Waheenee and Her Husband, Son-of-a-Star

WAHEENEE
AN INDIAN GIRL’S STORY

TOLD BY HERSELF
———TO———
GILBERT L. WILSON, Ph.D.

Field collector for the American Museum of Natural History of New York City. Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College.

Author of “Myths of the Red Children,” “Goodbird, the Indian,” “The Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians,” “Indian Hero Tales.”

ILLUSTRATED
BY
FREDERICK N. WILSON

Webb Publishing Company
St. Paul, Minnesota
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921
BY
WEBB PUBLISHING CO.
W¹

FOREWORD

The Hidatsas, called Minitaris by the Mandans, are a Siouan tribe and speak a language closely akin to that of the Crows. Wars with the Dakota Sioux forced them to ally themselves with the Mandans, whose culture they adopted. Lewis and Clark found the two tribes living in five villages at the mouth of the Knife river, in 1804.

In 1832 the artist Catlin visited the Five Villages, as they were called. A year later Maximilian of Wiet visited them with the artist Bodmer. Several score canvasses, the work of the two artists, are preserved to us.

Smallpox nearly exterminated the two tribes in 1837-8. The survivors, a mere remnant, removed to Fort Berthold reservation where they still dwell.

In 1908, with my brother, an artist, I was sent by Dr. Clark Wissler, Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, to begin cultural studies among the Hidatsas. This work, continued through successive summers for ten years, is but now drawing to a close.

During these years my faithful interpreter and helper has been Edward Goodbird, grandson of Small Ankle, a chief of the Hidatsas in the trying years following the terrible smallpox winter; and my principal informants have been Goodbird’s mother, Waheenee-wea, or Buffalo-Bird Woman, and her brother, Wolf Chief.

The stories in this book were told me by Buffalo-Bird Woman. A few told in mere outline, have been completed from information given by Wolf Chief and others.

Illustrations are by my brother, from studies made by him on the reservation. They have been carefully compared with the Catlin and Bodmer sketches. Not a few are redrawn from cruder sketches by Goodbird, himself an artist of no mean ability.

Acknowledgment is made of the courtesy of Curator Wissler, whose permission makes possible the publishing of this book.

Indians have the gentle custom of adopting very dear friends by relationship terms. By such adoption Buffalo-Bird Woman is my mother. It is with real pleasure that I offer to young readers these stories from the life of my Indian mother.

G. L. W.

CONTENTS

WAHEENEE

FIRST CHAPTER

A LITTLE INDIAN GIRL

I was born in an earth lodge by the mouth of the Knife river, in what is now North Dakota, three years after the smallpox winter.

The Mandans and my tribe, the Hidatsas, had come years before from the Heart river; and they had built the Five Villages, as we called them, on the banks of the Knife, near the place where it enters the Missouri.

Here were bottom lands for our cornfields and cottonwood trees for the beams and posts of our lodges. The dead wood that floated down either river would help keep us in firewood, the old women thought. Getting fuel in a prairie country was not always easy work.

When I was ten days old my mother made a feast and asked an old man named Nothing-but-Water to give me a name. He called me Good Way. “For I pray the gods,” he said, “that our little girl may go through life by a good way; that she may grow up a good woman, not quarreling nor stealing; and that she may have good luck all her days.”

I was a rather sickly child and my father wished after a time to give me a new name. We Indians thought that sickness was from the gods. A child’s name was given him as a kind of prayer. A new name, our medicine men thought, often moved the gods to help a sick or weakly child.

So my father gave me another name, Waheenee-wea,[1] or Buffalo-Bird Woman. In our Hidatsa language, waheenee, means cowbird, or buffalo-bird, as this little brown bird is known in the buffalo country; wea, meaning girl or woman, is often added to a girl’s name that none mistake it for the name of a boy. I do not know why my father chose this name. His gods, I know, were birds; and these, we thought, had much holy power. Perhaps the buffalo-birds had spoken to him in a dream.

[1] Wä hēē´ nēē wē´ a

I am still called by the name my father gave me; and, as I have lived to be a very old woman, I think it has brought me good luck from the gods.

My mother’s name was Weahtee.[2] She was one of four sisters, wives of my father; her sisters’ names were Red Blossom, Stalk-of-Corn, and Strikes-Many Woman. I was taught to call all these my mothers. Such was our Indian custom. I do not think my mother’s sisters could have been kinder to me if I had been an own daughter.

[2] Wē´ äh tēē

I remember nothing of our life at the Five Villages; but my great-grandmother, White Corn, told me something of it. I used to creep into her bed when the nights were cold and beg for stories.

“The Mandans lived in two of the villages, the Hidatsas in three,” she said. “Around each village, excepting on the side that fronted the river, ran a fence of posts, with spaces between for shooting arrows. In front of the row of posts was a deep ditch.

“We had corn aplenty and buffalo meat to eat in the Five Villages, and there were old people and little children in every lodge. Then smallpox came. More than half of my tribe died in the smallpox winter. Of the Mandans only a few families were left alive. All the old people and little children died.”

I was sad when I heard this story. “Did any of your family die, grandmother?” I asked.

“Yes, my husband, Yellow Elk, died. So many were the dead that there was no time to put up burial scaffolds; so his clan fathers bore Yellow Elk to the burying ground and laid him on the grass with logs over him to keep off the wolves.

“That night the villagers heard a voice calling to them from the burying ground. ‘A-ha-hey![3] I have waked up. Come for me.’

[3] Ä hä he̱y´

“‘It is a ghost,’ the villagers cried; and they feared to go.

“Some brave young men, listening, thought they knew Yellow Elk’s voice. They went to the burying ground and called, ‘Are you alive, Yellow Elk?’

“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I have waked up!’

“The young men rolled the logs from his body and bore Yellow Elk to the village; he was too weak to walk.”

This story of Yellow Elk I thought wonderful; but it scared me to know that my great-grandfather had been to the ghost land and had come back again.

Enemies gave our tribes much trouble after the smallpox year, my grandmother said. Bands of Sioux waylaid hunting parties or came prowling around our villages to steal horses. Our chiefs, Mandan and Hidatsa, held a council and decided to remove farther up the Missouri. “We will build a new village,” they agreed, “and dwell together as one tribe.”

The site chosen for the new village was a place called Like-a-Fishhook Point, a bit of high bench land that jutted into a bend of the Missouri. We set out for our new home in the spring, when I was four years old. I remember nothing of our march thither. My mothers have told me that not many horses were then owned by the Hidatsas, and that robes, pots, axes, bags of corn and other stuff were packed on the backs of women or on travois dragged by dogs.

The march was led by the older chiefs and medicine men. My grandfather was one of them. His name was Missouri River. On the pommel of his saddle hung his medicines, or sacred objects, two human skulls wrapped in a skin. They were believed to be the skulls of thunder birds, who, before they died, had changed themselves into Indians. After the chiefs, in a long line, came warriors, women, and children. Young men who owned ponies were sent ahead to hunt meat for the evening camp. Others rode up and down the line to speed the stragglers and to see that no child strayed off to fall into the hands of our enemies, the Sioux.

The earth lodges that the Mandans and Hidatsas built, were dome-shaped houses of posts and beams, roofed over with willows-and-grass, and earth; but every family owned a tepee, or skin tent, for use when hunting or traveling. Our two tribes camped in these tents the first summer at Like-a-Fishhook Point, while they cleared ground for cornfields.

The labor of clearing was done chiefly by the women, although the older men helped. Young men were expected to be off fighting our enemies or hunting buffaloes. There was need for hunting. Our small, first year’s fields could yield no large crops; and, to keep from going hungry in the winter months, we must lay in a good store of dried meat. We owned few guns in the tribe then; and hunting buffaloes with arrows was anything but sport. Only young men, strong and active, made good hunters.

My mothers were hard-working women, and began their labor of clearing a field almost as soon as camp was pitched. My grandmother, Turtle, chose the ground for the field. It was in a piece of bottom land that lay along the river, a little east of the camp. My mothers had brought seed corn from the Five Villages; and squash, bean and sunflower seed.

I am not sure that they were able to plant much corn the first season. I know they planted some beans and a few squashes. I am told that when the squash harvest came in, my grandmother picked out a long green-striped squash for me, for a doll baby. I carried this about on my back, snuggled under my buffalo-calf robe, as I had seen Indian mothers carry their babies. At evening I wrapped my dolly in a bit of skin and put her to bed.

Our camp on a summer’s evening was a cheerful scene. At this hour, fires burned before most of the tepees; and, as the women had ended their day’s labors, there was much visiting from tent to tent. Here a family sat eating their evening meal. Yonder, a circle of old men, cross-legged or squat-on-heels in the firelight, joked and told stories. From a big tent on one side of the camp came the tum-tum tum-tum of a drum. We had dancing almost every evening in those good days.

But for wee folks bedtime was rather early. In my father’s family, it was soon after sunset. My mothers had laid dry grass around the tent wall, and on this had spread buffalo skins for beds. Small logs, laid along the edge of the beds, caught any sparks from the fireplace; for, when the nights grew chill, my mothers made their fire in the tepee. My father often sat and sang me to sleep by the firelight.

He had many songs. Some of them were for little boys: others were for little girls. Of the girls’ songs, there was one I liked very much; it was something like this:

My sister asks me to go out and stretch the smoke-flap.

My armlets and earrings shine!

I go through the woods where the elm trees grow.

Why do the berries not ripen?

What berries do you like best?—the red? the blue?

This song I used to try to sing to my squash doll, but I found it hard to remember the words.

SECOND CHAPTER

WINTER CAMP

The medicine men of the two tribes had laid out the plan of our new village when they made camp in the spring. There was to be an open circle in the center, with the lodges of the chiefs and principal men opening upon it; and in the center of the circle was to stand the Mandans’ sacred corral. This corral was very holy. Around it were held solemn dances, when young men fasted and cut their flesh to win favor of the gods.

The early planning of the village by our medicine men made it possible for a woman to choose a site and begin building her earth lodge. Few lodges, however, were built the first summer. My mothers did not even begin building theirs; but they got ready the timbers with which to frame it.

Going often into the woods with their dogs to gather firewood, they kept a sharp lookout for trees that would make good beams or posts; these they felled later, and let lie to cure. For rafters, they cut long poles; and from cottonwood trunks they split puncheons for the sloping walls. In olden days puncheons were split with wedges of buffalo horn. A core of hard ash wood was driven into the hollow horn to straighten it and make it solid.

Autumn came; my mothers harvested their rather scanty crops; and, with the moon of Yellow Leaves, we struck tents and went into winter camp. My tribe usually built their winter village down in the thick woods along the Missouri, out of reach of the cold prairie winds. It was of earth lodges, like those of our summer village, but smaller and more rudely put together. We made camp this winter not very far from Like-a-Fishhook Point.

My father’s lodge, or, better, my mothers’ lodge,—for an earth lodge belonged to the women who built it—was more carefully constructed than most winter lodges were. Earth was heaped thick on the roof to keep in the warmth; and against the sloping walls without were leaned thorny rosebushes, to keep the dogs from climbing up and digging holes in the roof. The fireplace was a round, shallow pit, with edges plastered smooth with mud. Around the walls stood the family beds, six of them, covered each with an old tent skin on a frame of poles.

A winter lodge was never very warm; and, if there were old people or children in the family, a second, or “twin lodge,” was often built. This was a small lodge with roof peaked like a tepee, but covered with bark and earth. A covered passage led from it to the main lodge.

The twin lodge had two uses. In it the grandparents or other feeble or sickly members of the family could sit, snug and warm, on the coldest day; and the children of the household used it as a playhouse.

I can just remember playing in our twin lodge, and making little feasts with bits of boiled tongue or dried berries that my mothers gave me. I did not often get to go out of doors; for I was not a strong little girl, and, as the winter was a hard one, my mothers were at pains to see that I was kept warm. I had a tiny robe, made of a buffalo-calf skin, that I drew over my little buckskin dress; and short girls’ leggings over my ankles. In the twin lodge, as in the larger earth lodge, the smoke hole let in plenty of fresh air.

My mothers had a scant store of corn and beans, and some strings of dried squashes; and they had put by two or three sacks of dried prairie turnips. A mess of these turnips was boiled now and then and was very good. Once, I remember, we had a pudding, dried prairie turnips pounded to a meal and boiled with dried June berries. Such a pudding was sweet, and we children were fond of it.

To eke out our store of corn and keep the pot boiling, my father hunted much of the time. To hunt deer he left the lodge before daybreak, on snowshoes, if the snow was deep. He had a flintlock gun, a smoothbore with a short barrel. The wooden stock was studded with brass nails. For shot he used slugs, bits of lead which he cut from a bar, and chewed to make round like bullets. Powder and shot were hard to get in those days.

Buffaloes were not much hunted in winter, when they were likely to be poor in flesh; but my father and his friends made one hunt before midwinter set in. Buffaloes were hunted with bow and arrows, from horseback. Only a fleet pony could overtake a buffalo, and there were not many such owned in the tribe. We thought a man rich who had a good buffalo horse.

My father stabled his horses at night in our lodge, in a little corral fenced off against the wall. “I do not want the Sioux to steal them,” he used to say. In the morning, after breakfast, he drove them out upon the prairie, to pasture, but brought them in again before sunset. In very cold weather my mothers cut down young cottonwoods and let our horses browse on the tender branches.

Early in the spring our people returned to Like-a-Fishhook Point and took up again the labor of clearing and planting fields. Each family had its own field, laid out in the timbered bottom lands along the Missouri, if possible, in a rather open place where there were no large trees to fell.

Felling trees and grubbing out bushes were done with iron tools, axes and heavy hoes, gotten of the traders. I have heard that in old times my tribe used stone axes, but I never saw them myself. Our family field was larger than any owned by our neighbors; and my mothers were at pains to add to it, for they had many mouths to feed. My grandmother, Turtle, helped them, rising at the first sound of the birds to follow my mothers to the field.

Turtle was old-fashioned in her ways and did not take kindly to iron tools. “I am an Indian,” she would say, “I use the ways my fathers used.” Instead of grubbing out weeds and bushes, she pried them from the ground with a wooden digging stick. I think she was as skillful with this as were my mothers with their hoes of iron.

Digging sticks are even yet used by old Hidatsa women for digging wild turnips. The best kind is made of a stout ash sapling, slightly bent and trimmed at the root end to a three-cornered point. To harden the point, it is oiled with marrow fat, and a bunch of dry grass is tied around it and fired. The charring makes the point almost as hard as iron.

Turtle, I think, was the last woman in the tribe to use an old-fashioned, bone-bladed hoe. Two other old women owned such hoes, but no longer used them in the fields. Turtle’s hoe was made of the shoulder bone of a buffalo set in a light-wood handle, the blade firmly bound in place with thongs. The handle was rather short, and so my grandmother stooped as she worked among her corn hills.

She used to keep the hoe under her bed. As I grew a bit older my playmates and I thought it a curious old tool, and sometimes we tried to take it out and look at it, when Turtle would cry, “Nah, nah![4] Go away! Let that hoe alone; you will break it!”

[4] Näh

We children were a little afraid of Turtle.

THIRD CHAPTER

THE BUFFALO-SKIN CAP

The winter I was six years old my mother, Weahtee, died.

The Black Mouths, a men’s society, had brought gifts to One Buffalo and asked him to be winter chief. “We know you own sacred objects, and have power with the gods,” they said. “We want you to pray for us and choose the place for our camp.”

One Buffalo chose a place in the woods at the mouth of Many-Frogs Brook, three miles from Like-a-Fishhook village. I remember our journey thither. There was a round, open place in the trees by Many-Frogs Brook, where young men fasted and made offerings to the gods. It was a holy place; and One Buffalo thought, if we pitched our winter camp near-by, the gods would remember us and give us a good winter.

But it was a hard winter from its start. Cold weather set in before we had our lodges well under cover; and, with the first snow, smallpox broke out in camp. Had it been in summer, my tribe could have broken up into small bands and scattered; and the smallpox would have died out. This they could not do in winter, and many died. My brother, my mother Weahtee, and her sister Stalk-of-Corn, died, of my father’s family.

Although my old grandmother was good to me, I often wept for my mother. I was lonesome in our winter lodge, and we Indian children did not have many playthings. Old Turtle made me a dolly of deer skin stuffed with antelope hair. She sewed on two white bone beads for eyes. I bit off one of these bone beads, to see if it was good to eat, I suppose. For some days my dolly was one-eyed, until my grandmother sewed on a beautiful new eye, a blue glass bead she had gotten of a trader. I thought this much better, for now my dolly had one blue eye and one white one.

I liked to play with my father’s big hunting cap. It was made of buffalo skin, from the part near the tail where the hair is short. He wore it with the fur side in. Two ears of buffalo skin, stuffed with antelope hair to make them stand upright, were sewed one on each side. They were long, to look like a jack rabbit’s ears; but they looked more like the thumbs of two huge mittens. My father, I think, had had a dream from the jack-rabbit spirits, and wore the cap as a kind of prayer to them. Jack rabbits are hardy animals and fleet of foot. They live on the open prairies through the hardest winters; and a full grown rabbit can outrun a wolf. An Indian hunter had need to be nimble-footed and hardy, like a jack rabbit.

Small Ankle thought his cap a protection in other ways. It kept his head warm. Then, if he feared enemies were about, he could draw his cap down to hide his dark hair, creep up a hill and spy over the top. Being of dull color, like dead grass, the cap was not easily seen on the sky line. A Sioux, spying it, would likely think it a coyote, or wolf, with erect, pointed ears, peering over the hill, as these animals often did. There were many such caps worn by our hunters; but most of them had short pointed ears, like a coyote’s.

My father sometimes hung his cap, wet with snow, on the drying poles over the fire to dry. I would watch it with longing eyes; and, when I thought it well warmed, I would hold up my small hands and say, “Father, let me play with the cap.” I liked to sit in it, my small ankles turned to the right, like an Indian woman’s; for I liked the feel of the warm fur against my bare knees. At other times I marched about the lodge, the big cap set loosely on my head, and my dolly thrust under my robe on my back. In doing this I always made my grandmother laugh. “Hey, hey,” she would cry, “that is a warrior’s cap. A little girl can not be a warrior.”

The winter, if hard, was followed by an early spring. Snow was thawing and flocks of wild geese were flying north a month before their wonted time. The women of the Goose Society called the people for their spring dance, and prayed the gods for good weather for the corn planting. One Buffalo sent a crier through the lodges, warning us to make ready to break camp. On the day set, we all returned to Like-a-Fishhook village, glad to leave our stuffy little winter lodges for our roomy summer homes.

One morning, shortly after our return, my father came into the lodge with two brave men, Flying Eagle and Stuck-by-Fish. My grandfather, Big Cloud, joined them. Big Cloud lighted a pipe, offered smoke to the gods, and passed the pipe to the others. It was a long pipe with black stone bowl. The four men talked together. I heard my father speak of a war party and that he was sure his gods were strong.

Toward evening, Red Blossom boiled meat and set it before the men. When they had eaten, Small Ankle rose and went to his medicine bag, that hung in the rear of the lodge. He held out his hands and I saw his lips move; and I knew he was praying. He opened the medicine bag and took out a bundle which he unrolled. It was a black bear’s skin, painted red. He bore the skin reverently out of the lodge, and came back empty-handed. Flying Eagle and Stuck-by-Fish rose and left the lodge.

My father sat by the fire awhile, silent. Then from a post of his bed he fetched his hunting cap. “I shall need this cap,” he said to Red Blossom. “See if it must be sewed or mended in any place.”

The next morning when I went out of the lodge, I saw that the black-bear skin was bound to one of the posts at the entrance. This was a sign that my father was going to lead out a war party. I was almost afraid to pass the bear skin, for I knew it was very holy.

For days after, young men came to our lodge to talk with my father and Big Cloud. My mothers—for so I called Red Blossom and Strikes-Many Woman—had the pot boiling all the time, to give food to the young warriors.

One night I was in bed and asleep, when I woke with a start, hearing low voices. Peeping out, I saw many young men sitting around the fireplace. The fire had died down, but the night was clear and a little light came through the smoke hole. Many of the young men had bows and well-filled quivers on their backs. A few had guns.

Some one struck flint and steel, and I saw by the glow of the burning tobacco that a pipe was being passed. The men were talking low, almost in whispers. Then I heard Big Cloud’s voice, low and solemn, praying: “Oh gods, keep watch over these our young men. Let none of them be harmed. Help them strike many enemies and steal many horses.”

The company now arose and filed out of the lodge. As the skin door fell shut after them, I heard the whinny of Small Ankle’s war pony without. Next morning, I learned that Small Ankle and Big Cloud had led out a war party, all mounted, to strike the northern Sioux.

The ice on the Missouri river broke, and ran out with much crashing and roaring. Some dead buffaloes, frozen in the ice, came floating down the current. Our brave young men, leaping upon the ice cakes, poled the carcasses to shore. We were glad to get such carcasses. Buffaloes killed in the spring were lean and poor in flesh; but these, frozen in the ice, were fat and tender.

A good many frozen carcasses were thus taken at the spring break-up. In the fall the rivers froze over, often with rather thin ice. A herd would come down to the river’s edge and stand lowing and grumbling, until some bold bull walked out upon the ice. The whole herd followed, often breaking through with their weight.

The weather stayed warm. Bushes in the woods had begun to leaf, and old Turtle even raked part of our field and planted sunflower seed around the border. “We never saw such an early spring,” said some of the old men.

Then, one night, a cold wind arose with rain turning to snow. I woke up, crying out that I was chilled. My grandmother, who slept with me, pulled over us an extra robe she had laid up on the top of the bed frame.

The next morning a terrible blizzard broke over our village. The wind howled overhead, driving the falling snow in blinding clouds. Red Blossom drew her robe over her head and went to the entrance to run over to our next neighbor’s; but she came back. “I am afraid to go out,” she said. “The air is so full of snow that I can not see my hand when I hold it before my face. I fear I might lose my way, and wander out on the prairie and die.” There were stories in the tribe of villagers who had perished thus.

Old Turtle and Strikes-Many Woman made ready our noon meal—no easy thing to do; for the cold wind, driving down the smoke hole, blew ashes into our faces and into our food. An old bull-boat frame was turned over the smoke hole. Against it, on the windward side, my mothers had laid a buffalo skin the night before, weighting it down with a stone. This was to keep the wind from blowing smoke down the smoke hole; but the wind had shifted in the night, blowing the buffalo skin off the boat frame. The weight of the stone had sunk one end of the skin into the earth roof, where it had frozen fast; and we could hear the loose end flapping and beating in the wind. Little snow came down the smoke hole. The wind was so strong that it carried the snow off the roof.

Turtle and Strikes-Many Woman had gone with dogs for firewood only the day before; so there was plenty of fuel in the lodge. We could not go to get water at the river; but Red Blossom crept into the entrance way and filled a skin basket with snow. This she melted in a clay pot, for water. It was in this water that we boiled our meat for the midday meal. In spite of the calf skin that my grandmother belted about me, I shivered with the cold until my teeth chattered. Turtle poured some of the meat broth, steaming hot, into a wooden bowl, and fetched me a buffalo-horn spoon. With this spoon I scooped up the broth, glad to swallow something hot into my cold little stomach.

After our meal, my two mothers and Turtle sat on my father’s couch, looking grave. “I hope Small Ankle and Big Cloud have reached shelter in the Missouri-river timber,” I heard Red Blossom say. “If they are on the prairie in this storm, they will die.”

“Big Cloud’s prayers are strong,” answered Turtle, “and Small Ankle is a good plainsman. I am sure they and their party will find shelter.”

“I knew a Mandan who was caught in a blizzard,” said Red Blossom. “He walked with the wind until he fell into a coulee, that was full of snow. He burrowed under the drifts and lay on his back, with his knees doubled against his chin and his robe tight about him. He lay there three days, until the storm blew over. He had a little parched corn for food; and, for drink, he ate snow. He came home safely; but his mouth was sore from the snow he had eaten.”

Darkness came early, with the wind still screaming overhead. Turtle tried to parch some corn in a clay pot, but blasts from the smoke hole blew ashes into her eyes. She took out a handful of the half-parched corn, when it had cooled, and poured it into my two hands. This was my supper; but she also gave me a lump of dried chokecherries to eat. They were sweet and I was fond of them.

I awoke the next morning to see my mothers cooking our breakfast, parched-corn meal stirred into a thick mush with beans and marrow fat. I sprang out of bed and glanced up at the smoke hole. The sky, I saw, was clear and the sun was shining.

The second day after, about midafternoon, Small Ankle came home. I heard the tinkle of the hollow hoofs that hung on the skin door, and in a moment my father came around the fire screen leading his war pony, a bay with a white nose. He put his pony in the corral, replaced the bar, and came over to his couch by the fire. My mothers said nothing. Red Blossom put water and dried meat in a pot and set it on the fire, and Turtle fetched an armful of green cottonwood bark to feed the pony.

My father took off his big cap and hung it on the drying pole, and wrung out his moccasins and hung them beside the cap. They were winter moccasins, and in each was a kind of stocking, of buffalo skin turned fur in, and cut and sewed to fit snugly over the foot. These stockings Small Ankle drew out and laid by the fire, to dry. He put on dry moccasins, threw off his robe, and took upon his knees the bowl of broth and meat that Red Blossom silently handed him.

In the evening, some of his cronies came in to smoke and talk. Small Ankle told them of his war party.

“We had a hard time,” he said. “Perhaps the gods, for some cause, were angry with us. We had gone five days; evening came and it began to rain. We were on the prairie, and our young men sat all night with their saddles and saddle skins over their heads to keep off the rain.

“In the morning, the rain turned to snow. A heavy wind blew the snow in our faces, nearly blinding us.

“‘We must make our way to the Missouri timber and find shelter,’ Big Cloud said.

“Flying Eagle feared we could not find our way. ‘The air is so full of snow that we can not see the hills,’ he said.

“‘The wind will guide us,’ said Stuck-by-Fish. ‘We know the Missouri river is in the south. The wind is from the west. If we travel with the wind on our right, we shall be headed south. We should reach the river before night.’

“I thought this a good plan, and I cried, ‘My young men, saddle your horses.’ We had flat saddles, such as hunters use. We had a few bundles of dried meat left. These we bound firmly to our saddles, for we knew we could kill no game while the storm lasted.

“Many of my young men had head cloths which they bound over their hair and under their chins; but the wind was so strong that it blew the wet snow through the cloths, freezing them to the men’s faces. I had on my fur cap, which kept my face warm. Also, I think the jack-rabbit spirits helped me.

“We pushed on; but the snow got deeper and deeper until we could hardly force our ponies through it. We grew so chilled that Big Cloud ordered us to dismount and go afoot. ‘You go first,’ he said to Flying Eagle. ‘You are a tall man and have long legs. You break the way through the snow. We will follow single-file.’

“Flying Eagle did so, leading his pony. With Flying Eagle had come his brother, Short Buffalo, a lad of fourteen or fifteen years. He was not yet grown, and his legs were so short that he could not make his way through the deep snow. We let him ride.

“But in a little while Short Buffalo cried out, ‘My brother, I freeze; I die!’

“Flying Eagle called back, ‘Do not give up, little brother. Be strong!’ And he came back and bound Short Buffalo’s robe snugly about his neck, and took the reins of his pony, so that Short Buffalo could draw his hands under his robe to warm them. Short Buffalo’s robe had frozen stiff in the cold wind.

“We reached the Missouri before nightfall and went down into the thick timber. It was good to be out of the freezing wind, sheltered by the trees.

“Flying Eagle led us to a point of land over which had swept a fire, killing the trees. Many dead cottonwoods stood there, with shaggy bark. We peeled off the thick outer bark, shredding the dry inner bark for tinder. I had flint and steel. We rolled over a fallen trunk and started a fire on the dry ground beneath. We broke off dead branches for fuel.

“Flying Eagle helped me get wood and start the fire. He is a strong man and bore the cold better than the others. Many of the men were too benumbed to help any. My mittens and my cap had kept me warm.

“The men’s leggings, wetted by rain and snow, were frozen stiff. We soon had a hot fire. When their leggings had thawed soft, the men took off these and their moccasins, and wrung them out; and when they had half dried them by the fire, put them on again. They also put shredded cottonwood bark in their moccasins, packing it about their feet and ankles to keep them warm and dry.

“We toasted dried meat over the fire, and ate; for we were hungry, and weak from the cold. We fed our ponies green cottonwood branches that we cut with our knives.

“The storm died down before morning; and early the next day we started down the river to our village. We were slow coming, for the snow thawed, growing soft and slushy under our ponies’ feet. Our ponies, too, were weak from the cold.”

Many of the young men of my father’s party had their faces frozen on the right side. Short Buffalo had part of his right hand frozen, and his right foot. He was sick for a long time. Another war party that had been led out by Wooden House had also been caught in the storm and had fared even worse. They were afoot, and, not being able to reach the river timber, they lay down in a coulee and let the snow drift over them. Two were frozen to death.

The leaders of a war party were held to blame for any harm that came to their men. The villagers, however, did not blame my father much. Some of the older men said, “Small Ankle and Big Cloud were foolish. The wild geese had come north, but this fact alone was not proof that winter had gone. We know that bad storms often blow up at this season of the year.”

Of course, being but six years old, I could hardly remember all these things. But my father talked of his war party many times afterwards, at his evening fire, as he smoked with his cronies; and so I came to know the story.

FOURTH CHAPTER

STORY TELLING

My good old grandmother could be stern when I was naughty; nevertheless, I loved her dearly, and I know she was fond of me. After the death of my mother, it fell to Turtle to care for me much of the time. There were other children in the household, and, with so many mouths to feed, my two other mothers, as I called them, had plenty of work to do.

Indians are great story tellers; especially are they fond of telling tales around the lodge fire in the long evenings of autumn and winter. My father and his cronies used sometimes to sit up all night, drumming and singing and telling stories. Young men often came with gift of robe or knife, to ask him to tell them tales of our tribe.

I was too young yet to understand many of these tales. My father was hours telling some of them, and they had many strange words. But my grandmother used to tell me stories as she sat or worked by the lodge fire.

One evening in the corn planting moon, she was making ready her seed for the morrow’s planting. She had a string of braided ears lying beside her. Of these ears she chose the best, broke off the tip and butt of each, and shelled the perfect grain of the mid-cob into a wooden bowl. Baby-like, I ran my fingers through the shiny grain, spilling a few kernels on the floor.

“Do not do that,” cried my grandmother. “Corn is sacred; if you waste it, the gods will be angry.”

I still drew my fingers through the smooth grain, and my grandmother continued: “Once a Ree woman went out to gather her corn. She tied her robe about her with a big fold in the front, like a pocket. Into this she dropped the ears that she plucked, and bore them off to the husking pile. All over the field she went, row by row, leaving not an ear.

“She was starting off with her last load when she heard a weak voice, like a babe’s, calling, ‘Please, please do not go. Do not leave me.’

“The woman stopped, astonished. She put down her load. ‘Can there be a babe hidden in the corn?’ she thought. She then carefully searched the field, hill by hill, but found nothing.

“She was taking up her load, when again she heard the voice: ‘Oh, please do not go. Do not leave me!’ Again she searched, but found nothing.

“She was lifting her load when the voice came the third time: ‘Please, please, do not go! Please, do not leave me!’

“This time the woman searched every corn hill, lifting every leaf. And lo, in one corner of the field, hidden under a leaf, she found a tiny nubbin of yellow corn. It was the nubbin that had been calling to her. For so the gods would teach us not to be wasteful of their gifts.”

Another evening I was trying to parch an ear of corn over the coals of our lodge fire. I had stuck the ear on the end of a squash spit, as I had seen my mothers do; but my baby fingers were not strong enough to fix the ear firmly, and it fell off into the coals and began to burn. My mouth puckered, and I was ready to cry.

My grandmother laughed. “You should put only half the ear on the spit,” she said. “That is the way the Mandans did when they first gave us corn.”

I dropped the spit and, forgetting the burning ear, asked eagerly, “How did the Mandans give us corn, grandmother? Tell me the story.”

Turtle picked up the spit and raked the burning ear from the ashes. “I have told you that the gods gave us corn to eat, not to waste,” she said. “Some of the kernels on this cob are well parched.” And she shelled off a handful and put one of the hot kernels in her mouth.

“I will tell you the story,” she continued. “I had it from my mother when I was a little girl like you.

“In the beginning, our Hidatsa people lived under the waters of Devils Lake. They had earth lodges and lived much as we live now. One day some hunters found the root of a grapevine growing down from the lake overhead. They climbed the vine and found themselves on this earth. Others climbed the vine until half the tribe had escaped; but, when a fat woman tried to climb it, the vine broke, leaving the rest of the tribe under the lake.

“Those who had safely climbed the vine, built villages of earth lodges. They lived by hunting; and some very old men say that they also planted small fields in ground beans and wild potatoes. As yet the Hidatsas knew nothing of corn or squashes.

“One day, a war party that had wandered west to the Missouri river saw on the other side a village of earth lodges like their own. It was a village of the Mandans. Neither they nor the Hidatsas would cross over, each party fearing the other might be enemies.

“It was in the fall of the year, and the Missouri 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. These ears they broke in pieces, stuck the pieces on the points of arrows and shot them across the river. ‘Eat!’ they called. The word for ‘eat’ is the same in both the Hidatsa and the Mandan languages.

“The Hidatsas ate of the parched corn. They returned to their village and said, ‘We have found a people on a great river, to the west. They have a strange kind of grain. We ate of it and found it good.’

“After this, a party of Hidatsas went to visit the Mandans. The Mandan chief took an ear of corn, broke it in two, and gave half to the Hidatsas for seed. This half ear the Hidatsas took home, and soon every family in the village was planting corn.”

My father had been listening, as he sat smoking on the other side of the fire. “I know that story,” he said. “The name of the Mandan chief was Good-Fur Robe.”

My grandmother then put me to bed. I was so sleepy that I did not notice she had eaten up all the corn I had parched.

Winter came again, and spring. As soon as the soil could be worked, my mothers and old Turtle began cleaning up our field, and breaking new ground to add to it. Our first year’s field had been small; but my mothers added to it each season, until the field was as large as our family needed.

I was too little to note very much of what was done. I remember that my father set up boundary marks—little piles of earth or stones, I think they were—to mark the corners of the field we claimed. My mothers and Turtle began at one end of the field and worked forward. My mothers had their heavy iron hoes; and Turtle, her old-fashioned digging stick.

On the new ground, my mothers first cut the long grass with their hoes, bearing it off the field to be burned. They next dug and loosened the soil in places for the corn hills, which they laid off in rows. These hills they planted. Then all summer in this and other parts of the field they worked with their hoes, breaking and loosening the soil between the corn hills and cutting weeds.

Small trees and bushes, I know, were cut off with axes; but I remember little of this labor, most of it having been done the year before, when I was yet quite small. My father once told me that in very old times, when the women cleared a field, they first dug the corn hills with digging sticks, and afterwards worked between them with their bone hoes.

I remember this season’s work the better for a dispute that my mothers had with two neighbors, Lone Woman and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber. These two women were clearing lands that bordered our own. My father, I have said, to set up claim to our land, had placed boundary marks, one of them in the corner that touched the fields of Lone Woman and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber. 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.

My mothers showed Lone Woman the mark my father had placed. “This land belongs to us,” they said; “but we will pay you and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber for any rights you may think are yours. We do not want our neighbors to bear us any hard feelings.”

We Indians thought our fields sacred, and we did not like to quarrel about them. A family’s right to a field once having been set up, no one thought of disputing it. If any one tried to seize land belonging to another, we thought some evil would come upon him; as that one of his family would die or have some bad sickness.

There is a story of a hunter who had before been a black bear, and had been given great magic power. He dared try to catch eagles from another man’s pit, and had his mind taken from him for doing so. Thus the gods punished him for entering ground that was not his own.

Lone Woman and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber having withdrawn, my grandmother Turtle undertook to clear and break the ground that had been in dispute. She was a little woman but active, and she loved to work out-of-doors. Often, when my mothers were busy in the earth lodge, Turtle would go out to work in the field, and she would take me along for company. I was too little to help her any, but I liked to watch her work.

With her digging stick Turtle dug up a little round place in the center of the corner, and around this she circled from day to day, enlarging the dug-up space. She had folded her robe over her middle, like a pad. Resting the handle of her digging stick against her folded robe, she would drive the point into the soft earth to a depth equal to the length of my hand and pry up the soil.

She broke clods by striking them smartly with her digging stick. 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 little piles to dry. In a few days she gathered these piles into a heap about four feet high and burned them.

My grandmother worked in this way all summer, but not always in the corner that had been in dispute. Some days, I remember, she dug along the edges of the field, to add to it and make the edges even. Of course, not all the labor of enlarging the field was done by Turtle; but she liked to have me with her when she worked, and I remember best what I saw her do.

It was my grandmother’s habit to rise early in the summer months. She often arrived at the field before sunrise; about ten o’clock she returned to the lodge to eat and rest.

One morning, having come to the field quite early, I grew tired of my play before my grandmother had ended her work. “I want to go home,” I begged, and I began to cry. Just then a strange bird flew into the field. It had a long curved beak, and made a queer cry, cur-lew, cur-lew.

I stopped weeping. My grandmother laughed.

“That is a curlew,” she said. “Once at the mouth of the Knife river, a woman went out with her digging stick to dig wild turnips. The woman had a babe. Growing tired of carrying her babe on her back, she laid it on the ground.

“The babe began to cry. The mother was busy digging turnips, and did not go to her babe as she should have done. By and by she looked up. Her babe was flying away as a bird!

“The bird was a curlew, that cries like a babe. Now, if you cry, perhaps you, too, will turn into a curlew.”

FIFTH CHAPTER

LIFE IN AN EARTH LODGE

The small lodges we built for winter did not stand long after we left them in the spring. Built on low ground by the Missouri, they were often swept away in the June rise; for in that month the river is flooded by snows melting in the Rocky Mountains.

The loss of our winter lodges never troubled us, however; for we thought of them as but huts. Then, too, we seldom wintered twice in the same place. We burned much firewood in our winter lodges, and before spring came the women had to go far to find it. The next season we made camp in a new place, where was plenty of dead-and-down wood for fuel.

We looked upon our summer lodges, to which we came every spring, as our real homes. There were about seventy of these, earth lodges well-built and roomy, in Like-a-Fishhook village. Most of them were built the second summer of our stay there.

My mothers’ earth lodge—for the lodge belonged to the women of a household—was a large one, with floor measuring more than forty feet across. In the center was the fireplace. A screen of puncheons, set upright in a trench, stood between the fireplace and the door. This screen shut out draughts and kept out the dogs.

The screen ran quite to the sloping wall, on the right; but, on the left, there was space for a passage from the door to the fire. Right and left in an Indian lodge are reckoned as one stands at the fireplace, looking toward the door. We thought an earth lodge was alive and had a spirit like a human body, and that its front was like a face, with the door for mouth.

Before the fireplace and against the puncheon screen was my father’s bed. Forked posts, eighteen inches high, stood in the earth floor. On poles laid in the forks rested cottonwood planks over which were thrown buffalo robes. A skin pillow, stuffed with antelope hair, lay at one end of the bed.

The beds of the rest of the family stood in the back of the lodge, against the wall. They were less simply made than my father’s, being each covered with an old tent skin drawn over a frame of posts and poles. The bedding was of buffalo skins. As these could not be washed, my mothers used to take them out and hang them on the poles of the corn stage on sunny days, to air.

Most of the earth lodges—at least most of the larger ones—had each a bed like my father’s before the fireplace; for this was the warmest place in the lodge. Usually the eldest in the family, as the father or grandfather, slept in this bed.

My father’s bed, not being enclosed, made a good lounging place by day, and here he sat to smoke or chat with his friends. My mothers, too, used to sit here to peel wild turnips or make ready the daily meals.

Two or three sticks burned in the fireplace, not piled one upon the other as done by white men, but laid with ends meeting. As the ends burned away, the sticks were pushed in, keeping alive a small but hot fire. At night, the last thing my father did was to cover one of these burning sticks with ashes, that it might keep fire until morning.

Unless he had spent the night with some of his cronies, my father was the first to rise in the morning. He would go to the fireplace, draw out a buried coal, lay some dry sticks upon it, and blow with his breath until the fire caught. Sometimes he fanned the coal with a goose wing.

Soon a little column of smoke would rise toward the smoke hole, and my father would call, “Up, little daughter; up, sons! Get up, wives! The sun is up. To the river for your bath! Hasten!” And he would go up on the roof to look if enemies were about and if his horses were safe. My mothers were already up when I crept from my bed still sleepy, but glad that morning had come.

But if the weather was cold, we did not go to the river to bathe. An earthen pot full of water stood by one of the posts near the fire. It rested in a ring of bark, to keep it from falling. My mothers dipped each a big horn spoon full of water, filled her mouth, and, blowing the water over her palms, gave her face a good rubbing. Red Blossom washed my face in the same way. I did not like it very much, and I would shut my eyes and pucker my face when I felt the cold water. Red Blossom would say, “Why do you pucker up your face? You make it look like a piece of old, dried, buffalo skin.”

Her face washed, Red Blossom sat on the edge of her bed and finished her toilet. She had a little fawn-skin bag, worked with red porcupine quills. From this bag she took her hairbrush, a porcupine tail mounted on a stick, with the sharp points of the quills cut off. She brushed her hair smooth, parting it in two braids that fell over each shoulder nearly hiding her ears. Red Blossom was no longer young, but her black tresses had not a grey hair in them.

She now opened her paint bag, put a little buffalo grease on her two fingers, pressed the tips lightly in the dry paint, and rubbed them over her cheeks and face. She also rubbed a little red into the part of her hair.

Meanwhile, the pot had been put on the fire. We Indians did not eat many things at a meal as white men do. Usually, breakfast was of one thing, often buffalo meat dried, and boiled to soften it. When a buffalo was killed, the meat was cut into thin slices, and some parts, into strips. These were dried in the open air over the earth lodge fire or in the smoke of a small fire out-of-doors. For breakfast, a round earthen pot was filled with water, dried meat put in, and the water brought to a boil. Red Blossom used to lift out the hot meat slices on the point of a stick, laying them on a bit of clean rawhide.

A rough bench stood back of the fireplace, a cottonwood plank, with ends resting on two blocks chopped from a tree trunk. My grandmother Turtle sat on this bench to eat her meals. My two mothers sat beside her, or on the floor near the meat they were serving. My father ate sitting on the edge of his couch. A wooden bowl, heaped with steaming meat, was set before each. Our fingers did for forks.

Boiling the meat in water made a thin broth which we used for a hot drink. It was very good, tasting much like white man’s beef tea. We had no cups; but we had big spoons made of buffalo horn, and ladles, of mountain-sheep horn. Either of these did very well for drinking cups. Sometimes we used mussel shells.

A common breakfast dish was mapee[5] naka-pah,[6] or pounded-meal mush. From her cache pit Red Blossom took a string of dried squash slices. She cut off a length and tied the ends together, making a ring four or five inches in width. This ring and a double handful of beans she dropped in a pot of water, and set on the fire. When boiled, she lifted the ring out with a stick, with her horn ladle mashed the softened squash slices in a wooden bowl and put them back in the pot.

[5] mä pēē´

[6] nä kä päh´

Meanwhile Strikes-Many Woman or old Turtle had parched some corn in a clay pot, and toasted some buffalo fats on a stick, over the coals. Red Blossom now pounded the parched corn and toasted fats together in the corn mortar, and stirred the pounded mass into the pot with the squash and beans. The mess was soon done. Red Blossom dipped it into our bowls with a horn spoon.

We ate such messes with horn spoons or with mussel shells; for we Hidatsas had few metal spoons in those days. There was a shelf, or bench, at one side of the room, under the sloping roof, where were stored wooden bowls, uneaten foods, horn spoons, and the mussel shells that we used for teaspoons. When I was a little girl, nearly every family owned such shells, worn smooth and shiny from use.

After breakfast, unless it was in the corn season, when they went to the field, my mothers tidied up the lodge. They had short brooms of buckbrush. With these they swept the floor, stooping over and drawing the broom with a sidewise motion. As my father stabled his hunting ponies in the lodge at night, there was a good deal of litter to be taken out. Red Blossom used to scrape her sweepings into a skin basket, which she bore to the river bank and emptied.

Other tasks were then taken up; and there were plenty of them. Moccasins had to be made or old ones mended. Shirts and other garments had to be made. Often there were skins to be dressed or scraped. Leggings and shirts were embroidered usually in winter, when the women had no corn to hoe.

There was a good deal of visiting in our lodge; for my father was one of the chiefs of the village, and always kept open house. “If a man would be chief,” we said, “he should be ready to feed the poor and strangers.” A pot with buffalo meat or corn and beans cooking was always on the fire in my father’s lodge. His friends and the other chief men of the village often came in to talk over affairs. A visitor came in without knocking, but did not sit down until he was asked.

Friends of my mothers also came in to sit and chat; and they often joined my mothers at whatever task they might be doing. Red Blossom would set a bowl of food before each. What she could not eat the guest took home with her. It was impolite to leave any uneaten food, as that would mean, “I do not like your cooking; it is unfit to eat.”

My mothers were neat housekeepers and kept the ground about the lodge entrance swept as clean as the lodge floor; but many families were careless, and cast ashes, floor sweepings, scraps of broken bones and other litter on the ground about their lodges. In time this rubbish made little piles and became a nuisance, so that people could hardly walk in the paths between the lodges.

The Black Mouths then went through the village and ordered the women to clean up. The Black Mouths were a society of men of about forty years of age. They acted as police and punished any one who broke the camp laws.

These clean-ups were made rather often; in summer, perhaps twice a month. They were always ordered by the Black Mouths.

I remember one morning, just after breakfast, I heard singing, as of a dozen or more men coming toward our lodge. I started to run out to see what it was, but my mothers cried, “Do not go. It is the Black Mouths.” My mothers, I thought, looked rather scared. We were still speaking, when I heard the tramp of feet. The door lifted, and the Black Mouths came in.

They looked very terrible, all painted with the lower half of the face black. Many, but not all, had the upper half of the face red. Some had eagles’ feathers in their hair, and all wore robes or blankets. Some carried guns. Others had sticks about as long as my arm. With these sticks they beat any woman who would not help in the clean-up.

I fled to my father, but I dared not cry out, for I, too, was scared.

“One of you women go out and help clean up the village,” said the Black Mouths. They spoke sternly, and several of them at once.

Like all the other women, my mothers were afraid of the Black Mouths “We will go,” said both, and Red Blossom caught up broom and skin basket and went out.

The Black Mouths went also, and I followed to see what they did. They went into another lodge not far away. I heard voices, then the report of a gun, and a woman screamed. After a time, the Black Mouths came out driving before them a woman, very angry, but much frightened. She had not moved quickly enough to get her basket, and one of the Black Mouths had fired his gun at her feet to frighten her. The gun was loaded only with powder.

After they had made the rounds of the village, the Black Mouths returned to the lodge of their “keeper,” a man named Crow Paunch. Soon we heard singing and drumming, and knew they were singing some of the society’s songs.

When they had sung three or four times, there was silence for a while, as if a pipe were being passed. Then all came out and made the rounds a second time, to see if the work of cleaning was done and to hurry up the laggards. The village was all cleaned before noon; but some of the women got their work done sooner than others.

After the clean-up the village children came out to play in the spaces between the lodges, now swept clean and smooth. It was in these smooth spaces that the boys liked to play at throw sticks, light willow rods which they darted against the ground, whence they bounded to a great distance.

SIXTH CHAPTER

CHILDHOOD GAMES AND BELIEFS

White people seem to think that Indian children never have any play and never laugh. Such ideas seem very funny to me. How can any child grow up without play? I have seen children at our reservation school playing white men’s games—baseball, prisoners’ base, marbles. We Indian children also had games. I think they were better than white children’s games.

I look back upon my girlhood as the happiest time of my life. How I should like to see all my little girl playmates again! Some still live, and when we meet at feasts or at Fourth-of-July camp, we talk of the good times we had when we were children.

My little half sister was my usual playmate. She was two years younger than I, and I loved her dearly. She had a pretty name, Cold Medicine. On our prairies grows a flower with long, yellow root. In old times, if a warrior was running from enemies and became wearied he chewed a bit of the root and rubbed it on his eyelids. It made his eyes and tongue feel cold and kept him awake. The flower for this reason was called cold medicine. When my father spoke my sister’s name, it made him think of this flower and of the many times he had bravely gone out with war parties.

For playgrounds my little sister and I had the level spaces between the lodges or the ground under the corn stage, in sunny weather; and the big, roomy floor of the earth lodge, if it rained or the weather were chill. We liked, too, to play in the lodge in the hot days of the Cherry moon; for it was cool inside, never hot and stuffy like a white man’s house. In the fall, when the air was frosty, the sun often shone, and we could play in the big yellow sunspot that fell on the floor through the smoke hole.

We liked to play at housekeeping, especially in the warm spring days, when we had returned from winter camp and could again play out-ofdoors. With the help of the neighbors’ children, we fetched long forked sticks. These we stacked like a tepee frame and covered with robes that we borrowed. To this play tent we brought foods and had a feast.

Sometimes little boys joined in our play; and then it was like real housekeeping. We girls chose each a little boy for husband. To my little husband I said, “Old man, get your arrows, and go kill some buffaloes. We are hungry. Go at once!”

My little husband hastened to his mother and told her our needs. She laughed and gave him a boiled buffalo tongue; or perhaps pemmican, dried meat pounded fine and mixed with marrow fat. This and the foods which the other little husbands fetched us, we girls laid on fresh, clean grass that we pulled. Then we sat down to feast, the little girls on one side of the fireplace, the little boys on the other, just as we had seen men and women sit when they feasted. Only there really was no fireplace. We just made believe there was.

In summer, my little sister and I often went to the river for wet clay, which we modeled into figures. There is a smooth, blue clay found in places at the water’s edge, very good for modeling. We liked best to make human figures, man, woman, or little child. We dried them in the shade, else the sun cracked them. I fear they were not very beautiful. When we made a mud man, we had to give him three legs to make him stand up.

I had a doll, woven of rushes, that Turtle made me. It really was not a doll, but a cradle, such as Indian women used for carrying a small child. In winter I had my deer-skin doll, with the beads for eyes. My grandmother had made me a little bed for my dolls. The frame was of willows, and it was covered with gopher skins, tanned and sewed together. In this little bed my sister and I used to put our dollies to sleep.

We had a game of ball much like shinny. It was a woman’s game, but we little girls played it with hooked sticks. We also had a big, soft ball, stuffed with antelope hair, which we would bounce in the air with the foot. The game was to see how long a girl could bounce the ball without letting it touch the ground. Some girls could bounce it more than a hundred times. It was lots of fun.

We coasted in winter, on small sleds made of buffalo ribs; but coasting on the snow was rather for boys and older girls. There was another kind of coaster that we girls liked. A buffalo skin has the hair lying backwards, towards the flanks. I would borrow a skin of my mothers and tie a thong through two of the stake holes at the head or neck, to draw it by. Such a skin made a good coaster even in summer on a steep hillside; for, laid head forward, it slid smoothly over the soft grass.

Girls of thirteen or fourteen were fond of playing at “tossing in a blanket,” or “foot-moving,” as we called it. There were fifteen or twenty players. A newly dried skin was borrowed, one that was scraped clean of hair. There were always holes cut in the edges of a hide, to stake it to the ground while drying. Into each hole a small hard wood stick was now thrust and twisted around, for a handle.

Along the ditch at the edge of the village grew many tall weeds. The players pulled armfuls of these and made them into a pile. They laid the hide on this pile of weeds; and, with a player at every one of the stick handles, they stretched the hide taut.

A girl now lay downward on the hide. With a quick pull, the others tossed her into the air, when she was expected to come down on her feet, to be instantly tossed again. The game was to see how many times she could be tossed without falling. A player was often tossed ten or more times before she lost her balance. Each time, as she came down, she kept turning in one direction, right or left. When at last she fell, the pile of weeds saved her from any hurt.

We called the game eetseepadahpakee,[7] or foot-moving, from the player’s habit of wriggling her feet when in the air. We thought this wriggling, or foot moving, a mark of skill.

[7] ēēt sēē pä däh´ pä kēē

But, if my mothers let me play much of the time, they did not forget to teach me good morals. “We are a family that has not a bad woman in it,” they used to say. “You must try hard not to be naughty.”

My grandfather Big Cloud often talked to me. “My granddaughter,” he would say, “try to be good, so that you will grow up to be a good woman. Do not quarrel nor steal. Do not answer anyone with bad words. Obey your parents, and remember all that I say.”

When I was naughty my mothers usually scolded me; for they were kind women and did not like to have me punished. Sometimes they scared me into being good, by saying, “The owl will get you.” This saying had to do with an old custom that I will explain.

Until I was about nine years old, my hair was cut short, with a tuft on either side of my head, like the horns of an owl. Turtle used to cut my hair. She used a big, steel knife. In old times, I have heard, a thin blade of flint was used. I did not like Turtle’s hair cutting a bit, because she pulled.

“Why do you cut my hair, grandmother?” I asked.

“It is our custom,” Turtle answered. “I will tell you the story.”

“Thousands and thousands of years ago, there lived a great owl. He was strong and had magic power, but he was a bad bird. When the hunters killed buffaloes, the owl would turn all the meat bitter, so that the Indians could not eat it, and so they were always hungry.

“On this earth then lived a young man called the Sun’s Child; for the sun was his father. He heard how the Indians were made hungry, and came to help them.

“The owl lived in a hollow tree that had a hole high up in its trunk. The Sun’s Child climbed the tree, and when the owl put his head out of the hole, he caught the bird by the neck.

“‘Do not let the Sun’s Child kill me!’ the owl cried to the Indians. ‘I have been a bad bird; now I will be good and I will help your children.

“‘As soon as a child is old enough to understand you when you speak to him, cut his hair with two tufts like my own. Do this to make him look like an owl; and I will remember and make the child grow up strong and healthy. If a child weeps or will not obey, say to him, “The owl will get you!” This will frighten him, so that he will obey you.’”

Plate I.—Offering food before the shrine of the Big Birds’ ceremony

It was thus my mothers frightened me when I was naughty. Red Blossom would call, “O owl, I have a bad daughter. Come.”