The University of Minnesota

STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES NUMBER 9

AGRICULTURE OF THE HIDATSA INDIANS
AN INDIAN INTERPRETATION

BY
GILBERT LIVINGSTONE WILSON, Ph.D.

MINNEAPOLIS
Bulletin of the University of Minnesota
November 1917

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(Continued inside back cover)

Maxi´diwiac, or Buffalobird-woman

Photographed in 1910

The University of Minnesota

STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES NUMBER 9

AGRICULTURE OF THE HIDATSA INDIANS
AN INDIAN INTERPRETATION

BY
GILBERT LIVINGSTONE WILSON, Ph.D.

MINNEAPOLIS
Bulletin of the University of Minnesota
November 1917

Copyright 1917
by the
University of Minnesota

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 University of Minnesota. That the study has unexpectedly revealed certain varieties of maize of apparently great value to agriculture in the semi-arid areas west of Minnesota is a cause of satisfaction to both Mr. Wilson and myself. This fact again emphasizes the wisdom of research work in our universities. When, now and then, such practical dollar-and-cent results follow such purely scientific researches, the wonder is that university research work is not generously endowed by businesses which largely profit by these researches.

It is the intention of those interested in the anthropological work of the University of Minnesota that occasional publications will be issued by the University on anthropological subjects, although at present there is no justification for issuing a consecutive series. The present study is the second one in the anthropological field published by the University. The earlier one is number 6 in the Studies in the Social Sciences, issued March, 1916.

Albert Ernest Jenks
Professor of Anthropology

CONTENTS

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.

AGRICULTURE OF THE HIDATSA INDIANS
AN INDIAN INTERPRETATION

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´hidic promised that the villagers should become as numerous as the willows of the Missouri river.

Tradition says that the tribe came from Miniwakan, or Devils Lake, in what is now North Dakota; and that migrating west, they met the Mandans at the mouth of the Heart River. The two tribes formed an alliance and attempted to live together as one people. Quarrels between their young men caused the tribes to separate, but the Mandans loyally aided their friends to build new villages a few miles from their own. How long the two tribes dwelt at the mouth of the Heart is not known. They were found there with the Arikaras about 1765. In 1804 Lewis and Clark found the Hidatsas in three villages at the mouth of the Knife River, and the Mandans in two villages a few miles lower down on the Missouri.

In 1832 the artist Catlin visited the two tribes, remaining with them several months. A year later Maximilian of Wied visited them with the artist Bodmer. Copies of Bodmer’s sketches, in beautiful lithograph, are found in the library of the Minnesota Historical Society. Catlin’s sketches, also in lithograph, are in the Minneapolis Public Library.

Smallpox nearly exterminated the Mandans in 1837-8, not more than 150 persons surviving. The same epidemic reduced the Hidatsas to about 500 persons. The remnants of the two tribes united and in 1845 removed up the Missouri and built a village at Like-a-fishhook bend close to the trading post of Fort Berthold. They were joined by the Arikaras in 1862. Neighboring lands were set apart as a reservation for them; and there the three tribes, now settled on allotments, still dwell.

The Mandans and Hidatsas have much intermarried. By custom children speak usually the language of their mother, but understand perfectly the dialect of either tribe.

In 1877 Washington Matthews, for several years government physician to the Fort Berthold Reservation Indians, published a short description of Hidatsa-Mandan culture and a grammar and vocabulary of the Hidatsa language.[1] More extensive notes intended by him for publication were destroyed by fire.

In 1902 the writer was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian church of Mandan, North Dakota. In ill health, he was advised by his physician to purchase pony and gun and seek the open; but spade and pick plied among the old Indian sites in the vicinity proved more interesting. A considerable collection of archaeological objects was accumulated, a part of which now rests in the shelves of the Minnesota Historical Society; the rest will shortly be placed in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History.

In 1906 the writer and his brother, Frederick N. Wilson, an artist, and E. R. Steinbrueck drove by wagon from Mandan to Independence, Fort Berthold reservation. The trip was made to obtain sketches for illustrating a volume of stories, since published.[2] At Independence the party made the acquaintance of Edward Goodbird, his mother Maxi´diwiac, and the latter’s brother Wolf Chief. A friendship was thus begun which has been of the greatest value to the writer of this paper.

A year later Mr. George G. Heye sent the writer to Fort Berthold reservation to collect objects of Mandan-Hidatsa culture. Among those that were obtained was a rare old medicine shrine. Description of this shrine and Wolf Chief’s story of its origin have been published.[3]

In 1908 the writer and his brother, both now resident in Minneapolis, were sent by Dr. Clark Wissler, curator of anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, to begin cultural studies among the Hidatsas. This work, generously supported by the Museum, has been continued by the writer each succeeding summer. His reports, preparations to edit which are now being made, will appear in the Museum’s publications.

In February, 1910, the writer was admitted as a student in the Graduate School, University of Minnesota, majoring in Anthropology. At suggestion of his adviser, Dr. Albert E. Jenks, and with permission of Dr. Wissler, he chose for his thesis subject, Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation. It was the adviser’s opinion that such a study held promise of more than usual interest. Most of the tribes in the eastern area of what is now the United States practiced agriculture. It is well known that maize, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes, beans, sweet potatoes, cotton, tobacco, and other familiar plants were cultivated by Indians centuries before Columbus. Early white settlers learned the value of the new food plants, but have left us meager accounts of the native methods of tillage; and the Indians, driven from the fields of their fathers, became roving hunters; or adopting iron tools, forgot their primitive implements and methods. The Hidatsas and Mandans, shut in their stockaded villages on the Missouri by the hostile Sioux, were not able to abandon their fields if they would. Living quite out of the main lines of railroad traffic, they remained isolated and with culture almost unchanged until about 1885, when their village at Fort Berthold was broken up. It seemed probable that a carefully prepared account of Hidatsa agriculture might very nearly describe the agriculture practiced by our northern tribes in pre-Columbian days. It was hoped that this thesis might be such an account.

But the writer is a student of anthropology; and his interest in the preparation of his thesis could not be that of an agriculturist. The question arose at the beginning of his labors, Shall the materials of this thesis be presented as a study merely in primitive agriculture, or as a phase of material culture interpreting something of the inner life, of the soul, of an Indian? It is the latter aim that the writer endeavors to accomplish.

But again came up a question, By what plan may this best be done? The more usual way would be to collect exhaustively facts from available informants; sift from them those facts that are typical and representative; and present these, properly grouped, with the collector’s interpretation of them. But for his purpose and aim, it has seemed to the writer that the type choice should be human; that is, instead of seeking typical facts from multiple sources, he should rather seek a typical informant, a representative agriculturist—presumably a woman—of the Indian group to be studied, and let the informant interpret her agricultural experiences in her own way. We might thus expect to learn how much one Indian woman knew of agriculture; what she did as an agriculturist and what were her motives for doing; and what proportion of her thought and labor were given to her fields.

After consulting both Indians and whites resident on the reservation, the writer chose for typical or representative informant, his interpreter’s mother, Maxi´diwiac.

The writer’s summer visit of 1912 to Fort Berthold Reservation was planned to obtain material for his thesis. His brother again accompanied him, and for the expenses of the trip a grant of $500 was made by Curator Wissler. This trip the writer will remember as one of the pleasantest experiences of his life. The generous interest of Dr. Jenks and Dr. Wissler in his plans was equaled by the faithful coöperation of interpreter and informant. The writer and his brother arrived at the reservation in the beginning of corn harvest. As already stated, Maxi´diwiac was the principal informant, and her account was taken down almost literally as translated by Goodbird. Models of tools, drying stage, and other objects pertaining to agriculture were made and photographed, and sketched. Before the harvest closed notes were obtained which furnished the material for the greater part of this thesis.

In the summers of 1913, 1914, and 1915, additional matter was recovered. Previously written notes were read to Maxi´diwiac and corrections made.

In addition to the museum’s annual grant of $250, Dean A. F. Woods, Department of Agriculture, University of Minnesota, in 1914 contributed $60 for photographing, and collecting specimens of Hidatsa corn; and Mr. M. L. Wilson of the Agricultural Experiment Station, Bozeman, Montana, obtained for the writer a grant of $50 for like purposes.

A few words should now be said of informant and interpreter. Maxi´diwiac, or Buffalobird-woman, is a daughter of Small Ankle, a leader of the Hidatsas in the trying time of the tribe’s removal to what is now Fort Berthold reservation. She was born on one of the villages at Knife River two years after the “smallpox year,” or about 1839. She is a conservative and sighs for the good old times, yet is aware that the younger generation of Indians must adopt civilized ways. Ignorant of English, she has a quick intelligence and a memory that is marvelous. To her patience and loyal interest is chiefly due whatever of value is in this thesis. In the sweltering heat of an August day she has continued dictation for nine hours, lying down but never flagging in her account, when too weary to sit longer in a chair. Goodbird’s testimony that his mother “knows more about old ways of raising corn and squashes than any one else on this reservation,” is not without probability. Until recently, a small part of Goodbird’s plowed field was each year reserved for her, that she might plant corn and beans and squashes, cultivating them in old fashioned way, by hoe. Such corn, of her own planting and selection, has taken first prize at an agricultural fair, held recently by the reservation authorities.

Edward Goodbird, or Tsaka´kasạkic, the writer’s interpreter, is a son of Maxi´diwiac, born about November, 1869. Goodbird was one of the first of the reservation children to be sent to the mission school; and he is now native pastor of the Congregational chapel at Independence. He speaks the Hidatsa, Mandan, Dakota, and English languages. Goodbird is a natural student; and he has the rarer gift of being an artist. His sketches—and they are many—are crude; but they are drawn in true perspective and do not lack spirit. Goodbird’s life, dictated by himself, has been recently published.[4]

Indians have the gentle custom of adopting very dear friends by relationship terms. By such adoption Goodbird is the writer’s brother; Maxi´diwiac is his mother.

For his part in the account of the Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, the writer claims no credit beyond arranging the material and putting the interpreter’s Indian-English translations into proper idiom. Bits of Indian philosophy and shrewd or humorous observations found in the narrative are not the writer’s, but the informant’s, and are as they fell from her lips. The writer has sincerely endeavored to add to the narrative essentially nothing of his own.

Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians is not, then, an account merely of Indian agriculture. It is an Indian woman’s interpretation of economics; the thoughts she gave to her fields; the philosophy of her labors. May the Indian woman’s story of her toil be a plea for our better appreciation of her race.

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. “Beneath the waves,” he said, “I heard a faint drumming, as of drums in a big dance.” This story is true; for Sioux, who now live at Devils Lake, have also heard this drumming.

Those of my people who escaped from the lake built villages near by. These were of earth lodges, such as my tribe built until very recent years; two such earth lodges are still standing on this reservation.

The site where an earth lodge has stood is marked by an earthen ring, rising about what was once the hard trampled floor. There are many such earthen rings on the shores of Devils Lake, showing that, as tradition says, our villages stood there. There were three of these villages, my father said, who several times visited the sites.

Near their villages, the people made gardens; and in these they planted ground beans and wild potatoes, from seed brought with them from their home under the water. These vegetables we do not cultivate now; but we do gather them in the fall, in the woods along the Missouri where they grow wild. They are good eating.

These gardens by Devils Lake I think must have been rather small. I know that in later times, whenever my tribe removed up the Missouri to build a new village, our fields, the first year, were quite small; for clearing the wooded bottom land was hard work. A family usually added to their clearing each year, until their garden was as large as they cared to cultivate.

As yet, my people knew nothing of corn or squashes. One day a war party, I think of ten men, wandered west to the Missouri River. They saw on the other side a village of earth lodges like their own. It was a village of the Mandans. The villagers saw the Hidatsas, but like them, feared to cross over, lest the strangers prove to be enemies.

It was autumn, and the Missouri River was running low so that an arrow could be shot from shore to shore. The Mandans parched some ears of ripe corn with the grain on the cob; they broke the ears in pieces, thrust the pieces on the points of arrows, and shot them across the river. “Eat!” they said, whether by voice or signs, I do not know. The word for “eat” is the same in the Hidatsa and Mandan languages.

The warriors ate of the parched corn, and liked it. They returned to their village and said, “We have found a people living by the Missouri River who have a strange kind of grain, which we ate and found good!” The tribe was not much interested and made no effort to seek the Mandans, fearing, besides, that they might not be friendly.

However, a few years after, a war party of the Hidatsas crossed the Missouri and visited the Mandans at their village near Bird Beak Hill. The Mandan chief took an ear of yellow corn, broke it in two, and gave half to the Hidatsas. This half-ear the Hidatsas took home, for seed; and soon every family was planting yellow corn.

I think that seed of other varieties of corn, and of beans, squashes, and sunflowers, were gotten of the Mandans[5] afterwards; but there is no story telling of this, that I know.

I do not know when my people stopped planting ground beans and wild potatoes; but ground beans are hard to dig, and the people, anyway, liked the new kind of beans better.

Whether the ground beans and wild potatoes of the Missouri bottoms are descended from the seed planted by the villagers at Devils Lake, I do not know.

My tribe, as our old men tell us, after they got corn, abandoned their villages at Devils Lake, and joined the Mandans near the mouth of the Heart River. The Mandans helped them build new villages here, near their own. I think this was hundreds of years ago.

Firewood growing scarce, the two tribes removed up the Missouri to the mouth of the Knife River, where they built the Five Villages, as they called them. Smallpox was brought to my people here, by traders. In a single year, more than half my tribe died, and of the Mandans, even more.

Those who survived removed up the Missouri and built a village at Like-a-fishhook bend, where they lived together, Hidatsas and Mandans, as one tribe. This village we Hidatsas called Mu´a-idu´skupe-hi´cec, or Like-a-fishhook village, after the bend on which it stood; but white men called it Fort Berthold, from a trading post that was there.

We lived in Like-a-fishhook village about forty years, or until 1885, when the government began to place families on allotments.

The agriculture of the Hidatsas, as I now describe it, I saw practiced in the gardens of Like-a-fishhook village, in my girlhood, before my tribe owned plows.

An earth lodge

Note ladder at right of lodge entrance. Drying stage before entrance lacks the usual railings. (Photograph by courtesy of Rev. George Curtis.)

Like-a-fishhook village in process of being dismantled (about 1885)

Drying stage in foreground is floored Arikara fashion with a mat of willows. The Arikaras at this time had joined the Hidatsa-Mandans. (Photograph by courtesy of Rev. George Curtis.)

CHAPTER II
BEGINNING A GARDEN

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 support them. Turtle and her daughter were then living in Otter’s lodge; and Otter’s daughters, as Indian custom bade, called Corn Sucker their elder sister.

It was a custom of the Hidatsas, that if the eldest sister of a household married, her younger sisters were also given to her husband, as they came of marriageable age. Left without male kin by the smallpox, my grandmother’s family was hard put to it to get meat; and Turtle gladly gave her daughter to my father, Small Ankle, whom she knew to be a good hunter. Otter’s daughters, reckoned as Corn Sucker’s sisters, were given to Small Ankle as they grew up; the eldest, Want-to-be-a-woman, was my mother.

When I was four years old, my tribe and the Mandans came to Like-a-fishhook bend. They came in the spring and camped in tepees, or skin tents. By Butterfly’s winter count, I know they began building earth lodges the next winter. I was too young to remember much of this.

Two years after we came to Like-a-fishhook bend, smallpox again visited my tribe; and my mother, Want-to-be-a-woman, and Corn Sucker, died of it. Red Blossom and Strikes-many-women survived, whom I now called my mothers. Otter and old Turtle lived with us; I was taught to call them my grandmothers.

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 field drawn under Buffalobird-woman’s direction. The heavy dots represent corn hills; the dashes, the clearing and breaking of ground between, done after hills were planted.

In the lower left hand corner is the ground that was in dispute.

My mothers and my two grandmothers worked at clearing our family’s garden. It lay east of the village at a place where many other families were clearing fields.

I was too small to note very much at first. But I remember that my father set boundary marks—whether wooden stakes or little mounds of earth or stones, I do not now remember—at the corners of the field we claimed. My mothers and my two grandmothers began at one end of this field and worked forward. All had heavy iron hoes, except Turtle, who used an old fashioned wooden digging stick.

With their hoes, my mothers cut the long grass that covered much of the field, and bore it off the line, to be burned. With the same implements, they next dug and softened the soil in places for the corn hills, which were laid off in rows. These hills they planted. Then all summer they worked with their hoes, clearing and breaking the ground between the hills.

Trees and bushes I know must have been cut off with iron axes; but I remember little of this, because I was only four years old when the clearing was begun.

I have heard that in very old times, when clearing a new field, my people first dug the corn hills with digging sticks; and afterwards, like my mothers, worked between the hills, with bone hoes. My father told me this.

Whether stone axes were used in old times to cut the trees and undergrowths, I do not know. I think fields were never then laid out on ground that had large trees on it.

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 while my mothers were busy clearing and digging up the other end of their field, their two neighbors invaded this marked-off corner; Lone Woman had even dug up a small part before she was discovered.

However, when they were shown the mark my father had placed, the two women yielded and accepted payment for any rights they might have.

It was our Indian rule to keep our fields very sacred. We did not like to quarrel about our garden lands. One’s title to a field once set up, no one ever thought of disputing it; for if one were selfish and quarrelsome, and tried to seize land belonging to another, we thought some evil would come upon him, as that some one of his family would die. There is a story of a black bear who got into a pit that was not his own, and had his mind taken away from him for doing so!

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 ([figure 1]); and circling around this from day to day, she gradually enlarged the dug-up space. The point of her digging stick she forced into the soft earth to a depth equal to the length of my hand, and pried up the soil. The clods she struck smartly with her digging stick, sometimes with one end, sometimes with the other. Roots of coarse grass, weeds, small brush and the like, she took in her hand and shook, or struck them against the ground, to knock off the loose earth clinging to them; she then cast them into a little pile to dry.

In this way she accumulated little piles, scattered rather irregularly over the dug-up ground, averaging, perhaps, four feet, one from the other. In a few days these little piles had dried; and Turtle gathered them up into a heap, about four feet high, and burned them, sometimes within the cleared ground, sometimes a little way outside.

In the corner that had been in dispute, and in other parts of the field, my grandmother worked all summer. I do not remember how big our garden was at the end of her summer’s work, nor how many piles of roots she burned; but I remember distinctly how she put the roots of weeds and grass and brush into little piles to dry, which she then gathered into heaps and burned. She did not attempt to burn over the whole ground, only the heaps.

Afterwards, we increased our garden from year to year until it was as large as we needed. I remember seeing my grandmother digging along the edges of the garden with her digging stick, to enlarge the field and make the edges even and straight.

I remember also, that as Turtle dug up a little space, she would wait until the next season to plant it. Thus, additional ground dug up in the summer or fall would be planted by her the next spring.

There were two or three elm trees in the garden; these my grandmother left standing.

Fig. 2

Figure 2. Drawn from specimen in author’s collection. Length of specimen, 37½ inches.

Figure 3.

Figure 3. Drawn from model made by Buffalobird-woman, duplicating that used by her grandmother. Specimen is of full size. Length of wooden handle, 35 inches; length of bone blade, 8½ inches. The blade is made of the shoulder bone of an ox.

It must not be supposed that upon Turtle fell all the work of clearing land to enlarge our garden; but she liked to have me with her when she worked, and I remember best what I saw her do. As I was a little girl then, I have forgotten much that she did; but this that I have told, I remember distinctly.

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 bone hoes when I was a little girl; but Turtle, I think, was the very last one in the tribe who actually worked in her garden with one.

This hoe my grandmother kept in the lodge, under her bed; and when any of the children of the household tried to get it out to look at it, she would cry, “Let that hoe alone; you will break it!”

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 cut down big trees, a rather open place was usually chosen.

A family, then, having chosen a place for a field, cleared off the ground as much as they could, cutting down small trees and bushes in such way that the trees fell all in one direction. Some of the timber that was fit might be taken home for firewood; the rest was let lie to dry until spring, when it was fired. The object of felling the trees in one direction was to make them cover the ground as much as possible, since firing them softened the soil and left it loose and mellow for planting. We sought always to burn over all the ground, if we could.

Before firing, the family carefully raked off the dry grass and leaves from the edge of the field, and cut down any brush wood. This was done that the fire might not spread to the surrounding timber, nor out on the prairie. Prairie fires and forest fires are even yet not unknown on our reservation.

Planting season having come, the women of the household planted the field in corn. The hills were in rows, and about four feet or a little less apart. They were rather irregularly placed the first year. It was easy to make a hill in the ashes where a brush heap had been fired, or in soil that was free of roots and stumps; but there were many stumps in the field, left over from the previous summer’s clearing. If the planter found a stump stood where a hill should be, she placed the hill on this side the stump or beyond it, no matter how close this brought the hill to the next in the row. Thus, the corn hills did not stand at even distances in the row the first year; but the rows were always kept even and straight.

While the corn was coming up, the women worked at clearing out the roots and smaller stumps between the hills; but a stump of any considerable size was left to rot, especially if it stood midway between two corn hills, where it did not interfere with their cultivation.

My mothers and I used to labor in a similar way to enlarge our fields. With our iron hoes we made hills along the edge of the field and planted corn; then, as we had opportunity, we worked with our hoes between the corn hills to loosen up the soil.

Figure 4

Drawn from specimen made by Yellow Hair. Length of specimen, following curvature of tines, 36½ inches.

Figure 5

Drawn from specimen made by Buffalobird-woman. Length of wooden handle, 42 inches; spread of tines of antler, 15½ inches.

Although our tribe now had iron axes and hoes from the traders, they still used their native made rakes. These were of wood ([figure 4]), or of the antler of a black-tailed deer ([figure 5]). It was with such rakes that the edges of a newly opened field were cleaned of leaves for the firing of the brush, in the spring.

In the field with a horn rake

Hoeing squashes with a bone hoe

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.

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 the season.

We chose a place down in the bottoms, overgrown with willows; and with our axes we cut the willows close to the ground, letting them lie as they fell.

I do not know how many days we worked; but we stopped when we had cleared a field of about seventy-five by one hundred yards, perhaps. In our east, or yellow corn field, we counted nine rows of corn to one na´xu; and I remember that when we came to plant our new field, it had nine na´xu.

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 places the ground was quite bare of willows; but we collected dry grass and weeds and dead willows, and strewed them over these bare places, so that the fire would run over the whole area of the field.

It took us about four days to burn over the field.

It was well known in my tribe that burning over new ground left the soil soft and easy to work, and for this reason we thought it a wise thing to do.

CHAPTER III
SUNFLOWERS

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 fields in ways a little different; of them, also, I can not speak. This that I now tell is as I saw my mothers do, or did myself, when I was young. My mothers were industrious women, and our family had always good crops; and I will tell now how the women of my father’s family cared for their fields, as I saw them, and helped them.

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 were planted together, pressed into the loose soil by a single motion, with thumb and first two fingers. The hill was heaped up and patted firm with the palm in the same way as we did for corn.

Usually we planted sunflowers only around the edges of a field. The hills were placed eight or nine paces apart; for we never sowed sunflowers thickly. We thought a field surrounded thus by a sparse-sown row of sunflowers, had a handsome appearance.

Sometimes all three seeds sprouted and came up together; sometimes only two sprouted; sometimes one.

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.

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 called the seed from these big heads mapi´-i’ti´a from mapi´, sunflower, or sunflower seed, and i’ti´a, big.

Besides these larger heads, there were other and smaller heads on the stalk; and wild sunflowers bearing similar small heads grew in many places along the Missouri, and were sure to be found springing up in abandoned gardens. These smaller heads of the cultivated, and the heads of the wild, plants, were never more than five inches across; and these and their seed we called mapi´-na´ka, sunflower’s child or baby sunflower.

Our sunflowers were ready for harvesting when the little petals that covered the seeds fell off, exposing the ripe seeds beneath. Also, the back of the head turned yellow; earlier in the season it would be green.

To harvest the larger heads, I put a basket on my back, and knife in hand, passed from plant to plant, cutting off each large head, close to the stem; the severed heads I tossed into my basket. These heads I did not let dry on the stalk, as birds would devour the seeds.

My basket filled, I returned to the lodge, climbed the ladder to the roof, and spread the sunflower heads upon the flat part of the roof around the smoke hole, to dry. The heads were laid face downward, with the backs to the sun. When I was a girl, only three or four earth lodges in the village had peaked roofs; and these lodges were rather small. All the larger and better lodges, those of what we deemed wealthier families, were built with the top of the roof flat, like a floor. A flat roof was useful to dry things on; and when the weather was fair, the men often sat there and gossiped.

The sunflower heads were dried face downward, that the sun falling on the back of the head might dry and shrink the fiber, thus loosening the seeds. The heads were laid flat on the bare roof, without skins or other protection beneath. If a storm threatened, the unthreshed heads were gathered up and borne into the lodge; but they were left on the roof overnight, if the weather was fair.

When the heads had dried about four days, the seeds were threshed out; and I would fetch in from the garden another supply of heads to dry and thresh.

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.

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 under these smaller, or baby sunflower heads, and beating them smartly with a stick, threshed the seeds into the basket. It took me about half a day to thresh a basket half full. The seeds I took home to dry, before sacking them.

The seeds from the baby sunflowers of both wild and cultivated plants were sacked together. The seeds of the large heads were sacked separately; and in the spring, when we came to plant, our seed was always taken from the sack containing the harvest of the larger heads.

In my father’s family, we usually stored away two, sometimes three sacks of dried sunflower seed for winter use. Sacks were made of skins, perhaps fourteen inches high and eight inches in diameter, on an average.

Sunflower harvest came after we had threshed our corn; and corn threshing was in the first part of October.

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 sunflower seed, by pounding them in a corn mortar; but meal made from seed that had been frosted, seemed more oily than that from seed gathered before frost fell. The freezing of the seeds seemed to bring the oil out of the crushed kernels.

This was well known to us. The large heads, left on the roof over night, were sometimes caught by the frost; and meal made from their seed was more oily than that from unfrosted seed. Sometimes we took the threshed seed out of doors and let it get frosted, so as to bring out this oiliness. Frosting the seeds did not kill them.

The oiliness brought out by the frosting was more apparent in the seeds of baby sunflowers than in seeds of the larger heads. Seeds of the latter seemed never to have as much oil in them as seeds of the baby sunflowers.

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-handfuls of the seeds and as they parched, I stirred them with a little stick, to keep them from burning. Now and then I took out a seed and bit it; if the kernel was soft and gummy, I knew the parching was not done; but when it bit dry and crisp, I knew the seeds were cooked and I dipped them out with a horn spoon into a wooden bowl.

Again I threw into the pot two or three double-handfuls of seed to parch; and so, until I had enough.

As the pot grew quite hot I was careful not to touch it with my hands. The parching done, I lifted the pot out, first throwing over it a piece of old tent cover to protect my two hands.

Parching the seeds caused them to crack open somewhat.

The parched seeds were pounded in the corn mortar to make meal. Pounding sunflower seeds took longer, and was harder work, than pounding corn.

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 larger quantity of beans in this dish was apt to make gas on one’s stomach.

When we dried squash in the fall we strung the slices upon strings of twisted grass, each seven Indian fathoms long; an Indian fathom is the distance between a woman’s two hands outstretched on either side. From one of these seven-fathom strings I cut a piece as long as from my elbow to the tip of my thumb; the two ends of the severed piece I tied together, making a ring; and this I dropped into the pot with the beans.

When the squash slices were well cooked I lifted them out of the pot by the grass string into a wooden bowl. With a horn spoon I chopped and mashed the cooked squash slices into a mass, which I now returned to the pot with the beans. The grass string I threw away.

Figure 6

Drawn from specimens in author’s collection.

To the mess I now added four or five double-handfuls of mixed meal, of pounded parched sunflower seed and pounded parched corn. The whole was boiled for a few minutes more, and was ready for serving.

I have already told how we parched sunflower seed; and that I used two or three double-handfuls of seed to a parching. I used two parchings of sunflower seed for one mess of four-vegetables-mixed. I also used two parchings of corn; but I put more corn into the pot at a parching than I did of sunflower seed.

Pounding the parched corn and sunflower seed reduced their bulk so that the four parchings, two of sunflower seed and two of corn, made but four or five double-handfuls of the mixed meal.

Four-vegetables-mixed was eaten freshly cooked; and the mixed corn-and-sunflower meal was made fresh for it each time. A little alkali salt might be added for seasoning, but even this was not usual. No other seasoning was used. Meat was not boiled with the mess, as the sunflower seed gave sufficient oil to furnish fat.

Four-vegetables-mixed was a winter food; and the squash used in its making was dried, sliced squash, never green, fresh squash.

The clay pot used for boiling this and other dishes was about the size of an iron dinner pot, or even larger. For a large family, the pot might be as much as thirteen or fourteen inches high. I have described that in use in my father’s family.

When a mess of four-vegetables-mixed was cooked, I did not remove the pot from the coals, but dipped out the vegetables with a mountain-sheep horn spoon, into wooden bowls ([figure 6].)

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 enclosed in the two palms and gently shook it. The shaking brought out the oil of the seeds, cementing the particles of the meal and making the lump firm. I have said that frosted seeds gave out more oil than unfrosted; and that baby sunflower seeds gave out more oil than seeds from the big heads.

In olden times every warrior carried a bag of soft skin at his left side, supported by a thong over his right shoulder; in this bag he kept needles, sinews, awl, soft tanned skin for making patches for moccasins, gun caps, and the like. The warrior’s powder horn hung on the outside of this bag.

In the bottom of this soft-skin bag the warrior commonly carried one of these sunflower-seed balls, wrapped in a piece of buffalo-heart skin. When worn with fatigue or overcome with sleep and weariness, the warrior took out his sunflower-seed ball, and nibbled at it to refresh himself. It was amazing what effect nibbling at the sunflower-seed ball had. If the warrior was weary, he began to feel fresh again; if sleepy, he grew wakeful.

Sometimes the warrior kept his sunflower-seed ball in his flint case that hung always at his belt over his right hip.

It was quite a general custom in my tribe for a warrior or hunter to carry one of these sunflower-seed balls.

We called the sunflower-seed ball mapi´, the same name as for sunflower.

Sunflower meal, parched and pounded as described, was often mixed with corn balls, to which it gave an agreeable smell, as well as a pleasant taste.

CHAPTER IV
CORN

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 fire wood; and when they saw that the wild gooseberry bushes were almost in full leaf, they said, “It is time for you to begin planting corn!”

Corn was planted each year in the same hills.

Around each of the old and dead hills I loosened the soil with my hoe, first pulling up the old, dead roots of the previous year’s plants; these dead roots, as they collected, were raked off with other refuse to one end of the field outside of the cultivated ground, to be burned.

This pulling up of the dead roots and working around the old hill with the hoe, left the soil soft and loose for the space of about eighteen inches in diameter; and in this soft soil I planted the corn in this manner:

I stooped over, and with fingers of both hands I raked away the loose soil for a bed for the seed; and with my fingers I even stirred the soil around with a circular motion to make the bed perfectly level so that the seeds would all lie at the same depth.

A small vessel, usually a wooden bowl, at my feet held the seed corn. With my right hand I took a small handful of the corn, quickly transferring half of it to my left hand; still stooping over, and plying both hands at the same time, I pressed the grains a half inch into the soil with my thumbs, planting two grains at a time, one with each hand.

Figure 7

I planted about six to eight grains in a hill[7] ([figure 7]). Then with my hands I raked the earth over the planted grains until the seed lay about the length of my fingers under the soil. Finally I patted the hill firm with my palms.

The space within the hill in which the seed kernels were planted should be about nine inches in diameter; but the completed hill should nearly cover the space broken up by the hoe.

The corn hills I planted well apart, because later, in hilling up, I would need room to draw earth from all directions over the roots to protect them from the sun, that they might not dry out. Corn planted in hills too close together would have small ears and fewer of them; and the stalks of the plants would be weak, and often dried out.

If the corn hills were so close together that the plants when they grew up, touched each other, we called them “smell-each-other”; and we knew that the ears they bore would not be plump nor large.

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 planted them, patting down each with my palms, as described. Planting corn thus by hand was slow work; but by ten o’clock the morning’s work was done, and I was tired and ready to go home for my breakfast and rest; we did not eat before going into the field. The ten rows making the morning’s planting contained about two hundred and twenty-five hills.

I usually went to the field every morning in the planting season, if the weather was fine. Sometimes I went out again a little before sunset and planted; but this was not usual.

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.