesota Stone and Gravel. 1915. $0.25. 3. Franklin R. McMillan , Shrinkage and Time Effects in Reinforced Concrete. 1915. $0.25. (Continued inside back cover) Maxi´diwiac, or Buffalobird-woman Photographed in 1910 The University of Minnesota STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES NUMBER 9 AGRICULTUR

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PREFACE

PREFACE

The field of primitive economic activity has been largely left uncultivated by both economists and anthropologists. The present study by Mr. Gilbert L. Wilson is an attempt to add to the scanty knowledge already at hand on the subject of the economic life of the American Indian. The work was begun without theory or thesis, but solely with the object of gathering available data from an old woman expert agriculturist in one of the oldest agricultural tribes accessible to a student of the Universit

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HIDATSA ALPHABET

HIDATSA ALPHABET

Native Hidatsa words in this thesis are written in the foregoing alphabet. This does not apply to the tribal names Hidatsa, Mandan, Dakota, Arikara, Minitari....

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FOREWORD

FOREWORD

The Hidatsas, called Minitaris by the Mandans, are a Siouan linguistic tribe. Their language is closely akin to that of the Crows with whom they claim to have once formed a single tribe; a separation, it is said, followed a quarrel over a slain buffalo. The name Hidatsa was formerly borne by one of the tribal villages. The other villages consolidated with it, and the name was adopted as that of the tribe. The name is said to mean “willows,” and it was given the village because the god Itsikama´h

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CHAPTER I TRADITION

CHAPTER I TRADITION

We Hidatsas believe that our tribe once lived under the waters of Devils Lake. Some hunters discovered the root of a vine growing downward; and climbing it, they found themselves on the surface of the earth. Others followed them, until half the tribe had escaped; but the vine broke under the weight of a pregnant woman, leaving the rest prisoners. A part of our tribe are therefore still beneath the lake. My father, Small Ankle, going, when a young man, on a war party, visited Devils Lake. “Beneat

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Turtle

Turtle

My great-grandmother, as white men count their kin, was named Atạ´kic, or Soft-white Corn. She adopted a daughter, Mata´tic, or Turtle. Some years after, a daughter was born to Atạ´kic, whom she named Otter. Turtle and Otter both married. Turtle had a daughter named Ica´wikec, or Corn Sucker; [6] and Otter had three daughters, Want-to-be-a-woman, Red Blossom, and Strikes-many-women, all younger than Corn Sucker. The smallpox year at Five Villages left Otter’s family with no male members to suppo

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Clearing Fields

Clearing Fields

Soon after they came to Like-a-fishhook bend, the families of my tribe began to clear fields, for gardens, like those they had at Five Villages. Rich black soil was to be found in the timbered bottom lands of the Missouri. Most of the work of clearing was done by the women. In old times we Hidatsas never made our gardens on the untimbered, prairie land, because the soil there is too hard and dry. In the bottom lands by the Missouri, the soil is soft and easy to work. Figure 1 Map of newly broken

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Dispute and Its Settlement

Dispute and Its Settlement

About two years after the first ground was broken in our field, a dispute I remember, arose between my mothers and two of their neighbors, Lone Woman and Goes-to-next-timber. These two women were clearing fields adjoining that of my mothers; as will be seen by the accompanying map ( figure 1 ), the three fields met at a corner. I have said that my father, to set up claim to his field, had placed marks, one of them in the corner at which met the fields of Lone Woman and Goes-to-next-timber; but w

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Turtle Breaking Soil

Turtle Breaking Soil

Lone Woman and Goes-to-next-timber having withdrawn, my grandmother, Turtle, volunteered to break the soil of the corner that had been in dispute. She was an industrious woman. Often, when my mothers were busy in the earth lodge, she would go out to work in the garden, taking me with her for company. I was six years old then, I think, quite too little to help her any, but I liked to watch my grandmother work. With her digging stick, she dug up a little round place in the center of the corner ( f

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Turtle’s Primitive Tools

Turtle’s Primitive Tools

In breaking ground for our garden, Turtle always used an ash digging stick ( figure 2 ); and when hoeing time came, she hoed the corn with a bone hoe ( figure 3 ). Digging sticks are still used in my tribe for digging wild turnips; but even in my grandmother’s lifetime, digging sticks and bone hoes, as garden tools, had all but given place to iron hoes and axes. My grandmother was one of the last women of my tribe to cling to these old fashioned implements. Two other women, I remember, owned bon

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Beginning a Field in Later Times

Beginning a Field in Later Times

As I grew up, I learned to work in the garden, as every Hidatsa woman was expected to learn; but iron axes and hoes, bought of the traders, were now used by everybody, and the work of clearing and breaking a new field was less difficult than it had been in our grandfathers’ times. A family had also greater freedom in choosing where they should have their garden, since with iron axes they could more easily cut down any small trees and bushes that might be on the land. However, to avoid having to

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Trees in the Garden

Trees in the Garden

Trees were not left standing in the garden, except perhaps one to shade the watchers’ stage. If a tree stood in the field, it shaded the corn; and that on the north side of the tree never grew up strong, and the stalks would be yellow. Cottonwood trees were apt to grow up in the field, unless the young shoots were plucked up as they appeared....

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Our West Field

Our West Field

The field which Turtle helped to clear, lay, I have said, east of the village. I was about nineteen years old, I think, when my mothers determined to clear ground for a second field, west of the village. There were five of us who undertook the work, my father, my two mothers, Red Blossom and Strikes-many-women, my sister, Cold Medicine, and myself. We began in the fall, after harvesting the corn from our east garden, so that we had leisure for the work; we had been too busy to begin earlier in t

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Burning Over the Field

Burning Over the Field

The next spring my father, his two wives, my sister and I went out and burned the felled willows and brush which the spring sun had dried. We did not burn them every day; only when the weather was fine. We would go out after breakfast, burn until tired of the work, and come home. We sought to burn over the whole field, for we knew that this left a good, loose soil. We did not pile the willows in heaps, but loosened them from the ground or scattered them loosely but evenly over the soil. In some

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Remark by Maxi´diwiac

Remark by Maxi´diwiac

This that I am going to tell you of the planting and harvesting of our crops is out of my own experience, seen with my own eyes. In olden times, I know, my tribe used digging sticks and bone hoes for garden tools; and I have described how I saw my grandmother use them. There may be other tools or garden customs once in use in my tribe, and now forgotten; of them I cannot speak. There were families in Like-a-fishhook village less industrious than ours, and some families may have tilled their fiel

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Planting Sunflowers

Planting Sunflowers

The first seed that we planted in the spring was sunflower seed. Ice breaks on the Missouri about the first week in April; and we planted sunflower seed as soon after as the soil could be worked. Our native name for the lunar month that corresponds most nearly to April, is Mapi´-o´cë-mi´di, or Sunflower-planting-moon. Planting was done by hoe, or the woman scooped up the soil with her hands. Three seeds were planted in a hill, at the depth of the second joint of a woman’s finger. The three seeds

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Varieties

Varieties

Of cultivated sunflowers we had several varieties, black, white, red, striped, named from the color of the seed. The varieties differed only in color; all had the same taste and smell, and were treated alike in cooking. White sunflower seed when pounded into meal, turned dark, but I think this was caused by the parching. Each family raised the variety they preferred. The varieties were well fixed; black seed produced black; white seed, white....

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Harvesting the Seed

Harvesting the Seed

Although our sunflower seed was the first crop to be planted in the spring, it was the last to be harvested in the fall. For harvesting, we reckoned two kinds of flowers, or heads. A stalk springing from seed of one of our cultivated varieties had one, sometimes two, or even three larger heads, heavy and full, bending the top of the stalk with their weight of seed. Some of these big heads had each a seed area as much as eleven inches across; and yielded each an even double handful of seed. We ca

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Threshing

Threshing

To thresh the heads, a skin was spread and the heads laid on it face downward, and beaten with a stick. Threshing might be on the ground, or on the flat roof, as might be convenient. An average threshing filled a good sized basket, with enough seed left over to make a small package....

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Harvesting the Mapi´-na´ka

Harvesting the Mapi´-na´ka

The smaller heads of the cultivated plants were sometimes gathered, dried, and threshed, as were the larger heads; but if the season was getting late and frost had fallen, and the seeds were getting loose in their pods, I more often threshed these smaller heads and those of the wild plants directly from the stalk. For this I bore a carrying basket, swinging it around over my breast instead of my back; and going about the garden or into the places where the wild plants grew, I held the basket und

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Effect of Frost

Effect of Frost

Because they were gathered later, the seeds of baby sunflowers were looked upon as a kind of second crop; and as I have said, they were kept apart from the earlier harvest, because seed for planting was selected from the larger and earlier gathered heads. Gathered thus late, this second crop was nearly always touched by the frost, even before the seeds were threshed from the stalks. This frosting of the seeds had an effect upon them that we rather esteemed. We made a kind of oily meal from sunfl

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Parching the Seed

Parching the Seed

To make sunflower meal the seeds were first roasted, or parched. This was done in a clay pot, for iron pots were scarce in my tribe when I was young. The clay pot in use in my father’s family was about a foot high and eight or nine inches in diameter, as you see from measurements I make with my hands. This pot I set on the lodge fire, working it down into the coals with a rocking motion, and raked coals around it; the mouth I tipped slightly toward me. I threw into the pot two or three double-ha

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Four-vegetables-mixed

Four-vegetables-mixed

Sunflower meal was used in making a dish that we called do´patsa-makihi´kĕ, or four-vegetables-mixed; from do´patsa, four things; and makihi´kĕ, mixed or put together. Four-vegetables-mixed we thought our very best dish. To make this dish, enough for a family of five, I did as follows: I put a clay pot with water on the fire. Into the pot I threw one double-handful of beans. This was a fixed quantity; I put in just one double-handful whether the family to be served was large or small; for a larg

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Sunflower-seed Balls

Sunflower-seed Balls

Sunflower meal of the parched seeds was also used to make sunflower seed balls; these were important articles of diet in olden times, and had a particular use. For sunflower-seed balls I parched the seeds in a pot in the usual way, put them in a corn mortar and pounded them. When they were reduced to a fine meal I reached into the mortar and took out a handful of the meal, squeezing it in the fingers and palm of my right hand. This squeezing it made it into a kind of lump or ball. This ball I en

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Planting

Planting

Corn planting began the second month after sunflower-seed was planted, that is in May; and it lasted about a month. It sometimes continued pretty well into June, but not later than that; for the sun then begins to go back into the south, and men began to tell eagle-hunting stories. We knew when corn planting time came by observing the leaves of the wild gooseberry bushes. This bush is the first of the woods to leaf in the spring. Old women of the village were going to the woods daily to gather f

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A Morning’s Planting

A Morning’s Planting

We Hidatsa women were early risers in the planting season; it was my habit to be up before sunrise, while the air was cool, for we thought this the best time for garden work. Having arrived at the field I would begin one hill, preparing it, as I have said, with my hoe; and so for ten rows each as long as from this spot to yonder fence—about thirty yards; the rows were about four feet apart, and the hills stood about the same distance apart in the row. The hills all prepared, I went back and plan

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Soaking the Seed

Soaking the Seed

The very last corn that we planted we sometimes put into a little tepid water, if the season was late. Seed used for replanting hills that had been destroyed by crows or magpies we also soaked. We left the seed in the water only a short time, when the water was poured off. The water should be tepid only, so that when poured through the fingers it felt hardly warmed. Hot water would kill the seeds. Seed corn thus soaked would have sprouts a third of an inch long within four or five days after pla

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Planting for a Sick Woman

Planting for a Sick Woman

It was usual for the women of a household to do their own planting; but if a woman was sick, or for some reason was unable to attend to her planting, she sometimes cooked a feast, to which she invited the members of her age society and asked them to plant her field for her. The members of her society would come upon an appointed day and plant her field in a short time; sometimes a half day was enough. There were about thirty members in my age society when I was a young woman. If we were invited

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Size of Our Biggest Field

Size of Our Biggest Field

When our corn was in, we began planting beans and squashes. Beans we commonly planted between corn rows, sometimes over the whole field, more often over a part of it. Our bean and squash planting I will describe later; and I speak of it now only because I wish to explain to you how a Hidatsa garden was laid out. The largest field ever owned in my father’s family was the one which I have said my grandmother Turtle helped clear, at Like-a-fishhook village, or Fort Berthold, as the whites called it

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Na´xu and Nu´cami

Na´xu and Nu´cami

In our big garden at Like-a-fishhook village, nine rows of corn, running lengthwise with the field, made one na´xu, or Indian acre, as we usually translate it. There were ten of these na´xus, or Indian acres, in the garden. Figure 8 Some families of our village counted eight rows of corn to one na´xu, others counted ten rows. The rows of the na´xus always ran the length of the garden; and if the field curved, as it sometimes did around a bend of the river, or other irregularity, the rows curved

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Hoeing

Hoeing

Hoeing time began when the corn was about three inches high; but this varied somewhat with the season. Some seasons were warm, and the corn and weeds grew rapidly; other seasons were colder, and delayed the growth of the corn. Corn plants about three inches high we called “young-bird’s-feather-tail-corn,” because the plants then had blunt ends, like the tail feathers of a very young bird. Corn and weeds alike grew rapidly now, and we women of the household were out with our hoes daily, to keep a

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The Watchers’ Stage

The Watchers’ Stage

Our corn fields had many enemies. Magpies, and especially crows, pulled up much of the young corn, so that we had to replant many hills. Crows were fond of pulling up the green shoots when they were a half inch or an inch high. Spotted gophers would dig up the seed from the roots of young plants. When the corn had eared, and the grains were still soft, blackbirds and crows were destructive. Any hills of young corn that the birds destroyed, I replanted if the season was not too late. If only a pa

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Explanation of Sketch of Watchers’ Stage

Explanation of Sketch of Watchers’ Stage

My son Goodbird has made a sketch, under my direction, of a watchers’ stage ( figure 9 ). The stage was placed close to the tree shading it, about a foot from the trunk. Holes for the posts were dug with a long digging stick; and the posts were set firm, like fence posts. The stage was made nearly square, so that the watchers could sit facing any side with equal ease. The beams supporting the floor might be laid east and west, or north and south; but as the tree stood always on the south side of

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Sweet Grass’s Sun Shade

Sweet Grass’s Sun Shade

If the tree sheltering a stage had scant foliage, we often cut thick, leafy cottonwood boughs and thrust them horizontally through the branches of the tree to increase its shade. It was a common thing for the watchers to tie a robe across the face of the tree for the same purpose. If no tree grew in the garden, a small cottonwood with thick, leafy branches was cut and propped against the south or sunny side of the stage. There was an old woman named Sweet Grass who had no tree in her garden. She

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The Watchers

The Watchers

The season for watching the fields began early in August when green corn began to come in; for this was the time when the ripening ears were apt to be stolen by horses, or birds, or boys. We did not watch the fields in the spring and early summer, to keep the crows from pulling up the newly sprouted grain; such damage we were content to repair by replanting. Girls began to go on the watchers’ stage to watch the corn and sing, when they were about ten or twelve years of age. They continued the cu

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Booths

Booths

There were a good many booths in the gardens that lay west of the village. Usually a booth stood at one side of every field in which was a watchers’ stage. To make a booth, we cut diamond willows, stood them in the ground in a circle, and bending over the leafy tops, tied them together. A few leafy branches were interwoven into the top to increase the shade; but there was no further covering. A booth had a floor diameter of nine or ten feet, and was as high as I can conveniently reach with my ha

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Eating Customs

Eating Customs

A meal was eaten sometimes just after sunrise, or a little later; but we never had regular meal hours in the field. We cooked and ate whenever we got hungry, or when visitors came; or we strayed over to other gardens and ate with our friends. If relatives came, the watchers often entertained them by giving them something to eat. To cook the meal a fire was made in the booth. Meat had been brought out from the village, dried or fresh buffalo meat usually. Fresh meat was laid on the coals to broil

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Youths’ and Maidens’ Customs

Youths’ and Maidens’ Customs

We always kept drinking water at the stage; and if relatives came out, we freely gave them to drink. But boys and young men who came were offered neither food nor drink, unless they were relatives. Our tribe’s custom in such things was well understood. The youths of the village used to go about all the time seeking the girls; this indeed was almost all they did. Of course, when the girls were on the watchers’ stage the boys were pretty sure to come around. Sometimes two youths came together, som

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Watchers’ Songs

Watchers’ Songs

Most of the songs that were sung on the watchers’ stage were love songs, but not all. One that little girls were fond of singing—girls that is of about twelve years of age—was as follows: This song was sung for the benefit of the boys who came to the near-by woods to hunt birds. Here is another song; but that you may understand it I shall first have to explain to you what ikupa´ means. A girl whom another girl loves as her own sister, we call her ikupa´. I think your word chum, as you explain it

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Clan Cousins’ Custom

Clan Cousins’ Custom

Let us suppose that a woman of the Tsi´stska Doxpa´ka marries a man of the Midipa´di clan. Their child will be a Tsi´stska; for we Hidatsas reckon every child to belong to the clan of his mother; and the members of the mother’s clan will be clan sisters and clan brothers to her child. Another woman of the tribe, of what clan does not matter, also marries a Midipa´di husband; and they have a child. The child of the first mother and the child of the second we reckon as makutsati, or clan cousins,

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Story of Snake-head-ornament

Story of Snake-head-ornament

A long time ago, in one of our villages at Knife River, there lived a man Mapuksao´kihec, or Snake-head-ornament. He was a great medicine man; and in his earth lodge he kept a bull snake, whom he called “father.” When Snake-head-ornament started to go to a feast he would say to the bull snake, “Come, father, let us go and get something to eat!” The snake would crawl up the man’s body, coil about his neck and thrust his head forward over the man’s crown and forehead; or he would coil about the ma

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Green Corn and Its Uses

Green Corn and Its Uses

The first corn was ready to be eaten green early in the harvest moon, when the blossoms of the prairie golden rod are all in full, bright yellow; or about the end of the first week in August. We ate much green corn, boiling the fresh ears in a pot as white people do; but every Hidatsa family also put up dried green corn for winter. This took the place with us of the canned green corn we now buy at the trader’s store. I knew when the corn ears were ripe enough for boiling from these signs: The bl

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Mapë´di (Corn Smut)

Mapë´di (Corn Smut)

Mapë´di is a black mass that grows in the husk of an ear of corn; it is what you say white men call corn smut fungus. Sometimes an ear of corn appears very plump, or somewhat swelled; and when the husk is opened, there is no corn inside, only mapë´di, or smut; or sometimes part of the ear will be found with a little grain at one end, and mapë´di at the other. These masses of mapë´di, or corn smut, that we found growing on the ear, we gathered and dried for food. There is another mapë´di that gro

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The Ripe Corn Harvest

The Ripe Corn Harvest

As the corn in the fields began to show signs of ripening, the people of Like-a-fishhook village went hunting to get meat for the husking feasts. This meat was usually dried; but if a kill was made late in the season, the meat was sometimes brought in fresh. When the corn was fully ripened, the owners of a garden went out with baskets, plucked the ears from the stalks and piled them in a heap ready for the husking. The empty stalks were left standing in the field. A small family sometimes took a

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Seed Corn

Seed Corn

I have said that for braiding corn we chose the longest and finest ears. In my father’s family we used to braid about one hundred strings, some years less, some years more, as the season had been wet or dry; for the yield of fine ears was always less in a dry year. Of these braided strings we selected the very best in the spring for seed. My mothers reckoned that we should need five braided strings of soft white, and about thirty ears of soft yellow, for seed. Of ma´ikadicakĕ, or gummy, we raise

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Threshing Corn

Threshing Corn

The threshing season was always a busy one, for all the families of the village would be threshing their corn at the same time. Corn was threshed in a booth, under the drying stage. Figure 12 The figure has been redrawn from sketches by Goodbird. The original is a stage now standing on the reservation, but with mat of willows for floor; to this Goodbird added a threshing booth as he saw used by his grandmother when he was a boy. Goodbird’s sketches are closely followed, excepting that the floor

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Varieties of Corn

Varieties of Corn

We raised nine well marked varieties of corn in our village. Following are the names of the varieties: Our Hidatsa word for corn is ko´xati; but in speaking of any variety of corn, the work ko´xati is commonly omitted. In like manner, atạ´ki means white; but if one went into a lodge and asked for “atạ´ki” it was always understood to mean soft white corn. Of the nine varieties, the atạ´ki, or soft white, was the kind most raised in our village. The ma´ïkadicakĕ, or gummy, was least raised, as alm

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Uses of the Varieties

Uses of the Varieties

I think that perhaps at first, there was but one variety of corn, atạ´ki tso´ki, or hard white; and that all other varieties have sprung from it. I know that when we plant hard white seed, ears often develop that show color in the grain. Sometimes ears are produced bearing pink grains toward the beard end of the cob; such ears we call i´puta (top) hi´tsiica (pink); that is, pink top, or light-red top. In color these ears differed in no wise from atạ´ki aku´ hi´tsiica. Hard white was very general

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Sport Ears

Sport Ears

Quite often ears of corn appear that are marked by some unusual form; and for the more marked of these forms, we had special names. Following are some of them: Na’´ta-tawo´xi. From na’´ta, grain; and tawo´xi, a name applied to youth, or the young, and conveying the idea of small. This is an ear of corn having seventeen or eighteen rows of very small kernels. Our largest ears of corn had usually but fourteen rows of kernels of normal size. In the old legends of my tribe appear many women bearing

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Planting Squashes

Planting Squashes

Squash seed was planted early in June; or the latter part of May and the first of June. In preparation for planting, we first sprouted the seed. I cut out a piece of tanned buffalo robe about two and a half feet long and eighteen inches wide, and spread it on the floor of the lodge, fur side up. I took red-grass leaves, wetted them, and spread them out flat, matted together in a thin layer on the fur. Then I opened my bag of squash seeds, and having set a bowl of water beside me, I wet the seeds

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Cooking and Uses of Squash

Cooking and Uses of Squash

The first squashes of the season that we plucked were about three inches in diameter; that is, they were gathered as soon as we thought they were fit for cooking; and that same day we picked blossoms also. There might be three or four basketfuls of squashes at this first picking. These squashes we did not dry, but ate fresh; as they were the first vegetables of the season, we were eager to eat them. We cooked fresh squashes as follows: Boiling Fresh Squash in a Pot. I took a clay pot of our nati

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Seed Squashes

Seed Squashes

Seed squashes were chosen at the first or second picking of the season. At these pickings, as we went from hill to hill plucking the four-days-old squashes, we observed what ones appeared the plumpest and finest; and these we left on the vine to be saved for seed. We never chose more than one squash in a single hill; and to mark where it lay, and even more, to protect it from frost, we were careful to pull up a weed or two, or break off a few squash leaves and lay them over the squash; and thus

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Planting Beans

Planting Beans

Bean planting followed immediately after squash planting. Beans were planted in hills the size and shape of squash hills, or about seven by fourteen inches; but if made in open ground the hills were not placed so far apart in the row. Squash hills, like corn hills, stood about four feet apart in the row, measuring from center to center; but bean hills might be placed two feet or less in the row. Beans, however, were very commonly planted not in open ground, but between our rows of corn; the hill

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Putting in the Seeds

Putting in the Seeds

To make a hill for beans, I broke up and loosened the soil with my hoe, scraping away the dry top soil; the hill I then made of the soft, slightly moist under-soil. The hill, as suggested by the measurements, was rather elongated. I took beans, three in each hand, held in thumb and first two fingers, and buried them in a side of the hill, two inches deep, by a simultaneous thrust of each hand, as I stooped over; the two groups of seeds were six inches apart. I have heard that some families plant

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Hoeing and Cultivating

Hoeing and Cultivating

These subjects I have sufficiently described, I think, when I told you how we hoed and cultivated corn....

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Threshing

Threshing

Threshing was in the fall, after the beans had ripened and the pods were dead and dried. Sometimes, when the weather had been favorable, the bean vines were quite dry and could be threshed the same day they were gathered. But if the weather was a little damp, or if, as was usually the case, the vines were still a little green, they had to be dried a day or two before they could be threshed. To prepare for this labor, I went out into the field and pulled up all the corn stalks in a space four or

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Varieties

Varieties

There were five varieties of beans in common use in my tribe, as follows: These varieties we planted, each by itself; and each kind, again, was kept separate in threshing; also, only beans of the same variety were put in one bag for storing. Black, red, white, shield-figured, spotted, each had a separate bag. Besides the foregoing varieties, there were some families who raised a variety of yellow beans. I once planted some seed of this variety, but did not find that they bred very true to color;

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Selecting Seed Beans

Selecting Seed Beans

In the spring, when I came to plant beans, I was very careful to select seed for the following points: seed should be fully ripe; seed should be of full color; seed should be plump, and of good size. If the red was not a deep red, or the black a deep black, I knew the seed was not fully ripe, and I would reject it. So also of the white, the spotted, and the shield-figured. Did I learn from white men thus to select seed? (Laughing heartily.) No, this custom comes down to us from very old times. W

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Cooking and Uses

Cooking and Uses

Of the several varieties, I like to eat black beans best. Especially I like to use black beans in making mä´dakapa. However, all the other kinds were good. [18] I have already described to you some of the dishes we made, and still make, with beans. Following are some messes I have not described: Ama´ca Di´hĕ , or Beans-Boiled . The beans were boiled in a clay pot, with a piece of buffalo fat, or some bone grease. If the beans were dried beans, they were boiled a little longer than squash is boil

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The Cache Pit

The Cache Pit

We stored our corn, beans, sunflower seed and dried squash in cache pits for the winter, much as white people keep vegetables in their cellars. Figure 25 Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird. A cache pit was shaped somewhat like a jug, with a narrow neck at the top. The width of the mouth, or entrance, was commonly about two feet; on the very largest cache pits the mouth was never, I think, more than two feet eight, or two feet nine inches. In diagram ( figure 25 ), the width of pit’s mouth at BB´ sh

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Grass for Lining

Grass for Lining

When the cache pit was all dug, it had next to be lined with grass. The grass used for this purpose, and for closing the mouth of the cache pit, was the long bluish kind that grows near springs and water courses on this reservation; it grows about three feet high. In the fall, this kind of grass becomes dry at the top, but is still green down near the roots; and we then cut it with hoes and packed it in bundles, to the village. This bluish grass was the only kind used for lining a cache pit. We

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Grass Bundles

Grass Bundles

I remember, one time, I went out with my mother to cut grass. I took a pony along to pack our loads home. I loaded the pony with four bundles of grass, two on each side, bound to the saddle. A bundle was about four feet long, and from two and a half to three feet thick, pressed tight together. One bundle made a load for a woman. Besides the four bundles loaded on my pony, my mother packed one bundle back to the village, and three or four dogs dragged each a bundle on a travois. We reckoned that

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The Grass Binding Rope

The Grass Binding Rope

Each bundle was bound with a rope of grass. In a bed of this grass as it stands by the spring or stream, there is often found dead grass from the year before, or even from two years previous, standing among the other grass stems that are still somewhat green at the roots. To make a binding rope I must use only dead grass. I did so in this manner: I stooped, took a wisp of grass in my hands, twisting it to the left and at the same gently lifting it, when all the dry stems would break off at the r

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Drying the Grass Bundles

Drying the Grass Bundles

These grass bundles we fetched home and laid on the drying stage until we were ready to use them. Just before using, we took the bundles up on the roof of the earth lodge, broke the binding ropes and spread the grass out to dry, for one day....

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The Willow Floor

The Willow Floor

The walls of the cache pit were left bare for the grass lining; but a floor was laid on the bottom. This was rather simply made by gathering dead and dry willow sticks, and laying them evenly and snugly over the bottom of the pit....

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The Grass Lining

The Grass Lining

Over this willow floor, the grass, now thoroughly dried, was spread evenly, to a depth of about four inches. Grass was then spread over the walls to a depth of three or four inches, and stayed in place with about eight willow sticks. These were placed vertically against the walls and nailed in place with wooden pins made each from the fork of a dead willow, as shown in figure 27 . The ends of the sticks should reach to the neck of the cache pit, at the place marked B , in diagram ( figure 25, pa

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Skin Bottom Covering

Skin Bottom Covering

If the cache pit was a small one, we covered the bottom with a circular piece of skin, cut to fit the pit bottom, and laid it directly on the grass matting that covered the willow floor; but if the cache pit was a large one, we fitted into the bottom the skin cover of a bull boat, with the willow frame removed....

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Storing the Cache Pit

Storing the Cache Pit

The cache pit was now ready to be stored. My mother and I—and by “my mother” I mean always one of my two mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead—fetched an old tent cover from the earth lodge, and laid it by the cache pit so that one end of the cover hung down the pit’s mouth. Upon this tent cover we emptied a big pile of shelled ripe corn, fetched in baskets from the bull boats in which it had been temporarily stored inside the lodge. We also fetched many strings of braided corn, and laid

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The Puncheon Cover

The Puncheon Cover

Upon this grass, if the pit was one of the smaller ones, we laid puncheons; and these puncheons, as I have said, rested in a trench. The puncheons, split from small logs, were laid in the trench flat side down, so that they would not rock. There were about five main planks, or puncheons, the middle one being the heaviest, the better to sustain the weight of any horse that might happen to walk over the cache pit’s mouth. On either side of these main puncheons were two shorter ones, laid to cover

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Cache Pits in Small Ankle’s Lodge

Cache Pits in Small Ankle’s Lodge

In diagram ( figure 30 ), I have marked the positions of the cache pits we had in use in my father’s family, when I was a girl. Cache A was used for hard yellow shelled corn; but the braids piled against the wall of the pit were of white corn; so also of B and C . In cache D were stored dried boiled corn and strings of dried squash. Figure 30 Sometimes in one of the cache pits outside of the lodge we put a bag of beans, or sometimes two bags. Each bag was of skin and was about as long as one’s a

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Stages in Like-a-fishhook Village

Stages in Like-a-fishhook Village

There were about seventy lodges in Like-a-fishhook village, when I was a girl. A corn drying stage stood before every lodge. That before Small Ankle’s lodge was a three-section stage, of eight posts. White Feather, or his wives, owned two of these big eight-post stages, one before each of their two lodges; for White Feather had four wives. Many Growths—a woman—had a big eight-post stage. There were a few other eight-post stages in the village, but they were small, with narrow sections and posts

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Cutting the Timbers

Cutting the Timbers

The timbers we used for building a drying stage were all of cottonwood. Being thus of a soft wood, the timbers did not last so very long when exposed to the weather; and a stage built of cottonwood timbers lasted only about three years; the fourth year, unless the stage was rebuilt, the posts rotted and the stage would fall down. Unlike the posts of a watchers’ stage, those of a drying stage were always carefully peeled of bark, as they rotted more quickly if the bark was left on. My mother’s dr

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Digging the Post Holes

Digging the Post Holes

When we were ready to begin building, the first thing we had to do was to mark the post holes. We laid the two long floor beams parallel on the ground, at such a distance apart as to enclose the space necessary for the stage. We then marked the places for the post holes, at proper distances along the inside of the two beams; there were eight of these post holes, four on a side. These post holes were dug with a long digging stick, and the dirt removed, to the depth of a woman’s arm from the shoul

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Raising the Frame

Raising the Frame

The posts were now raised and dropped into the post holes; raising was by hand. The posts were turned so that the forks lay in proper position to receive the floor beams and upper rails; a two-forked post was placed with the prong C ( figure 32 ) turned inward. A single-forked post had to have a companion post beside it, also forked, to support the railing at the top of the stage. This companion post was not so heavy, but of course was longer. It stood just beside the main post and was carefully

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The Floor

The Floor

The floor of the stage was of cottonwood planks. Cottonwood logs, nine to twelve inches in diameter, had been cut of proper length. Out of the center of each was split a plank, or board, with ax and wedge. These planks were laid to make the floor, the ends of the planks resting on the two floor beams that lay on the forks of the posts. We took care to make the floor as snug as possible. The planks were carefully fitted together, and if there was any little crooked place in a plank that left a cr

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Staying Thongs

Staying Thongs

The eight posts of the stage stood in pairs, a post on either side of the floor; and between the tops of each pair of posts a green-hide thong was bound, and left to dry. These thongs stayed the stage and made it stronger and firmer; often they were also made to bind down the upper rails to the forks of the posts....

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Ladder

Ladder

The stage stood always in front of the earth lodge with its longer side to the door. A ladder stood at the right hand nigher corner post—as one comes out of the lodge—with the foot of the ladder resting a little way from the stage. The top of the ladder leaned against the end of the floor beam on the side next the lodge. Of course if the ladder were left here with nothing to stay it, it would fall against the loose planks of the stage floor and force them out of position. To prevent this a pole

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Enlarging the Stage

Enlarging the Stage

Some years, if our family’s corn crop was very large, we extended our drying stage, making it five posts long instead of four posts long, on a side. Other families did likewise, as they had need; one family might have corn enough to require a stage five posts long, while another family needed one only four posts long, on a side. Stages, indeed, varied in length with the needs of the family, but they were all of about the same width....

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Present Stages

Present Stages

The stage that I have been describing is of the kind that was in use in my tribe when I was a young girl of twelve or thirteen years of age. At present we no longer use this, our old form, but the Arikara form instead. The Arikara stage differs in having a floor of willows, and is easier to make. It took two days to erect a stage of the old fashioned kind, such as I have been describing....

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Building, Women’s Work

Building, Women’s Work

Building the drying stage was women’s work, although the men helped raise the heavy posts and floor beams. In my father’s family, my two mothers and I built the stage; but my father also helped us, especially if there was any heavy lifting to do....

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Measurements of Stage

Measurements of Stage

I will now give you the measurements of such a stage as we used in my father’s family. Pacing it off here, on the ground, the length of the stage was, I think, about so long—thirty feet. [20] Its width was about thus—twelve feet. From the ground to the top of the stage floor was a little higher than a woman can reach with her hand, or about six feet, six inches; there were horses in the village, and the stage floor must be high enough so that the horses could not reach the corn. From the floor o

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Drying Rods

Drying Rods

Lying across the top of the stage in harvest time, with their ends resting on the upper rails, were often a number of drying rods. A drying rod was a pole averaging a little more than two inches in diameter and about thirteen feet long, its length permitting six or seven inches to project over the rail on which either end rested. These drying rods were much used in harvest time. When old women came to the stage to slice squashes, they spitted the slices, as I have described, on willow spits; and

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Other Uses of the Drying Stage

Other Uses of the Drying Stage

By far the chief use of the drying stage, was to dry our vegetables, especially our corn and sliced squashes. Firewood, collected from the Missouri river in the June rise, was often piled on and under the stage floor, to dry. The keepers of the O´kipạ ceremony used to bring out their buffalo head masks, and air them on the drying stage that stood before their lodge door....

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Hoe

Hoe

Iron hoes had come into general use when I was a girl, but there were two or three old women who used old fashioned bone hoes. I think my grandmother, Turtle, was the very last to use one of these bone hoes. I will describe the hoe she used, as I remember it. The blade was made of the shoulder bone of a buffalo, with the edge trimmed and sharpened; and the ridge of bone, that is found on the shoulder blade of every animal, was cut off and the place smoothed. The handle of the hoe was split, and

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Rakes

Rakes

We Hidatsas began our tilling season with the rake. We used two kinds, [21] both of native make; one was made of a black-tailed deer horn ( figure 5, page 14 ), the other was of wood ( figure 4, page 14 ). Of the two, we thought the horn rake the better, because it did not grow worms, as we said. Worms often appear in a garden and do much damage. It is a tradition with us that worms are afraid of horn; and we believed if we used black-tailed deer horn rakes, not many worms would be found in our

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Squash Knives

Squash Knives

Squash knives of bone were still in use when I was young. I have often seen old women using them but, as I recollect, I never saw one being made. The knife was made from the thin part of a buffalo’s shoulder bone; never, I think, from the shoulder bone of a deer, elk, or bear. The bone of a buffalo cow was best, because it was thinner. If the squash knife was too thick, the slices of squash were apt to break as they were being severed from the fruit. Bone squash knives, as I remember, were used

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East-Side Fields

East-Side Fields

Figure 36 is a map I have made of the gardens east, or better, southeast, of Like-a-fishhook village. The fields lay, as indicated on the map, upon a point of land that went out into the Missouri river. The map is only approximately correct. There were many other gardens than those represented here on the map; for I have made no attempt to indicate any but those that lay in the immediate vicinity of the field my family tilled. These, however, I remember pretty clearly, and believe my map to be,

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East Side Fences

East Side Fences

Our fields on the east-side of the village were fenced, as will be seen from the map. The fences were made thus: Posts were cut of any kind of wood two or three inches in diameter and forked at the top. These were set in holes, at distances about as we now use for corral posts, or twelve feet from post to post. Posts were sunk the length of my forearm and fingers into the ground. Holes were made with digging stick and knife, and the dirt drawn out by hand. Rails were laid in the forks of the pos

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Idikita´c’s Garden

Idikita´c’s Garden

On the map there appears a garden marked as belonging to a woman named Idikita´c. She made her garden after all the others had been fenced in. There was a road that went down to some June-berry and choke-cherry patches, in the small timber that stood beyond the gardens; it was a mere path used by villagers afoot, by women with their dogs, and sometimes by horsemen. Now, Idikita´c laid out her field so that it enclosed a small section of this road; and she built a fence around it and tried to kee

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Fields West of the Village

Fields West of the Village

The first field cleared by my father’s family on the west side of the village, is that marked A , on the plot legended with Turtle’s name, on the map ( figure 37 ), which I have had my son Goodbird draw for you of our west-side fields. A coulee bordered one end of the field; and in the rainy months the water washed out much of the good soil. Willows growing up along the edge of the coulee also gave us much trouble. We therefore extended our field to the other side of the coulee, to include the p

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West-Side Fence

West-Side Fence

A fence protected our west-side gardens also, but only on the side nearest the village, probably because the horses could be expected to come from that direction. This fence differed somewhat from those on the east side. The fence was built thus: A heavy stick was sharpened at one end and driven into the ground with an ax; it was loosened by working it from side to side with the hands, and withdrawn, leaving a hole about a foot deep. Into this hole was thrust a diamond willow, butt end downward,

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Crops, Our First Wagon

Crops, Our First Wagon

The first wagon owned in my tribe belonged to Had-many-antelopes. My father hired him for a pair of trousers to haul in the corn from our gardens, one year. Had-many-antelopes fetched in three wagon loads from my garden; the field I mean, marked with my name; and three more wagon loads from the field A , in Turtle’s garden. From the field B , in Turtle’s garden, the family fetched the corn that year, for that field we had planted all to sweet corn; not gummy corn, but corn planted to half-boil a

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Divisions Between Gardens

Divisions Between Gardens

When two-fields adjoined the dividing space, or ground that ran between them, we called maạdupatska´; it was always about four feet wide. The word really means, I think, a raised ridge of earth. We still use the word in this sense. Down by the government school house at Independence, our agent has run a road; and the earth dug out of the roadway has been piled along the side in a low ridge to get rid of it. This ridge, running along the side of the road, we call maạdupatska´. But the maạdupatska

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Fallowing, Ownership of Gardens

Fallowing, Ownership of Gardens

The first crop on new ground was always the best, though the second was nearly as good. The third year’s crop was not so good; and after that, each year, the crop grew less, until in some seasons, especially in a dry summer, hardly anything was produced. The owners then stopped cultivating the garden and let it lie for two years; the third year they again planted the garden and found it would yield a good crop as before. During the two years their garden lay fallow, the family owning it would pl

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Frost in the Gardens

Frost in the Gardens

The fields that lay on the west side of our village got frosted more easily than those on the east side. Indeed, our west-side gardens suffered a good deal from frost. The reason was that the ground along the Missouri was lower on the west side of the village; and fields that lay on lower ground, we knew, were more likely to get frosted than those on higher ground. Gardens on the higher grounds east of the village were seldom touched by frost....

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Maxi´diwiac’s Philosophy of Frost

Maxi´diwiac’s Philosophy of Frost

Fields lying on lower ground catch frost more easily than those that lie higher. On a warm day, the ground becomes warmed; but at night cool air comes up out of the ground, and we can see that where it meets the warm air above, it creates a kind of snow [hoar frost]. Also, some days the wind is high; and toward evening it dies down. The hot airs are then sucked down into the ground and cause moisture to rise up out of the ground in steam. Afterwards, if the cool air comes up out of the ground an

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Men Helping in the Field

Men Helping in the Field

Did young men work in the fields? (laughing heartily.) Certainly not! The young men should be off hunting, or on a war party; and youths not yet young men should be out guarding the horses. Their duties were elsewhere, also they spent a great deal of time dressing up to be seen of the village maidens; they should not be working in the fields! But old men, too old to go to war, went out into the fields and helped their wives. It was theirs to plant the corn while the women made the hills; and the

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Sucking the Sweet Juice

Sucking the Sweet Juice

When the first green corn was plucked, we Indian women often broke off a piece of the stalk and sucked it for the sweet juice it contained. We did this merely for a little taste of sweets in the field; we never took the green stalks home to use as food at our meals. Did old men do this, you ask? (laughing.) How could they, with their teeth all worn down? Old men could not chew such hard stuff! No, just women and children did this—sucked the green corn stalks for the juice....

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Corn as Fodder for Horses

Corn as Fodder for Horses

In the early part of the harvest season, when we plucked green corn to boil, we gathered the ears first; afterwards we gathered the green stalks from which the ears had been stripped. These stalks with the leaves on them we fed to our horses, either without the lodge, or inside, in the corral. We commonly husked our corn, as I have said, out in the fields, piling up the husks in a heap. After the corn was all in, we drove our horses to the field to eat both the standing fodder and the husks that

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Disposition of Weeds

Disposition of Weeds

Weeds that we cut down in hoeing a field, we let lie on the ground if they were young weeds and bore no seeds nor blossoms, but if the weeds had seeded, we bore them off the garden about fifteen or twenty yards from the cultivated ground and left them to rot. In olden times we Indian women let no weeds grow in our gardens. I was very particular about keeping my own garden clean all the time....

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The Spring Clean-up

The Spring Clean-up

We never bothered to burn weeds; but in the spring we always cleaned up our fields before planting. We pulled up the stubs of corn stalks and roots, and piled them with the previous year’s bean vines and sunflower stalks, in the middle of the garden and burned them; this was commonly done at the husking place, where the husks had been piled. There was not a great deal of refuse left from the corn crop, however, as the horses had eaten most of it for fodder in the previous fall; but bean vines th

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Manure

Manure

We Hidatsas did not like to have the dung of animals in our fields. The horses we turned into our gardens in the fall dropped dung; and where they did so, we found little worms and insects. We also noted that where dung fell, many kinds of weeds grew up the next year. We did not like this, and we therefore carefully cleaned off the dried dung, picking it up by hand and throwing it ten feet or more beyond the edge of the garden plot. We did likewise with the droppings of white men’s cattle, after

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Worms

Worms

Our corn, we knew, raised a good many worms. They came out in the ears; it was the corn kernels that became the worms. Wood also became worms. Leaves became worms. All these bred worms of themselves. I knew also, when I was a young woman, that flies lay eggs, that after a time the eggs move about alive; and that later these put on wings and fly away. Whether all flies do this, I did not know, but I knew that some do. Many worms appeared in our gardens in some years; in other years they were fewe

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Wild Animals

Wild Animals

Did buffaloes or deer ever raid our gardens? (laughing.) No. Buffaloes have keen scent, and they could wind an Indian a long way off. While they could smell us Indian people, or the smoke from our village, there was no danger that they would come near to eat our crops. Antelopes lived out on the plains, in the open country; they never came near our fields. Rocky Mountain sheep lived in the clay hills, in the very roughest country, where cedar trees and sage brush grow. Black-tailed deer lived fa

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About Old Tent Covers

About Old Tent Covers

I have said that we made the threshing booth under the drying stage of an old tent cover. Buffalo hides that we wanted to use for making tent covers, were taken in the spring when the buffaloes shed their hair and their skins are thin. The skin tent cover which we then made would be used all that summer; and the next winter, perhaps, we would begin to cut it up for moccasins. The following spring, again, we could take more buffalo hides and make another tent cover. Not all families renewed a ten

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How We Got Potatoes and Other Vegetables

How We Got Potatoes and Other Vegetables

The government has changed our old way of cultivating corn and our other vegetables, and has brought us seeds of many new vegetables and grains, and taught us their use. We Hidatsas and our friends, the Mandans, have also been removed from our village at Like-a-fishhook bend, and made to take our land in allotments; so that our old agriculture has in a measure fallen into disuse. I was thirty-three years old when the government first plowed up fields for us; two big fields were broken, one betwe

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The New Cultivation

The New Cultivation

The government also broke up big fields of prairie ground, and had us plant corn in them; but these fields on the prairie near the hills I do not think are so good as our old fields down in the timber lands along the Missouri. The prairie fields get dry easily and the soil is harder and more difficult to work. Then I think our old way of raising corn is better than the new way taught us by white men. Last year, 1911, our agent held an agricultural fair on this reservation; and we Indians compete

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Iron Kettles

Iron Kettles

The first pots, or kettles, of metal that we Hidatsas got were of yellow tin [brass]; the French and the Crees also traded us kettles made of red tin [copper]. As long as we could get our native clay pots, we of my father’s family did not use metal pots much, because the metal made the food taste. When I was a little girl, if any of us went to visit another family, and they gave us food cooked in an iron pot, we knew it at once because we could taste and smell the iron in the food. I have said t

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Observations by Maxi´diwiac

Observations by Maxi´diwiac

Tobacco was cultivated in my tribe only by old men. Our young men did not smoke much; a few did, but most of them used little tobacco, or almost none. They were taught that smoking would injure their lungs and make them short winded so that they would be poor runners. But when a man got to be about sixty years of age we thought it right for him to smoke as much as he liked. His war days and hunting days were over. Old men smoked quite a good deal. Young men who used tobacco could run; but in a s

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The Tobacco Garden

The Tobacco Garden

The old men of my tribe who smoked had each a tobacco garden planted not very far away from our corn fields, but never in the same plot with one. Two of these tobacco gardens were near the village, upon the top of some rising ground; they were owned by two old men, Bad Horn and Bear-looks-up. The earth lodges of these old men stood a little way out of the village, and their tobacco gardens were not far away. Bear-looks-up called my father “brother” and I often visited his lodge. Tobacco gardens,

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Planting

Planting

Tobacco seed was planted at the same time sunflower seed was planted. The owner took a hoe and made soft every foot of the tobacco garden; and with a rake he made the loosened soil level and smooth. He marked the ground with a stick into rows about eighteen inches apart. He opened a little package of seed, poured the seed into his left palm, and with his right sowed the seed very thickly in the row. He covered the newly sowed seed very lightly with soil which he raked with his hand. When rain ca

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Arrow-head-earring’s Tobacco Garden

Arrow-head-earring’s Tobacco Garden

An old man, I remember, named Arrow-head-earring, or Ma´iạ-pokcahec, had a patch of tobacco along the edge of a field on the east side of the village. He was a very old man. He used a big buffalo rib, sharpened on the edge, to work the soil and cultivate his tobacco. He caught the rib in his hands by both ends with the edge downward; and stooping over, he scraped the soil toward him, now and then raising the rib up and loosening the earth with the point at one end—poking up the soil, so to speak

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Small Ankle’s Cultivation

Small Ankle’s Cultivation

My father always attended to the planting of his tobacco garden. When the seed sprouted he thinned out the plants, weeded the ground and hilled up the tobacco plants later with his own hands. Tobacco plants often came up wild from seed dropped by the cultivated plants. These wild plants seemed just as good as the cultivated ones. There seemed little preference between them....

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Harvesting the Blossoms

Harvesting the Blossoms

Tobacco plants began to blossom about the middle of June; and picking then began. Tobacco was gathered in two harvests. The first harvest was of these blossoms, which we reckoned the best part of the plant for smoking. Old men were fond of smoking them. Blossoms were picked regularly every fourth day after the season set in. If we neglected to pick them until the fifth day, the blossoms would begin to seed. This picking of the blossoms my father often did, but as he was old, and the work was slo

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Harvesting the Plants

Harvesting the Plants

About harvest time, just before frost came, the rest of the plants were gathered—the stems and leaves, I mean, left after the harvesting of the blossoms. My father attended to this. He took no basket, but fetched the plants in his arms. He dried the plants in the lodge near the place where the cache pit lay. For this he took sticks, about fifteen inches long, and thrust them over the beam between two of the exterior supporting posts, so that the sticks pointed a little upwards. On each of these

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Selling to the Sioux

Selling to the Sioux

We used to sell a good deal of tobacco to the Sioux. They called it Pana´nitachani, or Ree’s tobacco. A bunch six or seven inches in diameter, bound together, we sold for one tanned hide....

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Size of Tobacco Garden

Size of Tobacco Garden

My father’s tobacco garden, when I was a little girl, was somewhat larger than this room; and that, as you measure it, is twenty-one by eighteen feet. I have seen other tobacco gardens planted by old men that measured somewhat larger; but this was about the average size....

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Customs

Customs

If any one went into a tobacco garden and took tobacco without notifying the owner, we said that his hair would fall out; and if any one in the village began to lose his hair, and it kept coming out when he brushed it, we would laugh and say, “Hey, hey, you man! You have been stealing tobacco!” What? You say you got this tobacco out of Wolf Chief’s garden without asking? (laughing heartily.) Then be sure your hair will fall out when you comb it. Just watch, and see if it doesn’t! I have said tha

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Accessories to the Tobacco Garden

Accessories to the Tobacco Garden

When I was a little girl every tobacco garden had a willow fence around it. I remember very well seeing such fences built. Post holes were made by driving a sharp stake into the ground with an ax; the stake was withdrawn, and into the hole left by it, a diamond willow was thrust for a post; on this willow were left all the upper branches with the leaves. A rail was run from the post to its next neighbor, at the height of a woman’s shoulder, and stayed in place by bending over the leafy top of th

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STUDIES IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

STUDIES IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

1. Herbert G. Lampson , A Study on the Spread of Tuberculosis in Families. 1913. $0.50. 2. Julius V. Hofman , The Importance of Seed Characteristics in the Natural Reproduction of Coniferous Forests. In press....

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STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

1. Esther L. Swenson , An Inquiry into the Composition and Structure of Ludus Coventriae ; Hardin Craig , Note on the Home of Ludus Coventriae . 1914. $0.50. 2. Elmer Edgar Stoll , Othello : An Historical and Comparative Study. 1915. $0.50. 3. Colbert Searles , Les Sentiments de l’Académie Française sur le Cid : Edition of the Text, with an Introduction. 1916. $1.00. 4. Paul Edward Kretzmann , The Liturgical Element in the Earliest Forms of the Medieval Drama. 1916. $1.00. 5. Arthur Jerrold Tiej

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CURRENT PROBLEMS

CURRENT PROBLEMS

1. William Anderson , The Work of Public Service Commissions. 1913. $0.15. 2. Benjamin F. Pittenger , Rural Teachers’ Training Departments in Minnesota High Schools. 1914. $0.15. 3. Gerhard A. Gesell , Minnesota Public Utility Rates. 1914. $0.25. 4. L. D. H. Weld , Social and Economic Survey of a Community in the Red River Valley. 1915. $0.25. 5. Gustav P. Warber , Social and Economic Survey of a Community in Northeastern Minnesota. 1915. $0.25. 6. Joseph B. Pike , Bulletin for Teachers of Latin

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