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Title: Waheenee—An Indian Girl's Story
Author: Wilson, Gilbert Livingstone, Waheenee
Language: English
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STORY ***
[Illustration: 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
Chapter Page
I A Little Indian Girl 7
II Winter Camp 15
III The Buffalo-skin Cap 21
IV Story Telling 29
V Life in an Earth Lodge 44
VI Childhood Games 54
VII Kinship, Clan Cousins 66
VIII Indian Dogs 73
IX Training a Dog 81
X Learning to Work 90
XI Picking June Berries 99
XII The Corn Husking 109
XIII Marriage 117
XIV A Buffalo Hunt 127
XV The Hunting Camp 138
XVI Homeward Bound 149
XVII An Indian Papoose 156
XVIII The Voyage Home 165
Glossary of Indian Words 177
Explanatory Notes 178
SUPPLEMENT:—
How to Make an Indian Camp 183
Hints to Young Campers 187
Indian Cooking 188
Editor’s Note 189
[Illustration]
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.”
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
“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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.”
[Illustration]
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.”
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
“‘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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
“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.
[Illustration]
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.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.”
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.”
[Illustration]
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.’”
[Illustration: 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.”
“I will be good, I will be good!” I would cry, as I ran to my father. I
knew he would not let the owl hurt me.
My old grandfather, Missouri River, taught me of the gods. He was a
medicine man and very holy, and I was rather afraid of him. He used
to sit on the bench behind the fire, to smoke. He had a long pipe, of
polished black stone. He liked best to smoke dried tobacco blossoms
which he first oiled with buffalo fat.
[Illustration]
One day, as he sat smoking, I asked him, “Grandfather, who are the
gods?”
Missouri River took a long pull at his pipe, blew the smoke from his
nostrils, and put the stem from his mouth. “Little granddaughter,” he
answered, “this earth is alive and has a soul or spirit, just as you
have a spirit. Other things also have spirits, the sun, clouds, trees,
beasts, birds. These spirits are our gods. We pray to them and offer
them food, that they may help us when we have need.”
“Do the spirits eat the food?” I asked. I had seen my grandfather set
food before the two skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony.
“No,” said my grandfather, “They eat the food’s spirit; for the food
has a spirit as have all things. When the gods have eaten of its
spirit, we often take back the food to eat ourselves.”
“How do we know there are gods, grandfather?” I asked.
“They appear to us in our dreams. That is why the medicine man fasts
and cuts his flesh with knives. If he fasts long, he will fall in a
vision. In this vision the gods will come and talk with him.”
“What are the gods like?” I asked.
“Like beings that live on this earth. Some are as men. Others are as
birds, or beasts, or even plants and other things. Not all the gods are
good. Some seek to harm us. The good gods send us buffaloes, and rain
to make our corn grow.”
“Do they send us thunder?” I asked. There had been a heavy storm the
day before.
“The thunder bird god sends us thunder,” said my grandfather. “He is
like a great swallow, with wings that spread out like clouds. Lightning
is the flash of his eyes. His scream makes the thunder.
“Once in Five Villages,” my grandfather went on, “there lived a brave
man who owned a gun. One day a storm blew up. As the man sat in his
lodge, there came a clap of thunder and lightning struck his roof,
tearing a great hole.
“This did not frighten the man at all. Indeed, it angered him. He
caught up his gun and fired it through the hole straight into the sky.
‘You thunder bird,’ he shouted, ‘stay away from my lodge. See this gun.
If you come, I will shoot at you again!’”
My grandfather paused to fill his pipe. “That was a brave man,” he said
as he reached for a coal. “Perhaps the thunder bird loves brave men,
and did not harm him. But it is not well to provoke the gods. My little
granddaughter should never laugh at them nor speak of them lightly.”
My grandfather spoke very solemnly.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SEVENTH CHAPTER
KINSHIP, CLAN COUSINS
We Hidatsas do not reckon our kin as white men do. If a white man
marries, his wife is called by his name; and his children also, as
Tom Smith, Mary Smith. We Indians had no family names. Every Hidatsa
belonged to a clan; but a child, when he was born, became a member of
his mother’s, not his father’s clan.
An Indian calls all members of his clan his brothers and sisters. The
men of his father’s clan he calls his clan fathers; and the women, his
clan aunts. Thus I was born a member of the _Tsistska_[8], or Prairie
Chicken clan, because my mother was a _Tsistska_. My father was a
member of the _Meedeepahdee_,[9] or Rising Water clan. Members of the
_Tsistska_ clan are my brothers and sisters; but my father’s clan
brothers, men of the _Meedeepahdee_, are my clan fathers, and his clan
sisters are my clan aunts.
[8] Tsïst´ skä
[9] Mēē dēē päh´ dēē
These relations meant much to us Indians. Members of a clan were bound
to help one another in need, and thought the gods would punish them if
they did not. Thus, if my mother was in need, members of the _Tsistska_
clan helped her. If she was hungry, they gave her food. If her child
was naughty, my mother called in a _Meedeepahdee_ to punish him, a clan
father, if the child was a boy; if a girl, a clan aunt; for parents did
not punish their own children. Again, when my father died, his clan
fathers and clan aunts it was, who bore him to the burial scaffold and
prayed his ghost not to come back to trouble the villagers.
Another clan relative is _makutsatee_,[10] or clan cousin. I reckon
as my clan cousins all members of my tribe whose fathers are my
clan fathers. Thus, my mother, I have said, was a Prairie Chicken;
my father, a member of the _Meedeepahdee_, or Rising Water, clan.
Another woman, of what clan does not matter, is also married to a
_Meedeepahdee_; her children will be my clan cousins, because their
father, being a _Meedeepahdee_, is my clan father.
[10] mä kṳt´ sä tēē
Clan cousins had a custom that will seem strange to white people. We
Indians are proud, and it makes our hearts sore if others make mock
of us. In olden times if a man said to his friend, even in jest, “You
are like a dog,” his friend would draw his knife to fight. I think we
Indians are more careful of our words than white men are.
[Illustration]
But it is never good for a man not to know his faults, and so we let
one’s clan cousins tease him for any fault he had. Especially was
this teasing common between young men and young women. Thus a young
man might be unlucky in war. As he passed the fields where the village
women hoed their corn, he would hear some mischievous girl, his clan
cousin, singing a song taunting him for his ill success. Were any one
else to do this, the young man would be ready to fight; but, seeing
that the singer was his clan cousin, he would laugh and call out, “Sing
louder cousin, sing louder, that I may hear you.”
I can best explain this custom by telling you a story:
Story of Snake Head-Ornament
A long time ago, in one of our villages at Knife river, lived a man
named _Mapuksaokihe_,[11] or Snake Head-Ornament. He was a great
medicine man. In a hole in the floor of his earth lodge, there lived a
bull snake. Snake Head-Ornament called the bull snake “father.”
[11] Mä pṳk´ sä ō kēē hĕ
When Snake Head-Ornament was invited to a feast, he would paint his
face, wrap himself in his best robe and say, “Come, father; let us go
and get something to eat.”
The bull snake would creep from his hole, crawl up the man’s body and
coil about his neck, thrusting his head over the man’s forehead; or he
would coil about the man’s head like the headcloth of a hunter, with
his head thrust forward, as I have said.
Bearing the snake thus on his head, Snake Head-Ornament would enter the
lodge where the feast was held and sit down to eat. The snake, however,
did not eat of the food that Snake Head-Ornament ate. The snake’s food
was scrapings of buffalo hides that the women of the lodge fed him.
When Snake Head-Ornament came home, he would say to the bull snake,
“Father, get off.” And the snake would crawl down the man’s body and
into his den again.
Snake Head-Ornament fasted and had a vision. In the vision his gods, he
thought, bade him go to war. He made up a war party and led it against
enemies on the Yellowstone river. The party not only killed no enemies,
but lost three of their own men; and they thought Snake Head-Ornament
was to blame for it. “You said your prayers were strong,” they said;
“and we have lost three men! Your gods have not helped us.”
Snake Head-Ornament thought his gods were angry with him; and when he
came home he went about crying and mourning and calling upon his gods
to give him another vision. “Pity me, gods,” he cried, “make me strong
that I may bring home scalps and horses.” He was a brave man, and his
bad fortune made his heart sore.
[Illustration]
In those days, when a man mourned he cut off his hair, painted his body
with white clay, and threw away his moccasins. He also cut his flesh
with a knife or some sharp weapon. Now when a man sought a vision from
the gods, he wept and mourned, that the gods might have pity on him;
and for this he went away from the village, alone, into the hills. So
it happened, that Snake Head-Ornament, on his way to the hills, went
mourning and crying past a field where sat a woman, his clan cousin, on
her watch-stage. Seeing him, she began a song to tease him:
He said, “I am a young bird!”
If a young bird, he should be in his nest;
But he comes here looking gray,
And wanders about outside the village!
He said, “I am a young snake!”
If a young snake, he should be in the hills among the red buttes;
But he comes here looking gray and crying,
And wanders aimlessly about!
When the woman sang, “He comes here looking gray,” she meant that the
man was gray from the white-clay paint on his body.
Snake Head-Ornament heard her song; but, knowing she was his clan
sister, he cried out to her: “Sing louder, cousin! You are right; let
my ‘fathers’ hear what you say. I do not know if they will feel shame
or not, but the bull snake and the bald eagle both called me ‘son’!”
What he meant was that the bull snake and the bald eagle were his dream
gods. That is, they had appeared to him in a dream, and promised to
help him as they would a son, when he went to war. In her song, the
woman taunted him with this. If she had not been his clan cousin, he
would have been beside himself with anger. As it was, he but laughed
and did not hurt her.
But the woman had cause for singing her song. Years before, when Snake
Head-Ornament was a very young man, he went out with a war party and
killed a Sioux woman. When he came home the people called him brave,
and made much of him; and he grew quite puffed up now that all looked
up to him.
Not long after, he was made a member of the Black Mouth society.
It happened one day, that the women were building a fence of logs,
set upright around the village, to defend it from enemies. Snake
Head-Ornament, as a member of the Black Mouths, was one of the men
overseeing the work. This woman, his clan cousin, was slow at her task;
and, to make her move more briskly, Snake Head-Ornament came close to
her and fired off his gun just past her knees. She screamed, but seeing
it was Snake Head-Ornament who had shot, and knowing he was her clan
cousin, she did not get angry. Nevertheless, she did not forget! And,
years after, she had revenge in her taunting song.
• • • • •
Young men going out with a war party had to take much chaffing from
older warriors who were clan cousins. My brother was once out with a
party of fifty, many of them young men. They were fleeing from a big
camp of Sioux and had ridden for two days. The second night one of the
younger men, a mere lad, fell asleep as he rode his pony. An older
warrior, his clan cousin, fired a gun past the lad’s ear. “Young man,”
he cried, “you sleep so soundly that only thunder can waken you!” The
rest of the party thought the warrior’s words a huge joke.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
EIGHTH CHAPTER
INDIAN DOGS
In old times we Indian people had no horses, and not many families of
my tribe owned them when I was a little girl. But I do not think there
ever was a time when we Hidatsas did not own dogs. We trained them to
draw our tent poles and our loaded travois. We never used dogs to chase
deer, as white men do.
Our Hidatsa dogs—the breed we owned when I was a little girl—had broad
faces, with gentle, knowing eyes; erect, pointed ears; and tails
curling, never trailing like a wolf’s tail. They had soft silky hair,
gray, black, or spotted red or white. All had stout, heavy legs. I
think this sturdiness was because we saved only dogs of stout build to
drag our travois.
The Teton Sioux, who lived south of us, owned dogs like ours, but of
slenderer build and legs. They liked these dogs, I think, because they
were speedier; for the Sioux were hunters, always moving from place to
place.
Almost every family in Like-a-Fishhook village owned two or more dogs;
and, as there were about seventy lodges in the village, our dogs made
a large pack. The dogs knew every man and child in the village, and
being, besides, well trained, seldom bit anyone. But they were quick to
wind a stranger. A visitor from another tribe was sure to be beset by a
troop of dogs, growling and barking at his heels.
The dogs had one habit I liked. Every evening about bedtime—and bedtime
for a little Indian girl was early—some dog was sure to start up,
_wu-wu-wu!_ And all the others would join in, even the little puppies.
I used to lie in my bed and listen to them.
About midnight, the barking would start up again, especially if there
was a moon, and again a little before daylight; but I was usually
asleep at these hours.
[Illustration]
In daytime lookouts were always on the roofs of some of the lodges
watching if enemies or buffaloes were about. If they saw our hunters,
with meat, coming home over the prairie, these lookouts would cry out,
“_Hey-da-ey!_”[12] And the dogs, knowing what the cry meant, would
join in with “_wu-u-u-u_.”[13] They liked fresh buffalo meat no less
than the Indians.
[12] He̱y dä e̱y´
[13] Wṳ-ṳ-ṳ
But the greatest excitement was when enemies were seen. The lookouts
then cried, “_Ahahuts[14]—they come against us!_” Warriors, on hearing
the cry, seized weapons and ran out of their lodges, yelling shrilly.
The chiefs sprang for their ponies, twisting lariats into the ponies’
mouths for bridles. Medicine men chanted holy songs, and women ran
about calling to their children. But above all rose the barking of the
dogs, every beast joining in the hubbub.
[14] A hä hṳts´
One day, after the midday meal—I think I was then eight years old—old
Turtle went down to the river and fetched an armful of dry willows.
They were about four feet long and as thick as a child’s wrist; some
were forked at the top. She set them in a circle, with tops together
like a tepee, at one side of the lodge entrance near the place where
the dogs slept.
“What are you doing, grandmother?” I asked.
Turtle did not answer my question. “I want to get some dry grass,” she
said. “Come and help me.”
We went out to a place in the hills where was some long, dead grass.
Turtle pulled a big armful, piling it on her robe which she spread on
the ground. She drew the corners of the robe together, slung the bundle
over her shoulder and we came back to the village.
She laid the grass thickly over the sides of the little tepee, leaning
chunks of wood against it to keep the grass in place. She left a door,
or opening, in front; and she even bound a stick over the door, like
the pole over the door of a hunting lodge. Last, she put grass inside,
as if for a bed.
[Illustration]
“Grandmother, what _are_ you doing?” I begged; but she led me into the
lodge, telling me nothing.
I was awakened early the next morning by dogs barking on the roof. As I
lay listening, I thought I heard a faint whining outside. It seemed to
come from the place where the little grass tepee stood.
I fell asleep, and awoke a second time to see Red Blossom fanning the
fire with a goose wing. Breakfast was soon ready, of fresh boiled
buffalo meat. The hunters had come in only the night before, and they
had brought a fresh side-and-ribs for a present to my father.
After the meal I saw Turtle gather up the scraps of meat into a wooden
bowl. “Come,” she said, leading me out of the lodge.
She stopped before the tepee, and thrust the bowl of scraps within.
Again I heard the faint whining. I dropped to my knees and looked in.
There I saw our best dog, the pet of us all; and beside her lay four
little puppies.
“_Eh, sukkeets!_”[15] I cried, “Oh, good!” And I drew the puppies out
one by one, to cuddle them. The mother dog whined, and raised her eyes
to me. She was a gentle dog and did not snap at my hand.
[15] sŭk´ kēēts
[Illustration]
I do not know whether I or the puppies’ mother cuddled them more, the
next few days. One puppy I came to love dearly. He was a wriggling
little thing, with a bob tail for all the world like a rabbit’s,
except that it hung down. There were ten or more bobtailed dogs in
the village all of them born so. My puppy was black, so I named him
_Sheepeesha_,[16] or Blackie.
[16] Shēē´ pēē shä
It must have been a funny sight to see me take my puppy out for a walk.
Stooping, I would lay the puppy between my shoulders and draw my tiny
robe up over his back; and I would walk off proud as any Indian mother
of her new babe. The old mother dog would creep half out of her kennel,
following me with her gentle eyes. I was careful not to go out of her
sight.
When the puppies were ten days old my grandmother brought in some fresh
sage, the kind we Indians use in a sweat lodge. She laid the sage by
the fireplace and fetched in the puppies, barring the door so that
the mother dog could not come in. I could hear the poor dog whining
pitifully.
“What are you going to do, grandmother?” I asked.
“I am going to smoke the puppies.”
“Why, grandmother?” I cried.
“Because the puppies are old enough to eat cooked meat, for their
teeth have come through. The sage is a sacred plant. Its smoke will
make the puppies hungry, so that they will eat.”
While she was speaking, she opened my little pet’s jaws. Sure enough,
four white teeth were coming through the gums.
Turtle raked some coals from the ashes, and laid on them a handful of
the sage. A column of thick white smoke arose upward to the smoke hole.
My grandmother took my puppy in her hands and held his head in the
smoke. The poor puppy struggled and choked. Thick spittle, like suds,
came out of his mouth. I was frightened, and thought he was going to
die.
“The smoke will make the puppy healthy,” said Turtle. “Now let us see
if he will grow up strong, to carry my little granddaughter’s tent.”
She lifted the puppy, still choking, from the floor, and let him fall
so that he landed on his feet. The puppy was still young and weak, and
he was strangling; but his little legs stiffened, and he stood without
falling.
“Hey, hey,” laughed my grandmother. “This is a strong dog! He will grow
up to carry your tent.” For in old times, when traveling, we Hidatsas
made our dogs drag our tents on poles, like travois.
Turtle tried the other three puppies. One, not as strong as the
rest, fell on his side. “This dog will not grow up strong,” said my
grandmother. “I will give him to my neighbor, who asks for one.”
She now lifted a clay pot out of the ashes, and from it poured
something into a flat bowl; corn mush, I think it was, boiled with
buffalo fats. She set the bowl before the puppies. They quickly lapped
up the mush, with funny red tongues. My little black puppy even gulped
down a lump of fat.
[Illustration]
Turtle laughed. “I told you your puppy is strong,” she cried. “He will
soon grow up to carry your tent. But to grow, our puppies must be fed.
It will be your work to feed them. See they do not starve.”
But, if I had to feed the puppies, my grandmother also helped. Indeed,
the whole family watched to see that they had enough. If fresh meat
was brought in, we always boiled some and gave to the puppies. We did
not give them raw meat. “It is not good for puppies. It will make them
sick,” said Turtle.
But, as the puppies grew up, we began to feed them raw meat. My
grandmother sometimes boiled corn for them, into a coarse mush. They
were fond of this. As they grew older, any food that turned sour or was
unfit for the family to eat was given me for my doggies. They ate it
greedily. It did not seem to harm them.
Sometimes a deer or elk was killed, that was poor in flesh. Such a
carcass was cut up and given to the dogs of the village, and of course
mine got their share.
When several buffaloes were killed, the hunters often could not carry
all the meat home, and took only the best cuts. The next day any one
who wanted, could go out and take the cast-away pieces for her dogs.
Then, there were parts that we always threw away or gave to the dogs.
The tough, outside meat of a buffalo’s hams we cut off and saved for
the dogs. The inside meat, next the bone, we thought our very best.
Hunters were fond of roasting it before the fire, on two stones.
Even in famine times we did not forget our dogs; but we sometimes had
only soft bones to give them that had been broken for boiling. The dogs
gnawed these, and so got a little food.
We Hidatsas loved our good dogs, and were kind to them.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
NINTH CHAPTER
TRAINING A DOG
Autumn twice came around, and my puppy had grown into a romping dog.
In the moon of Yellow Leaves, my tribe went again into winter camp. We
returned to Like-a-Fishhook village rather early in the spring. Patches
of snow lay on the ground, and the ice was still firm on the Missouri
when we crossed. We reached the village in midafternoon.
My father had two pack horses loaded with our stuff and our dogs
dragged well-laden travois. While my mothers were unpacking, my father
made a fire. He drew his flint and steel, and with a bit of soft,
rotten wood for tinder struck a spark. In olden times the Hidatsas made
fire with two sticks. “I saw very old men make fire thus, when I was a
lad,” my grandfather once told me. I never saw it done myself.
Small Ankle wrapped the spark, caught in the tinder, in a little bunch
of dry grass, and waved it in the air until the grass was ablaze. He
had raked together some bits of charcoal in the fireplace and on them
laid a few dry-wood splinters. To these he held the burning grass and
soon had a fire.
There was a little firewood in the lodge, left from the previous
autumn, but not enough to keep the fire going long. As my mothers were
still unpacking, my father offered to go out and get wood for the
night. Getting wood, we thought, was woman’s work; but my father was a
kind man, willing to help his wives.
From the saddle of one of his horses Small Ankle took a rawhide lariat,
and to one end fastened a short stick. There were some cottonwoods
under the river bank, not far from the village. Into one of the largest
trees Small Ankle threw his lariat until the stick caught in some dead
branches overhead. A sharp pull broke off the branches. My father
gathered them up and bore them to the lodge.
There were logs and dead wood lying along the river, but they were wet
with the snows. My father knew the dead branches in the trees would be
dried by the winds. He wanted dry wood to kindle a quick fire.
The next morning after we had eaten, Red Blossom took her ax, and,
dragging a travois from its place against the fire screen, led the way
out of the lodge. Strikes-Many Woman followed her. Our biggest dog,
lying outside, saw them coming. He got up, shaking himself, wagging
his tail, and barking _wu-wu-wu!_ Our dogs were always ready to be
harnessed. They liked to go to the woods, knowing they would be fed
well afterwards.
This, our best dog, was named _Akeekahee_,[17] or Took-from-Him. He
belonged to Red Blossom. A woman owning a dog would ask some brave
man of her family to name him for her; and Red Blossom had asked my
grandfather, Big Cloud, to name her dog. Once an enemy had stolen his
horse, but Big Cloud gave chase and retook his horse from that bad
enemy. For this, he named the dog Took-from-Him.
[17] Ȧ kēē´ kä hēē
[Illustration]
My mothers harnessed their dogs, four in number and started off. They
returned a little after midday; first, Red Blossom, with a great pack
of wood on her back; after her, Strikes-Many Woman; then the four dogs,
marching one behind the other, Took-from-Him in the lead. Each dog
dragged a travois loaded with wood.
My mothers dropped their loads before the lodge entrance. The dogs
were unhitched; and, while old Turtle fed them, Strikes-Many Woman
carried the wood into the lodge and piled it by the corral, where it
was handy to the fire.
I was eager to have my dog broken to harness and begged my grandmother
to make a travois for him. “I will,” she said, “but wait another moon.
Your dog will then be fed fat, after the long winter. A dog should be
two years old, and strong, when he is broken. To work a dog too young
or when he is weak will hurt his back.”
A month after this, my mothers came home one afternoon from
woodgathering, dragging each a cottonwood pole about eight feet long.
They peeled these poles bare of bark, and laid them up on the corn
stage to dry.
“What are the poles for?” I asked.
“They are for your travois,” said my grandmother. “Your dog
_Sheepeesha_ is now old enough to work; and my little granddaughter,
too, must learn to be useful.”
I was ready to cry out and dance, when I heard these words of my
grandmother; and I thought I could never, never wait until those poles
dried. The heavy ladder we used for mounting the stage lay on the
ground when not in use. I was too little to lift it, to climb up to the
poles; but I went every day to stand below and gaze at them longingly.
One afternoon my grandmother fetched the poles into the lodge. “They
are dry now,” she said. “I will make the travois frame.”
With her big knife she hacked the greater ends of the poles flat, so
that they would run smooth on the ground. The small ends she crossed
for the joint, cutting a notch in each to make them fit. She bound the
joint with strips of the big tendon in a buffalo’s neck that we Indians
call the _eetsuta_[18]. These strips drew taut as they dried, making
the joint firm.
[18] ēēt sṳ´ tä
Turtle now drew a saddle, or cushion, over the poles just under the
joint, sewing it down with buckskin thongs. This saddle was to keep the
dog from fretting his shoulders against the poles.
The hoop for the basket was of ash. My father webbed it. He cut a
long, thin thong from the edges of a hide, and soaked it to make it
soft. Taking some wet paint in his palm, he drew the thong through it,
thus painting it a bright red. He laced the thong over the hoop and my
grandmother bound the basket in place.
[Illustration]
The harness was of two pieces: a collar, to go around the dog’s
neck; and a breast thong, that was drawn across his chest and through a
loop in the saddle, was lapped once or twice around one of the travois
poles, and was finally carried under the dog’s body to the other pole,
where it was made fast.
I could hardly wait to eat my breakfast the next morning, for my
mothers had promised to take me with them to gather wood. “And we are
going to begin training your dog to-day,” they told me.
I knew a dog should be fed before he was harnessed, and I saved half my
breakfast meat to give to mine. Owning a dog, and invited to go with
my mothers to get wood, I felt that in spite of my girlish years I was
almost a woman now.
Breakfast ended, Red Blossom fetched the new travois and laid it on
my dog’s back. He looked up, puzzled, then sank to the ground and lay
wagging his tail from side to side, sweeping a clean place in the dust.
Red Blossom bound the collar about his neck, and drew and fastened the
breast thong. While she was doing this I gently patted my dog’s head.
“_Nah!_” said Red Blossom, “Come!” But my doggie was a bit frightened.
He twisted about, trying to rid himself of the travois, but only hurt
himself. He looked up at me and whined. Red Blossom tied a thong to
his collar and put the end in my hand. “Lead him,” she said. “He will
follow the other dogs.” She led off, Strikes-Many Woman behind her, and
the dogs followed after, in a line.
I tugged at my dog’s thong, pursing my lips and making a whistling
sound, as Indians do. My doggie understood. He rose to his feet, and,
seeing the other dogs moving off, followed after the last one.
We thus came to the woods, about a mile and a half from the village.
The dogs sank in their tracks, to rest. My mothers searched about for
dead-and-dry wood, which they cut into lengths of two feet or more, and
piled them in the path near the dogs.
When they had enough wood cut, my mothers lifted each travois by its
basket, and turned it so that the dog’s nose was pointed toward the
village; and they loaded each travois with a double armful of wood,
bound to the basket with two thongs. My two mothers then lifted each a
load to her own back, and started to the village.
I did not carry any load myself, as my shoulders were not strong enough
for such heavy work; but I led my dog. Not a very big load was put on
him, as it was his first. I called to him, tugging gently at the thong.
Seeing the other dogs ahead, he followed willingly.
Old Turtle awaited us at the door. “Grandmother,” I cried joyfully,
“my dog has brought home a load of wood. He did not try to run away.”
Turtle laughed, and helped me unload.
That evening I was sitting by the fire with my good dog, for Red
Blossom had let me bring him into the lodge. Now and then I slipped him
a bit of meat I had saved from my supper. My father had laid some dry
sticks on the fire, and the blaze flickered and rose, flickered and
rose, making post and rafter yellow with its light. Small Ankle sat on
his couch smoking his pipe. Suddenly I heard the clitter of the hollow
hoofs as the lodge door was raised and let fall again. I looked up.
Coyote Eyes, a Ree Indian, was coming around the screen.
“_Hau!_”[19] cried my father, making a place for him on the couch.
Small Ankle was a polite man. He handed his pipe to the Ree, who took
big pulls, blowing the smoke through his nostrils.
[19] Hau (How)
Coyote Eyes gave the pipe back to my father. “That is a fine dog you
have,” he said to me. “I know a story of my tribe about two dogs.”
Being but a little girl, I did not think it proper for me to talk to a
stranger, but my father answered for me, “What is the story?”
“In the beginning, my tribe came out of a cave in the earth,” said
Coyote Eyes. “They journeyed until they came to the Missouri river.
‘Let us go up this river,’ they said, ‘and find a place to build our
villages.’ They were weary of journeying.
[Illustration]
“They had two dogs in the camp. One was black; his name was Death. The
other was white, and her name was Sickness. These dogs were asleep when
the tribe broke camp the next morning. The people were in such haste to
be off that they forgot to waken the dogs.
“The third day after, they saw two great fires sweeping toward them
over the prairie. The women cried out with fear. All thought that they
should die.
“When the fires came near, the people saw that they were the two dogs,
Death and Sickness.
“‘Do not fear,’ said the dogs. ‘Our hearts are not all evil. True, we
will bite you, because you forgot us; but we will also live with you
and be your friends. We will carry your burdens; and when we die, you
shall eat us.’
“The dogs grew old. The white one died, and her skin became the squash.
Now our squashes are of different colors, white, gray, yellow, spotted,
just as are dogs. These squashes we eat. Also we Rees eat dog meat;
for, before he died, the black dog said, ‘You shall eat my flesh.’
“And to this day, when our Ree people sicken and die, they say, ‘We are
bitten by Sickness and Death.’”
My father smiled. “We Hidatsas do not eat dogs,” he said; and then to
me, “Little daughter, it is bedtime.”
I did not always obey my mothers; for, like all little girls, I was
naughty sometimes, but I dared not disobey my father.
I put my dog out of the lodge, and went to bed.
[Illustration]
TENTH CHAPTER
LEARNING TO WORK
My mothers began to teach me household tasks when I was about twelve
years old. “You are getting to be a big girl,” they said. “Soon you
will be a woman, and marry. Unless you learn to work, how will you feed
your family?”
One of the things given me to do was fetching water from the river. No
spring was near our village; and, anyhow, our prairie springs are often
bitter with alkali. But the Missouri river, fed by melting snows of
the Montana mountains, gave us plenty of fresh water. Missouri river
water is muddy; but it soon settles, and is cool and sweet to drink. We
Indians love our big river, and we are glad to drink of its waters, as
drank our fathers.
A steep path led down the bank to the watering place. Down this path,
the village girls made their way every morning to get water for
drinking and cooking. They went in little groups or in pairs. Two
girls, cousins or chums, sometimes swung a freshly filled pail from a
pole on their shoulders.
[Illustration]
But there were few pails of metal in my tribe, when I was a
little girl. I used to fetch water in a clay pot, sometimes in a
buffalo-paunch lining skewered on a stick; but my commonest bucket was
of a buffalo heart skin. When my father killed a buffalo, he took out
the heart skin, and filled it with grass until it dried. This he gave
to Red Blossom, who sewed a little stick on each side of the mouth; and
bound a short stick and sinews between them for handle. Such a bucket
held about three pints. It was a frail looking vessel, but lasted a
long time.
We girls liked to go to the watering place; for, while we were filling
our buckets, we could gossip with our friends. For older girls and
young men it was a place for courtship. A youth, with painted face and
trailing hair switch, would loiter near the path, and smile slyly at
his sweetheart as she passed. She did not always smile back. Sometimes
for long weeks, she held her eyes away, not even glancing at his
moccasins. It was a shy smile that she gave him, at last. Nor did she
talk with her love-boy—as we called him—when others were about. We
should have thought that silly. But he might wait for her at sunset, by
her father’s lodge, and talk with her in the twilight.
But I had other tasks besides fetching water. I learned to cook,
sweep, and sew with awl and sinew. Red Blossom taught me to embroider
with quills of gull and porcupine, dyed in colors. Sometimes I helped
at harder work; gathered drift wood at the river, dressed or scraped
hides, and even helped in our cornfield.
I liked to go with my mothers to the cornfields in planting time, when
the spring sun was shining and the birds singing in the tree tops. How
good it seemed to be out under the open sky, after the long months in
our winter camp! A cottonwood tree stood at a turn of the road to our
field. Every season a pair of magpies built their nest in it. They were
saucy birds and scolded us roundly when we passed. How I used to laugh
at their wicked scoldings!
I am afraid I did not help my mothers much. Like any young girl, I
liked better to watch the birds than to work. Sometimes I chased away
the crows. Our corn indeed had many enemies, and we had to watch that
they did not get our crop. Magpies and crows destroyed much of the
young corn. Crows were fond of pulling up the plants when they were
a half inch or an inch high. Spotted gophers dug up the roots of the
young corn, to nibble the soft seed.
When our field was all planted, Red Blossom used to go back and replant
any hills that the birds had destroyed. Where she found a plant
missing, she dug a little hole with her hand and dropped in a seed, or
I dropped it in for her.
It was hard work, stooping to plant in the hot sun, and Red Blossom
never liked having to go over the field a second time. “Those bad
crows,” she would groan, “they make us much trouble.”
[Illustration]
My grandmother Turtle made scarecrows to frighten away the birds. In
the middle of the field she drove two sticks for legs, and bound two
other sticks to them for arms; on the top, she fastened a ball of
cast-away skins for a head. She belted an old robe about the figure to
make it look like a man. Such a scarecrow looked wicked! Indeed I was
almost afraid of it myself. But the bad crows, seeing the scarecrow
never moved from its place, soon lost their fear, and came back.
In the months of midsummer, the crows did not give us much trouble;
but, as the moon of Cherries drew near, they became worse than ever.
The corn had now begun to ear, and crows and blackbirds came in flocks
to peck open the green ears for the soft kernels. Many families now
built stages in their fields, where the girls and young women of the
household came to sit and sing as they watched that crows and other
thieves did not steal the ripening grain.
We cared for our corn in those days, as we would care for a child; for
we Indian people loved our fields as mothers love their children. We
thought that the corn plants had souls, as children have souls, and
that the growing corn liked to hear us sing, as children like to hear
their mothers sing to them. Nor did we want the birds to come and steal
our corn, after the hard work of planting and hoeing. Horses, too,
might break into the field, or boys might steal the green ears and go
off and roast them.
A watchers’ stage was not hard to build. Four posts, forked at the
tops, upheld beams, on which was laid a floor of puncheons, or split
small logs, at the height of the full grown corn. The floor was about
four feet long by three wide, roomy enough for two girls to sit
together comfortably. Often a soft robe was spread on the floor. A
ladder made of the trunk of a tree rested against the stage. The ladder
had three steps.
A tree was often left standing in the field, to shade the watchers’
stage. If the tree was small and more shade was wanted, a robe was
stretched over three poles leaned against the stage. These poles could
be shifted with the sun.
Girls began to go on the watchers’ stage when about ten or twelve
years of age, and many kept up the custom after they were grown up and
married. Older women, working in the field and stopping to rest, often
went on the stage and sang.
[Illustration]
There was a watchers’ stage in my mothers’ field, where my sister, Cold
Medicine, and I sat and sang; and in the two weeks of the ripening
season we were singing most of the time. We looked upon watching our
field as a kind of lark. We liked to sing, and now and then between
songs we stood up to see if horses had broken into the field or if
any boys were about. Boys of nine or ten years of age were quite
troublesome. They liked to steal the green ears to roast by a fire in
the woods.
I think Cold Medicine and I were rather glad to catch a boy stealing
our corn, especially if he was a clan cousin, for then we could call
him all the bad names we wished. “You bad, bad boy,” we would cry. “You
thief,—stealing from your own relatives! _Nah, nah_,—go away.” This was
enough; no boy stayed after such a scolding.
Most of the songs we sang were love-boy songs, as we called them; but
not all were. One that we younger girls were fond of singing—girls,
that is, of about twelve years of age—was like this:
You bad boys, you are all alike!
Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;
Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;
You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you
have no moccasins!
This song we sang to tease the boys who came to hunt birds in the
near-by woods. Small boys went bird hunting nearly every day. The birds
that a boy snared or shot he gave to his grandparents to roast in the
lodge fire; for, with their well-worn teeth, old people could no longer
chew our hard, dried buffalo meat.
Here is another song; but, that you may understand it, I will explain
to you what _eekupa_[20] means. A girl loved by another girl as her
own sister was called her _eekupa_. I think your word “chum,” as you
explain it, has nearly the same meaning. This is the song:
“My _eekupa_, what do you wish to see?” you said to me.
What I wish to see is the corn silk peeping out of the growing ear;
But what _you_ wish to see is that naughty young man coming!
[20] ēē´ kṳ pä
Here is a song that older girls sang to tease young men of the Dog
Society who happened to be going by:
You young man of the Dog Society, you said to me,
“When I go east with a war party, you will hear news of me how
brave I am!”
I have heard news of you;
When the fight was on, you ran and hid;
And you still think you are a brave young man!
Behold, you have joined the Dog Society;
But I call you just plain _dog_!
Songs that we sang on the watchers’ stage we called _meedaheeka_,[21]
or gardeners’ songs. I have said that many of them were love-boy
songs, and were intended to tease. We called a girl’s sweetheart her
love-boy. All girls, we know, like to tease their sweethearts.
[21] mēē dä´ hēē kä
[Illustration]
At one side of our field Turtle had made a booth, diamond willows
thrust in the ground in a circle, with leafy tops bent over and tied
together. In this booth, my sister and I, with our mothers and old
Turtle, cooked our meals. We started a fire in the booth as soon as we
got to the field, and ate our breakfast often at sunrise. Our food we
had brought with us, usually buffalo meat, fresh or dried. Fresh meat
we laid on the coals to broil. Dried meat we thrust on a stick and held
over the fire to toast.
Sometimes we brought a clay cooking pot, and boiled squashes. We were
fond of squashes and ate many of them. We sometimes boiled green corn
and beans. My sister and I shelled the corn from the cob. We shelled
the beans or boiled them in the pod. My grandmother poured the mess in
a wooden bowl, and we ate with spoons which she made from squash stems.
She would split a stem with her knife and put in a little stick to hold
the split open.
I do not think anything can taste sweeter than a mess of fresh corn and
beans, in the cool morning air, when the birds are twittering and the
sun is just peeping over the tree tops.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ELEVENTH CHAPTER
PICKING JUNE BERRIES
June berry time had come. I was now fourteen years, old and had begun
to think myself almost a young woman. Some of the young men even smiled
at me as I came up from the watering place. I never smiled back, for
I thought: “My father is a chief, and I belong to one of the best
families in my tribe. I will be careful whom I choose to be my friends.”
A little north of my father’s, stood the earth lodge of Bear Man’s
family. Bear Man was an eagle hunter. He had magic snares of sacred
hemp plant which he tossed into the air as he prayed to the eagle
spirits. After doing so he was sure to catch many young golden eagles
at his eagle pit. We thought him a great medicine man.
Bear Man had a son named Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing, a straight-limbed,
rather good-looking lad, a year older than myself. Bear Man’s
father died, and Bear Man cut off his long hair in mourning.
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing made a switch of his father’s hair, tastefully
spotting it with little lumps of spruce gum mixed with red ochre. He
looked quite manly, I thought, wearing this switch, in spite of his
fifteen years.
[Illustration]
My father’s earth lodge and Bear Man’s both faced eastward, with the
lodge of Blue Paint’s family standing between; but, as I stood at my
father’s lodge entrance, I could see the flat top of Bear Man’s lodge
over Blue Paint’s roof. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing had joined the Stone
Hammer Society a short while before, and had begun to paint his face
like a young man. He would get up on his father’s roof, painted, and
decked out in hair switch, best leggings, and moccasins, and sing his
society’s songs. He had a fine voice, I thought; and when I went out
with my buck-brush broom to sweep the ground about our lodge entrance,
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing would sing harder than ever. I thought perhaps he
did this so that I would hear him. I was too well-bred to look up at
him, but I did not always hurry to finish my sweeping.
There had been plenty of rain, and the June berry trees were now loaded
with ripe fruit. We Indians set great store by these berries, and
almost every family dried one or more sackfuls for winter. June berries
are sweet, and, as we had no sugar, we were fond of them.
We were sitting one evening at our supper. Red Blossom had gone into
the woods earlier in the day and fetched home some ripe June berries
which we were eating. Perhaps that is why we ended our meal with
our kettle half-full of boiled meat. “We will save this meat until
morning,” Red Blossom said. “We must breakfast early, for Strikes-Many
Woman and I are going with a party to pick June berries. Our daughter
may go with us, if she will.”
I was quite happy when I heard this. I had seen my two mothers getting
ready their berry sacks; and, looking over to the bench where they lay,
I now saw that a small sack had been laid out for me.
Red Blossom dipped her fingers into the kettle for a lump of fat and
continued: “The mother of that young man, Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing, said
to me to-day, ‘If your daughter goes berrying to-morrow, my son wishes
to go with her. He will take his bow and keep off enemies.”
I did not blush, for we Indian girls had dark skins and painted our
cheeks; but I felt my heart jump. I looked down at the floor, then got
up and went about my work, humming a song as I did so; for I thought,
“I am going berrying in the morning.” I felt quite grown-up to know
that a young man wanted to go berrying with me.
[Illustration]
We were off the next morning before the sun was up. I walked with my
mothers and the other women. The men went a little ahead, armed, some
with guns, others with bows. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing walked behind the
men. On his back I saw a handsome otter-skin quiver, full of arrows.
I felt safer to see those arrows. Enemies might be lurking anywhere
in the woods, ready to capture us or take our scalps. We Indian women
dared not go far into the woods without men to protect us.
At the woods the men joined us, and our party broke up into little
groups, the older men helping their wives, and the younger men
their sweethearts. I made my way to a clump of June berry trees
bent nearly to the ground with fruit. I did not look to see if
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing was following me. I thought, “If he wants to
help me, he may; but I shall not ask him.” I spread a skin under the
branches, and I was looking for a stout stick when I saw my boy friend
breaking off the laden branches and piling them on the skin, ready to
be beaten.
I sat on the ground and with my stick beat off the berries.
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing fetched me fresh branches, and in an hour or two
I had enough berries to fill my sack. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing’s arrows
lay at my feet. Once, when a near-by bush stirred, my boy friend leaped
for his bow and laid an arrow on the string; but it was the wind, I
guess.
[Illustration]
All the time that we worked together Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing and I spoke
not a word. Older couples, I knew, talked together, when they thought
of marrying; but I was a young girl yet and did not want to be bothered
with a husband.
When my sack was filled, I tied it shut and slung it on my back by my
packing strap. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing laid some sweet smelling leaves
under the sack that the juices from the ripe berries might not ooze
through and stain my dress.
I am sorry to say that I am not sure I even thanked
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing for all he did to help me.
I walked back to the village with the women as I had come. Ahead of us
walked a young woman named Pink Blossom, with her chin in the air as
if she were angry. The older women, coming after her, were laughing
and slyly jesting with one another. I asked my mothers what it was all
about.
It seems there was an old man in our party named Old Bear, whose wife
had died. He wanted to marry again and smiled at Pink Blossom whenever
she passed him; but she did not like Old Bear, and she turned her eyes
away whenever he came near.
When she came to the June berry woods, Pink Blossom set her sack under
a tree, while she picked berries. Old Bear saw the sack. He folded his
robe under his arm into a kind of pocket, picked it full of berries,
and emptied them into Pink Blossom’s sack.
This vexed Pink Blossom. She went to her sack and poured Old Bear’s
berries out on the ground. “I do not want that old man to smile at me,”
she told the other women.
It was because the women were laughing at her and Old Bear, that Pink
Blossom walked ahead with her chin in the air. The others were having a
good deal of fun with one another at her expense.
“I think Pink Blossom did wrong to waste the berries,” said one, a clan
cousin. “If she did not want them herself, she should have given them
back to Old Bear, for him to eat.”
“Old Bear’s is a sad case,” said Elk Woman. “But I knew a man in a
worse case.”
“Tell us of it,” said Red Blossom.
“Years ago,” said Elk Woman, “I went berrying with some others on the
other side of the Missouri. In the party was a young man named Weasel
Arm. He was a good singer, and he liked to sing so that his sweetheart
could hear his voice. His sweetheart was also in the party. Weasel Arm
helped her fill her sack; and when she went back with the other women
and they were waiting for some that had not yet come in, Weasel Arm lay
down on the grass a little way off and sang, beating time on the stock
of his gun.
“As he lay there he heard some one riding toward him, but thought it
was one of his party. It was a Sioux; and right in the midst of the
song—_poh!_—the Sioux fired, wounding Weasel Arm in the hip. Luckily
the wound was slight, and Weasel Arm sprang for the near-by woods. The
Sioux dared not follow him, for he saw that Weasel Arm had a gun.”
“I do not think Weasel Arm’s case as sad as Old Bear’s,” said one of
the women. “Weasel Arm was wounded in his body, but Old Bear is wounded
in his heart.”
Elk Woman laughed. “Have no fear for Old Bear,” she said. “He is an old
man and has had more than one sweetheart. His heart will soon heal.”
[Illustration]
“But I am sorry for the spilled berries,” she continued. “Pink Blossom
should not waste good berries, even if Old Bear does look like an old
man.”
All laughed at this but Pink Blossom.
“I knew a young woman who once wasted good rose berries, just as Pink
Blossom wasted the June berries,” said Old-Owl Woman.
“Tell us the story,” said one of my mothers.
“When I was a girl,” said Old-Owl Woman, “Ear-Eat, a Crow Indian,
married Yellow Blossom, a Hidatsa girl. They went to live with the
Crows, but after a year they came back to visit our tribe at Five
Villages.
“It was in the fall, when the rose berries are ripe. Now the Crow
Indians like to eat rose berries, and gather them to dry for winter as
we dry squashes. We Hidatsas eat rose berries sometimes, but we never
dry them for winter. We think they are food for wild men.
“Ear-Eat was riding in the woods near our villages, when he found a
thicket of rose bushes bending over with their load of ripe berries.
‘_Ey_,’ he cried, ‘how many berries are here! I never saw it thus in
our Crow country.’ And he got off his horse and began to pick the
berries.
“He had no basket to put them in, so he drew off his leggings, tied the
bottoms shut with his moccasin strings, and, when he had filled the
leggings with berries, he slung them over his horse’s back like a pair
of saddle bags.
“He rode home happy, for he thought, ‘My wife will be glad to see so
many berries.’
“When Yellow Blossom saw her husband riding home without his leggings,
and with the tops of his moccasins loose and flapping, she could
hardly believe her eyes. As she stood staring, Ear-Eat got off his
horse and handed her his bulging leggings. ‘Here, wife,’ he cried,
‘look at these fine berries. Now we shall have something good to eat.’
“The village women, hearing what Ear-Eat said, crowded close to look.
When they saw that his leggings were filled with rose berries, they
cried out with laughter.
“Yellow Blossom was angry. ‘You are crazy,’ she cried to her husband.
‘We Hidatsas raise corn, beans, sunflower seed, and good squashes to
eat. We are not starving, that we must eat rose berries.’
“‘The Crow Indians eat rose berries,’ said Ear-Eat. ‘My mother used to
dry them for winter food.’
“His words but vexed Yellow Blossom more.
“‘I am a Hidatsa woman, not a Crow,’ she cried. ‘We Hidatsas are not
wild people. We live in earth lodges and eat foods from our gardens.
When we go berrying we put our berries into clean baskets, not into our
leggings.’ And she turned the leggings up and poured the rose berries
out on the ground.”
We all laughed at Old-Owl Woman’s story.
“We had other use for rose berries when I was a girl,” said Red
Blossom. “If a young man went at evening to talk with his sweetheart,
he put a ripe rose berry in his mouth to make his breath sweet.”
“I wonder if Old Bear put a rose berry in his mouth,” said Old-Owl
Woman.
“I think he put two rose berries in his mouth,” said Red Blossom,
smiling.
All laughed again but Pink Blossom; she walked on, saying nothing.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TWELFTH CHAPTER
THE CORN HUSKING
After the June berry season came choke-cherries. We did not gather so
big a store of these, but they were harder to prepare for drying. I
can yet see old Turtle, with her gnarled, wrinkled fingers, plying the
crushing stones. She dropped three or four cherries on a round stone
and crushed them with a smaller stone held in her palm. The pulp she
squeezed through her palms into lumps, which she dried in the sun.
And then came the corn harvest, busiest and happiest time of all the
year. It was hard work gathering and husking the corn, but what fun
we had! For days we girls thought of nothing but the fine dresses we
should wear at the husking.
While the ears were ripening my sister and I went every morning to sit
on our watch stage and sing to the corn. One evening we brought home
with us a basketful of the green ears and were husking them by the
fire. My father gathered up the husks and took them out of the lodge. I
wondered why he did so.
“I fed the husks, daughter, to my pack horses,” he said, when he came
back. “To-morrow I go hunting to get meat for the husking.” He had
brought his hunting pony into the lodge, but he had penned his pack
horses for the night under the corn stage.
My two mothers, I knew, were planning a big feast. “We have much corn
to husk,” they said, “and we must have plenty of food, for we do not
want our huskers to go away hungry.”
Small Ankle left us before daybreak. He returned the fourth day
after, about noon, with two deer loaded on his pack horses. “One is
a black-tail,” he told us when he came in the lodge, “a buck that I
killed yesterday in some bad lands by the Little Missouri. He was
hiding in a clump of trees. As I rode near, he winded me and ran out
into the open. I checked my pony, and the buck stopped to look around.
I fired, and he fell; but, when I got off my horse, the buck rose and
tried to push me with his horns. I killed him with my knife.” A wounded
black-tail often tried to fight off the hunters: a white-tail hardly
ever did so.
The next morning we women rose early, and with our baskets hastened to
the cornfield. All day we plucked the ripe ears, bearing them in our
baskets to the center of the field, where we laid them in a long pile.
That night my father and Red Blossom slept on the watchers’ stage, to
see that no horse broke in and trampled our corn pile. There was not
much danger of this. Around the field ran a kind of fence, of willows,
enough to keep out the ponies.
[Illustration]
The rest of us returned to the lodge to make ready for the feast the
next day. Turtle fetched out three great bundles of dried buffalo meat
and piled them on the puncheon bench with the freshly killed deer meat.
Our three kettles were scoured and set by, ready to be taken to the
field.
At nightfall Bear’s Tail went around the village to lodges of our
relatives and friends, and invited the young men to come to our husking.
I was too excited that night to sleep much. Early in the morning my
sister and I rose and went to the river for a dip in its cold waters.
After a hasty breakfast I put on my best dress, of deer skin, with
hoofs hanging like bangles at the edge of the skirt and three rows of
costly elk teeth across the front. Cold Medicine helped me paint my
face, and was careful to rub a little red ochre in the part of my hair.
The sun was just coming over the prairie when we started for the field.
We had loaded our kettles and meat on two pack horses, and old Turtle
led the way. My father and Red Blossom had risen early and eaten
breakfast, and now had a brisk fire going. We put our kettles on, after
filling them with water. In one we put dried, in another fresh, meat;
the third kettle we filled with green corn, late planted for this
purpose. The meat and corn were for our feast.
The sun was three hours high when the huskers came. They were about
thirty in all, young men, except three or four crippled old warriors
who wanted to feast. These were too old to work much, but my father
made them welcome.
The huskers came into the field yelling and singing. We had, indeed,
heard their yells long before we saw them. I think young men all sing
and yell, just because they are young.
My sister and I were already seated at one side of the corn pile, and
the other women joined us. The young men sat down on the opposite side,
and the husking began.
I saw that Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing sat just opposite me. Next to him was
a young man named Red Hand, with grass plumes in his hair. These meant
that he had been in a war party and had been sent out to spy on the
enemy. I saw Red Hand looking at me, and I was glad that I was wearing
my elk teeth dress. “He is a young man,” I thought, “not a boy, like
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing.”
The huskers worked rapidly, stripping off the dry husks with their
hands. The big fine ears they braided in strings, to save for seed.
Smaller ears they tossed into a pile. Big as our corn pile was, it was
husked in about four hours.
[Illustration]
My mothers then served the feast. The huskers were hearty eaters; for,
like all young men, they had good appetites; but we had a big feast of
meat, and even they could not eat all. It was not polite to leave any
of the food, and some had brought sharp sticks on which they skewered
the meat they could not eat, to take home with them.
The feast over, the huskers went to another field, singing and yelling
as they went.
We women had now to busy ourselves carrying in our corn.
We loaded our two pack horses with strings of braided ears, ten strings
to a pony. The smaller ears we bore to the village in our baskets, to
dry on our corn stage before threshing.
In midafternoon there were a few strings of corn still left, and I was
laying them by for the next trip when I heard steps. I looked up and
saw Red Hand coming, leading his pony.
Red Hand did not speak, but he laid my strings of corn on his pony and
started for the village. “He wants to help me take home my corn,” I
thought. A young man did thus for the girl he admired. “Red Hand is
brave, and he owns a pony,” I said to myself; and I forgot all about
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing.
My father returned with the pack horses just as Red Hand was starting
off; and I was stooping to fill my basket, when suddenly there came a
sound, _poh-poh-poh_, as of guns; then yells, and a woman screamed.
Small Ankle sprang for his war pony, which he had left hobbled near the
husking pile.
Our corn fields lay in a strip of flat land skirted by low foot hills;
and now I saw, coming over the hills, a party of Sioux, thirty or
more, mounted, and painted for war. At the edge of the hills they
checked their ponies, and those who had guns began firing down into our
gardens. Many of the Sioux were armed with bows and arrows.
On all sides arose outcries. My brave father dashed by with his ringing
war whoop, _ui, ui, ui_;[22] and after him Red Hand, lashing his pony
and yelling like mad. Red Hand had thrown away my strings of corn, but
I was not thinking of my corn just then.
[22] ṳ ï (pronounced like ōō ēē, but quickly and sharply)
Women and children began streaming past our field to the village. Brave
young men rode between them and our enemies, lest the Sioux dash down
and cut off some straggler. Two lads, on swift ponies, galloped ahead
to rouse the villagers.
Meanwhile my father and others were fighting off the Sioux from the
shelter of some clumps of small trees that dotted the flat: Our enemies
did not fight standing, but galloped and pranced their horses about on
the hillside to spoil our aim.
[Illustration]
Suddenly a Sioux warrior, in trailing eagle-feather bonnet, and mounted
on a beautiful spotted pony, dashed down the hillside toward us, waving
his bow over his head; and from our side I saw Red Hand, gun in hand,
riding to meet him.
As they drew near one another the Sioux swerved, and an arrow, like a
little snake, came curving through the air. Red Hand’s pony stumbled
and fell, the shaft in its throat; but Red Hand, leaping to the ground,
raised his gun and fired. I saw the Sioux drop his bow and ride back
clinging desperately to his pony’s mane. Red Hand put his hand to his
mouth and I heard his _yi-yi-yi-yi-yah_,[23] the yell that a warrior
made when he had wounded an enemy.
[23] yĭ yĭ yĭ yĭ yäh´
On the side toward our village other cries now arose, for the warriors
were coming to our help. The Sioux fled. Our men pursued them, and at
nightfall came back with one scalp.
All that night we danced the scalp dance. A big fire was built. Men and
women painted their faces black and sang glad songs. Old women cried
_a-la-la-la-la!_[24] Young men danced, yelled and boasted of their
deeds. All said that Red Hand was a brave young man and would become a
great warrior.
[24] ä lä lä lä lä´
[Illustration]
The next day I was coming from the watering place with my kettle. Just
ahead of me walked Waving Corn, a handsome girl two years older than I.
Red Hand passed by; shyly I looked up, thinking to see him smile at me.
He was smiling at Waving Corn.
[Illustration]
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
MARRIAGE
And so I grew up, a happy, contented Indian girl, obedient to my
mothers, but loving them dearly. I learned to cook, dress skins,
embroider, sew with awl and sinew, and cut and make moccasins, clothing
and tent covers. There was always plenty of work to do, but I had time
to rest, and to go to see my friends; and I was not given tasks beyond
my strength. My father did the heavy lifting, if posts or beams were
to be raised. “You are young, daughter,” he would say. “Take care you
do not overstrain!” He was a kind man, and helped my mothers and me
whenever we had hard work to do.
For my industry in dressing skins, my clan aunt, Sage, gave me a
woman’s belt. It was as broad as my three fingers, and covered with
blue beads. One end was made long, to hang down before me. Only a very
industrious girl was given such a belt. She could not buy or make one.
No relative could give her the belt; for a clan aunt, remember, was not
a blood relative. To wear a woman’s belt was an honor. I was as proud
of mine as a war leader of his first scalp.
I won other honors by my industry. For embroidering a robe for my
father with porcupine quills I was given a brass ring, bought of the
traders; and for embroidering a tent cover with gull quills dyed yellow
and blue I was given a bracelet. There were few girls in the village
who owned belt, ring and bracelet.
In these years of my girlhood my mothers were watchful of all that I
did. We had big dances in the village, when men and women sang, drums
beat loud, and young men, painted and feathered, danced and yelled to
show their brave deeds. I did not go to these dances often, and, when
I did, my mothers went with me. Ours was one of the better families of
the tribe, and my mothers were very careful of me.
I was eighteen years old the Bent-Enemy-Killed winter; for we Hidatsas
reckoned by winters, naming each for something that happened in it. An
old man named Hanging Stone then lived in the village. He had a stepson
named Magpie, a handsome young man and a good hunter.
One morning Hanging Stone came into our lodge. It was a little while
after our morning meal, and I was putting away the wooden bowls that
we used for dishes. The hollow buffalo hoofs hung on the door for
bells, I remember, rattled clitter, clitter, clitter, as he raised and
let fall the door. My father was sitting by the fire.
Hanging Stone walked up to my father, and laid his right hand on my
father’s head. “I want you to believe what I say,” he cried. “I want my
boy to live in your good family. I am poor, you are rich; but I want
you to favor us and do as I ask.”
He went over to my mothers and did likewise, speaking the same words to
both. He then strode out of the lodge.
Neither my father nor my mothers said anything, and I did not know at
first what it all meant. My father sat for a while, looking at the
fire. At last he spoke, “My daughter is too young to marry. When she is
older I may be willing.”
Toward evening Hanging Stone and his relatives brought four horses and
three flint-lock guns to our lodge. He tied the four horses to the
drying stage outside. They had good bridles, with chains hanging to the
bits. On the back of each horse was a blanket and some yards of calico,
very expensive in those days.
Hanging Stone came into the lodge. “I have brought you four horses and
three guns,” he said to my father.
“I must refuse them,” answered Small Ankle. “My daughter is too young
to marry.”
Hanging Stone went away, but he did not take his horses with him. My
father sent them back by some young men.
The evening of the second day after, Hanging Stone came again to our
lodge. As before, he brought the three guns and gifts of cloth, and
four horses; but two of these were hunting horses. A hunting horse was
one fleet enough to overtake a buffalo, a thing that few of our little
Indian ponies could do. Such horses were costly and hard to get. A
family that had good hunting horses had always plenty of meat.
After Hanging Stone left, my father said to his wives, “What do you
think about it?”
“We would rather not say anything,” they answered. “Do as you think
best.”
“I know this Magpie,” said my father. “He is a kind young man. I have
refused his gifts once, but I see his heart is set on having our
daughter. I think I shall agree to it.”
Turning to me he spoke: “My daughter, I have tried to raise you right.
I have hunted and worked hard to give you food to eat. Now I want you
to take my advice. Take this man for your husband. Try always to love
him. Do not think in your heart, ‘I am a handsome young woman, but this
man, my husband, is older and not handsome.’ Never taunt your husband.
Try not to do anything that will make him angry.”
I did not answer _yes_ or _no_ to this; for I thought, “If my father
wishes me to do this, why that is the best thing for me to do.” I had
been taught to be obedient to my father. I do not think white children
are taught so, as we Indian children were taught.
[Illustration]
For nigh a week my father and my two mothers were busy getting ready
the feast foods for the wedding. On the morning of the sixth day, my
father took from his bag a fine weasel-skin cap and an eagle-feather
war bonnet. The first he put on my head; the second he handed to my
sister, Cold Medicine. “Take these to Hanging Stone’s lodge,” he said.
We were now ready to march. I led, my sister walking with me. Behind
us came some of our relatives, leading three horses; and, after them,
five great kettles of feast foods, on poles borne on the shoulders of
women relatives. The kettles held boiled dried green corn and ripe corn
pounded to meal and boiled with beans; and they were steaming hot.
There was a covered entrance to Hanging Stone’s lodge. The light was
rather dim inside, and I did not see a dog lying there until he sprang
up, barking _wu-wu!_ and dashed past me. I sprang back, startled.
Cold Medicine tittered. “Do not be foolish,” called one of our women
relatives. Cold Medicine stopped her tittering, but I think we were
rather glad of the dog. My sister and I had never marched in a wedding
before, and we were both a little scared.
[Illustration]
I lifted the skin door—it was an old-fashioned one swinging on thongs
from the beam overhead—and entered the lodge. Hanging Stone sat on
his couch against the puncheon fire screen. I went to him and put the
weasel-skin cap on his head. The young man who was to be my husband was
sitting on his couch, a frame of poles covered with a tent skin. Cold
Medicine and I went over and shyly sat on the floor near-by.
The kettles of feast foods had been set down near the fireplace, and
the three horses tied to the corn stage without. Hanging Stone had
fetched my father four horses. We reckoned the weasel cap and the war
bonnet as worth each a horse; and, with these and our three horses, my
father felt he was going his friend one horse better. It was a point
of honor in an Indian family for the bride’s father to make a more
valuable return gift than that brought him by the bridegroom and his
friends.
[Illustration: Plate II.—“I put the weasel-skin cap on his head.”]
As we two girls sat on the floor, with ankles to the right, as Indian
women always sit, Magpie’s mother filled a wooden bowl with dried
buffalo meat pounded fine and mixed with marrow fat, and set it for my
sister and me to eat. We ate as much as we could. What was left, my
sister put in a fold of her robe, and we arose and went home. It would
have been impolite to leave behind any of the food given us to eat.
Later in the day Magpie’s relatives and friends came to feast on the
foods we had taken to Hanging Stone’s lodge. Each guest brought a gift,
something useful to a new-wed bride—beaded work, fawn-skin work bag,
girl’s leggings, belt, blanket, woman’s robe, calico for a dress, and
the like. In the evening two women of Magpie’s family brought these
gifts to my father’s lodge, packing them each in a blanket on her back.
They piled the gifts on the floor beside Red Blossom, the elder of my
two mothers.
Red Blossom spent the next few days helping me build and decorate the
couch that was to mark off the part of our lodge set apart for my
husband and me. We even made and placed before the couch a fine, roomy
lazy-back, or willow chair.
All being now ready, Red Blossom said to me: “Go and call your husband.
Go and sit beside him and say, ‘I want you to come to my father’s
lodge.’ Do not feel shy. Go boldly and have no fear.”
So with my sister I slowly walked to Hanging Stone’s lodge. There were
several besides the family within, for they were expecting me; but no
one said anything as we entered.
Magpie was sitting on his couch, for this in the daytime was used as
white men use a lounge or a big chair. My sister and I went over and
sat beside him. Magpie smiled and said, “What have you come for?”
“I have come to call you,” I answered.
“_Sukkeets_—good!” he said.
Cold Medicine and I arose and returned to my father’s lodge. Magpie
followed us a few minutes later; for young men did not walk through the
village with their sweethearts in the daytime. We should have thought
that foolish.
And so I was wed.
[Illustration]
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
A BUFFALO HUNT
My young husband and I lived together but a few years. He died of lung
sickness; and, after I had mourned a year, I married Son-of-a-Star, a
Mandan. My family wished me to marry again; for, while an Indian woman
could raise corn for herself and family, she could not hunt to get meat
and skins.
Son-of-a-Star was a kind man, and my father liked him. “He is brave,
daughter,” Small Ankle said. “He wears two eagle feathers, for he has
twice struck an enemy, and he has danced the death dance. Three times
he has shot an arrow through a buffalo.” It was not easy to shoot an
arrow through a buffalo and few of my tribe had done so.
Spring had come, and in the moon of Breaking Ice we returned to
Like-a-Fishhook village. Our hunters had not killed many deer the
winter before, and our stores of corn were getting low. As ours was
a large family, Son-of-a-Star thought he would join a hunting party
that was going up the river for buffaloes. “Even if we do not find much
game,” he said, “we shall kill enough for ourselves. We younger men
should not be eating the corn and beans that old men and children need.”
Small Ankle thought the plan a good one. I was glad also, for I was to
be one of the party. Corn planting time would not come for a month yet;
and, after the weeks in our narrow winter quarters, I longed to be out
again in the fresh air.
There were ten in the party besides Son-of-a-Star and myself:
Crow-Flies-High, Bad Brave, High Backbone, Long Bear, and Scar, and
their wives. Scar was a Teton Sioux who had come to visit us.
My tribe now owned many horses, and fewer dogs were used than when I
was a little girl. A party of buffalo hunters usually took both hunting
and pack horses; but our village herd was weak and poor in flesh after
the scant winter’s feeding, and we thought it better to take only dogs.
There was yet little pasture, and the ground was wet and spongy from
the spring thaws. Only a strong, well-fed pony could go all day on wet
ground.
I took three of our family dogs. On the travois of two I loaded robes
for bedding, the halves of an old tent cover, moccasins for myself and
husband, an ax, a copper kettle and a flesher for dressing hides. My
third dog dragged a bull boat, bound mouth down to the travois poles.
We planned to return by way of the river, in boats.
We were clad warmly, for the weather was chill. All had robes. I wore a
dress of two deer skins sewed edge to edge; the hind legs, thus sewed,
made the sleeves for my arms.
[Illustration]
I had made my husband a fine skin shirt, embroidered with beads. Over
it he drew his robe, fur side in. He spread his feet apart, drew the
robe high enough to cover his head, and folded it, tail end first, over
his right side; then the head end over his left, and belted the robe in
place. He spread his feet apart when belting, to give the robe a loose
skirt for walking in.
We all wore winter moccasins, fur lined, with high tops. The men
carried guns. Buffalo hunters no longer used bows except from horseback.
We started off gaily, in a long line. Each woman was followed by her
dogs. Two women, having no dogs, packed their camp stuff on their backs.
We made our first camp late in the afternoon, at a place called
Timber-Faces-across-River. There was a spring here, of good water.
Crow-Flies-High and Bad Brave went hunting, while we women pitched
our tent. We cut forked poles and stacked them with tops together
like a tepee. We covered this frame with skins, laced together at
the edges with thongs. A rawhide lariat was drawn around the outside
of the cover; and small logs, laid about the edges, held the tent to
the ground. We could not use tent pins, for the ground was frozen.
We raised an old saddle skin on the windward side of the smoke hole,
staying it with a forked pole, thrust through a hole in the edge. We
were some time building, as the tent had to be large enough for twelve
persons.
We finished just at dusk; and we were starting a fire inside, when the
two hunters came in. Each packed on his back the side and ham of an
elk they had killed. Bad Brave had laid a pad of dry grass across his
shoulders that the meat juice might not stain his robe.
It was getting dark, and, while we women gathered dry grass for our
beds, the two hunters roasted one of the sides of meat. They skewered
it on a stick and swung it from the drying pole. Standing on each side,
the two men swung the meat slowly, forth and back, over the fire.
We were all hungry when we sat down to eat. The fresh roasted ribs of
the elk were juicy and sweet, and with full stomachs we felt sleepy,
for the day’s march had been long. We gladly spread our robes and crept
into our beds, first covering a coal with ashes for the morning fire.
[Illustration]
Next morning we had struck our tent and loaded our dogs before the sun
was well up. We took only the tent cover, leaving the poles. Three
of our men went ahead to hunt. The rest followed more slowly, not to
tire our dogs. Now and then we stopped to rest and eat from our lunch
bags. These were of dried buffalo heart skins. Every woman in the party
carried one of them tucked under her belt. We had been careful to fill
our bags with cooked meat, from our breakfast.
My husband walked at my side if he talked with me. At other times he
went a little ahead; for, if enemies or a grizzly attacked us, he would
thus be in front, ready to fight, giving me time to escape.
Our trail led along the brow of the bluffs overlooking the Missouri.
There was a path here, fairly well marked, made by hunting parties, and
perhaps by buffaloes.
Our second camp was at a place called the Slides; for, here, big blocks
of earth, softened by the spring rains, sometimes slide down the bank
into the river. We found a spring a little way in from the river, with
small trees that we could cut for tent poles.
[Illustration]
Our tent was hardly pitched when Son-of-a-Star and Scar came in to say
they had killed a stray buffalo not far away. They had packed part of
the meat to camp on their shoulders, and Son-of-a-Star had cut out the
buffalo’s paunch and filled it with fresh blood. While the two hunters
went back for the rest of the meat, I put on my copper kettle and made
blood pudding. It was hot and ready to serve by the time they came
back. I had stirred the pudding with a green chokecherry stick, giving
it a pleasant, cherry flavor.
We were a jolly party as we sat around the evening fire. The hot
pudding felt good in our stomachs, after the long march. My good dogs,
Knife-Carrier, Took-a-Scalp, and Packs-a-Babe, I had fed with scraps
of meat from the dead buffalo, and they were dozing outside, snuggled
against the tent to keep warm. _Okeemeea_,[25] Crow-Flies-High’s wife,
fetched in some dry wood, which she put on the fire. A yellow blaze lit
up the tent and a column of thin, blue smoke rose upward to the smoke
hole.
[25] O kēē mēē´ ä
Crow-Flies-High filled his pipe and passed it among the men. Hidatsa
women do not smoke.
In the morning, on the way up, we had forded a stream we call Rising
Water creek. My leggings and moccasins were still wet; and, as I was
wringing them out to dry over the fire, I said to High Backbone’s
wife Blossom: “That creek is dangerous. As I was fording it to-day, I
slipped in the mud and nearly fell in; but I once got a good dinner out
of that mud.”
“How did you get a dinner out of mud?” asked Blossom.
“I will tell you,” I answered. “I was a young girl then. My tribe
had come up the river to hunt buffaloes and we had stopped at Rising
Water Creek to make fires and eat our midday meal. It was summer and
the creek was low, for there had been little rain. Some little girls
went down for water. They came running back, much frightened. ‘We saw
something move in the mud of the creek,’ they cried. ‘It is alive!’
“We ran to the bank of the creek and, sure enough, something that
looked as big as a man was struggling and floundering in a pool. The
water was roiled and thick with mud.
“We could not think what it could be. Some thought it was an enemy
trying to hide in the mud.
“A brave young man named Skunk threw off his leggings, drew his knife,
and waded out to the thing. Suddenly he stooped, and in a moment
started to land with the thing in his arms. It was a great fish, a
sturgeon. It had a smooth back, like a catfish. We cut up the flesh and
boiled it. It tasted sweet, like catfish flesh. I do not remember if we
drank the broth, as we do when we boil catfish.”
[Illustration]
“I have seen those fish,” said Bad Brave. “Sometimes when the Missouri
falls after the spring floods, one of them will be left stranded on the
sand; but I never knew one to be seen in Rising Water creek. I know
that turtles are found there, the big kind that fight.”
“I have heard that white men eat turtles,” said Long Bear’s wife. “I do
not believe it.”
“They do eat turtles,” said High Backbone, “and they eat frogs. A white
man told me. I asked him.”
“_Ey!_ And such unclean things; I could not eat them,” cried Bird Woman.
“There are big turtles in our Dakota lakes,” said Scar. “They are so
big that they drag under the water buffaloes that come there to drink.
I once heard a story of a magic turtle.”
“Tell us the story,” said Son-of-a-Star.
“A brave young Dakota led out a war party, of six men,” began Scar.
“They came into the Chippewa country and wandered about, seeking to
strike an enemy. They found deserted camps, sometimes with ashes in the
fire pit still warm; but they found no enemies.
“One day they came to a beautiful lake. On the shore, close to the
water, was a grassy knoll, rising upward like the back of a great
turtle.
“The leader of the party had now begun to lose heart. ‘We have found no
enemy,’ he said. ‘I think the gods are angry with us. We should return
home. If we do not, harm may come to us.’
“‘Let us rest by this knoll,’ said one. ‘When we have smoked, we will
start back home.’
“They had smoked but one pipe when the leader said, ‘I think we should
go now. There is something strange about this knoll. Somehow, I think
it is alive.’
“There was a young man in the party, reckless and full of life, whom
the others called the Mocker. He sprang up crying, ‘Let us see if it is
alive. Come on, we will dance on the knoll.’
“‘No,’ said the leader, ‘an evil spirit may be in the knoll. The hill
may be but the spirit’s body. It is not wise to mock the gods.’
“‘_Hwee_[26]—come on! Who is afraid?’ cried the Mocker. He ran to the
top of the knoll, and three of the party followed him laughing. They
leaped and danced and called to the others, ‘What do you fear?’
[26] Hwēē
“Suddenly the knoll began to shake. It put out legs. It began to move
toward the lake. It was a huge turtle.
“‘Help, help!’ cried the Mocker. He and his friends tried to escape.
They could not. Some power held their feet fast to the turtle’s back,
so that they could not move.
“The great turtle plunged in the lake. The men were never seen again.”
[Illustration]
There was silence when Scar ended. Then Crow-Flies-High spoke: “Those
men were foolish. One should never make mock of the spirits.” He
paused, puffing at his pipe and blowing great clouds from his nostrils.
“I know a story of another Dakota who came to grief at a lake,” he
continued, as he passed the burning pipe for my husband to smoke.
“What is the story?” said Scar, smiling.
“We Hidatsas,” said Crow-Flies-High, “believe that all babies born in
our tribe have lived in another life. Some have lived in hills we call
Babes’ Lodges. Others have lived as birds or beasts or even plants.
“Down near the Dakota country is a lake. It is magic; and in old times
young men went there to see what they had been in a former life. If one
got up early in the morning while the lake was smooth, and looked in
the water, he saw in his shadow the shadow also of what he had been.
Some found this to be a bird, others a plant, as a flower or a squash.
“A Dakota Indian had married a Hidatsa woman, and dwelt with our tribe.
He was a good man, but he had a sharp tongue. He often got angry and
said bitter words to his wife. When his anger had gone, he felt sorry
for his words. ‘I do not know why I have such a sharp tongue,’ he would
say.
[Illustration]
“One day, when hunting with some Hidatsas, he came near the magic lake.
‘I am going to see what I was before I became a babe,’ he told the
others. In the morning he went to the lake, leaned over and looked. In
his shadow he saw what he had been. It was a thorn bush.
“With heavy heart, he came back to camp. ‘Now I know why I have a sharp
tongue,’ he cried. ‘It is because I was a thorn bush. All my life I
shall speak sharp words, like thorns.’”
All laughed at Crow-Flies-High’s story, none more than Scar himself. “I
am sure _I_ was never a thorn bush,” he said, “for I speak sweet words
to my wife, even when she scolds me.”
“Hey, listen to the man!” cried his wife.
“But stop talking, you men,” she continued, as she reached for a piece
of bark to use as a shovel. “It is time to sleep, for we must be up
early in the morning.” And she began to cover the fire with ashes.
[Illustration]
FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
THE HUNTING CAMP
We were up the next morning before the sun, and, after a hasty
breakfast, the men went out to look for buffaloes. “The one we killed
yesterday may have strayed from a herd,” Son-of-a-Star said. He was
hopeful that they might find the herd near.
We women were getting dinner when the men returned, having seen no
buffaloes. I had cut a green stick with prongs, on which I spread
slices of fresh buffalo steak, and held them over the fire to broil. I
had three juicy steaks, steaming hot, lying on a little pile of clean
grass, when my husband came in. “_Sukkeets_—good!” he cried; and he had
eaten all three steaks before I had the fourth well warmed through.
After dinner we broke camp and went on about five miles to Shell Creek
Lake. In the afternoon of the following day we reached Deep Creek. We
pitched our tent on a bit of rising ground from which we scraped the
wet snow with a hoe. The weather was getting warmer. Ice had broken on
the Missouri the day we killed the stray buffalo.
While we women busied ourselves with things in camp, the men went to
hunt, and five miles farther on they discovered a herd of buffaloes
crossing the Missouri from the south side. Our hunters, creeping close
on the down-wind side, shot five fat cows as they landed. Buffaloes are
rather stupid animals, but have keen scent. Had our hunters tried to
come at them from the windward side, the herd would have winded them a
half mile away. As it was, no more buffaloes crossed after the shots
were fired, and some that were in the water swam back to the other
side. A rifle shot at the Missouri’s edge will echo between the bluffs
like a crash of thunder.
The hunters found an elm tree with low hanging branches, and under it
they built a rude stage. Meat and skins of the slain buffaloes they
laid on the floor of the stage, out of reach of wolves. Some of the
meat they hung on the branches of the elm.
Son-of-a-Star brought back two hams and a tongue. I sliced the tough
outer meat from the hams, to feed to my dogs. The bones, with the
tender, inner meat, I laid on stones, around the fireplace, to roast,
turning them now and then to keep the meat from scorching. The roasted
meat we stripped off, and cracked the hot bones for the rich, yellow
marrow.
The next morning Crow-Flies-High called a council, and we decided to
cross over to the other side of the river. “The main herd is there,”
said Crow-Flies-High. “We should hunt the buffaloes before they move to
other pasture.” We thought he spoke wisely, and men and women seized
axes to cut a road through the willows for our travois.
These we now loaded. The dogs dragged them to the water’s edge and
we made ready to cross. There were two other bull boats in the party
besides my own.
My husband helped me load my boat, and we pushed off, our three dogs
swimming after us. We had bound our travois to the tail of the boat,
one upon the other. The long runners dragged in the water, but the
travois baskets, raised to the boat’s edge, were hardly wetted.
We landed, and I lent my boat to Scar to bring over his wife and her
camp stuff. Our whole party crossed and brought over their goods in two
trips.
We packed our goods up the bank and made camp. While we women were
cutting poles for our tent, we heard the men disputing. They were
seated in a circle near our pile of goods. High Backbone had lighted a
pipe.
“I say we should go across the river and get the meat we staged
yesterday,” said Crow-Flies-High. Others said, “No, there is better
hunting on this side. Let us go at once and find the herd.” And all
took their guns and hastened off but High Backbone, who stayed to
guard the camp. We were afraid enemies might also be following the
herd.
But the hunters returned at evening without having seen buffalo sign,
and hungry—so hungry that they ate up half our store of meat. After
supper, Crow-Flies-High called them to another council. “I told you we
should get the meat we staged,” he said. “The gods gave us that meat.
We should not waste it.”
We recrossed the river the next morning and fetched back most of the
staged meat and skins, reaching camp again in the early part of the
afternoon. Too busy to stop and eat, we spent the rest of the day
building stages and staking out the green hides to dry.
[Illustration]
The next day we found to our joy that the wind had shifted to the west.
Our stages were now hung with slices of drying meat, and we had built
slow fires beneath. An east wind would have carried the smoke toward
the herd and stampeded it.
[Illustration]
It was evening and getting dusk when Son-of-a-Star came into the tent,
saying, “Buffaloes are on a bluff a quarter of a mile up the river. I
can see them moving against the sky line.” We listened and heard the
bulls roaring; so we knew a herd was coming in.
We were careful to chop no wood that evening, nor do anything to make
a noise. We smothered our fires, and we fed our dogs; for, with gorged
stomachs, they would be sleepy and not bark. If a dog stirred in the
night, one of us went out and quieted him.
We made another crossing the next morning to fetch over the last of the
meat we had staged. We returned about noon. The first woman to climb
the bank under our camp was Scar’s wife, Blossom. She dropped her pack
and came running back, her hands at each side of her head with two
fingers crooked, like horns, the sign for buffaloes.
We hastened into camp and saw the buffaloes a quarter of a mile away,
swarming over a bluff. There was a bit of bad-land formation below,
round-topped buttes with grassy stretches between. In these lower
levels the sun had started the grass, and I think the buffaloes were
coming down into them to seek pasture.
Our hunters had come up from the boats, guns in hand, and set off at
once, creeping up the coulees from the lee side, that the buffaloes
might not wind them. Presently I saw a flash and a puff of smoke; then
another, and another; and the reports came echoing down the river
basin, _poh—poh—poh—poh, poh, poh!_ like thunder, away off. The herd
took to their heels. Buffaloes, when alarmed, usually run up-wind; but,
as the wind had shifted again to the east, this would have taken the
herd into the river; so they swerved off and went tearing away toward
the north.
The hunters returned before evening. Son-of-a-Star was the first to
come in. “I shot two fat cows,” he cried. “I have cut up the meat and
put it in a pile, covered with the skins.” He had brought back the
choice cuts, however, the tongues, kidneys and hams. We ate the kidneys
raw.
In the morning we harnessed our dogs and went out to the butchering
place. As we neared my husband’s meat pile, I saw that he had driven
a stick into the ground and tied his headcloth to it, like a flag.
This was to keep away the wolves. There were many of them in the
Missouri-river country then.
While the flag fluttered and they winded the human smell, wolves would
not touch the meat pile.
Sometimes in the fall, when hunters were cutting up a dead buffalo, I
have seen wolves, coyotes, and foxes, a half hundred maybe, stalking
about or seated just out of bow shot, awaiting the time the hunters
left. All then rushed in to gorge on the offal. The wolves often
snarled and bit at one another as they ate.
All these animals were great thieves; but the kit foxes, I think, were
boldest. I was once with a hunting party, sleeping at night in a tent,
when I awoke, hearing some one scream. A kit fox had stolen into the
tent and walked over the bare face of one of the sleeping women. She
was terribly vexed. “That bad fox stepped his foot in my mouth,” she
cried angrily. In the morning we found the fox had made off with some
of our meat.
Son-of-a-Star uncovered his meat pile, and helped me load our travois,
binding each load to its basket with thongs. By long use I knew how
heavy a load each of my dogs was able to drag. When I thought the
travois held enough, I lifted its poles and tried the weight with my
hands.
My husband and I packed loads on our own backs. Mine, I remember, was a
whole green buffalo cow skin, a side of ribs and a tongue. This was a
heavy load for a woman, and my husband scolded me roundly when we came
in to camp. “That is foolish,” he said. “You will hurt your back.” I
liked to work, however, and I wanted to show the older women how much I
could carry.
[Illustration]
We remained in the camp about ten days. The men would hunt until they
made a kill. Then we harnessed our dogs, and all went out to fetch in
the meat. To do this took us about half a day. At other times, when not
drying meat, we women busied ourselves making bull boats, to freight
our meat down the river.
I have said that I had brought one boat up from the village on one
of my dogs. I now made another. There were some _mahoheesha_ willows
growing near the camp. I made the boat frame of these, covering it with
the green hide of a buffalo cow. _Mahoheesha_ willows are light, tough,
and bend to any shape. They make good boat ribs.
When ready to move camp, I carried my new boat down to the river,
turned over my head like a big hat. At the water’s edge I drove a stout
stake into the mud, and to this I fastened the floating boat with a
short thong.
Skins and dried meat had been made up into small bales. I packed these
to the boat on my back, using a two-banded packing strap. As the river
was not far from our camp and the bank not very steep, I did not think
this task a hard one.
When the boat was filled, I covered the load neatly with a piece of
old tent skin, and to the tail of the boat, I lashed my three travois.
The buffalo skin covering a bull boat was so laid that the tail was
to the rear of the boat. For this reason we often spoke of the boat’s
_head_ and _tail_.
[Illustration]
Meanwhile, Son-of-a-Star fetched the boat I had brought up from the
village, and I bound it to the head of my newer boat. We were now ready
to embark. I waded out, climbed into the empty, or passenger, boat, and
called to my dogs. They leaped in beside me.
Son-of-a-Star took off his moccasins and rolled up his leggings. He
handed me his gun, loosed the thong that bound the boats to the stake,
pushed the boats into deeper water, and climbed in. I handed him his
paddle.
I had hewn this paddle from a cottonwood log, only the day before. My
own, lighter and better made, I had brought with me from the village.
Each paddle had a large hole cut in the center of the blade. Without
this hole, a paddle wobbled in the current.
On the front of my paddle blade, Son-of-a-Star had painted a part of
his war record, hoof prints as of a pony, and moccasin tracks such as
a man makes with his right foot. Hoof and footprints had each a wound
mark, as of flowing blood. Son-of-a-Star had drawn these marks with his
finger, dipped in warm buffalo fat and red ochre.
The marks were for a brave deed of my husband. He once rode against a
party of Sioux, firing his gun, when a bullet went through his right
thigh, and killed his horse. The footprints with the wound marks meant
that Son-of-a-Star had been shot in his right leg.
On his own paddle my husband had marked a cross within bars. These
meant, “I was one of four warriors to count _strike_ on an enemy.”
[Illustration]
It was an Indian custom to mark a warrior’s honors, much as a soldier
wears stripes for the wounds he has had. I was quite proud of the marks
on my paddles. I was a young woman, remember, and I thought, “Not every
woman has a husband as brave as mine.”
Just before I got into my boat I had paused to wash my sweaty face
in the river, and, with a little ochre and buffalo fat, I painted my
cheeks a bright red. I thought this made me look handsome; and, too,
the paint kept my face from being tanned by the sun, for I had a light
skin. In those days everybody painted, and came to feasts with handsome
faces, red or yellow. Now we follow white men’s ways, and we go about
with faces pale, like ghosts from the Dead village. I think that is why
some tribes call white men _pale-faces_; because they do not paint and
are pale like ghosts.
Altogether there were eleven boats in our fleet, two to each couple
except Scar and his wife, who had but one. At that, their one boat
was enough, for they had small store of meat or skins to take home.
They were a young couple and thought more of having a good time than of
doing any hard work.
We had launched our boats in a tiny bay, and our paddles, dipping into
the quiet backwater, sent the waves rippling against the shore. It was
a crisp spring morning, and the sun, rising almost in our faces, threw
a broad band of gold over the water. In the shadow of the opposite
bank, a pelican was fishing. He paused to gaze at us, his yellow beak
laid against his white plumage; then calmly went to fishing again. Out
in mid-current, an uprooted tree swept by, and our skin boats, as they
swung out of the bay, passed a deadhead that bobbed up and down, up and
down. Then with a roar, the current caught us and bore us swiftly away.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
HOMEWARD BOUND
When using her bull boat to cross over the river, a woman knelt in
the bow and dipped her paddle in front of her; but, with a second and
freighted boat in tow, my husband and I paddled, seated one at each
side of our boat. We had not much need to use our paddles as long as we
rode the current.
Crow-Flies-High led the way. We had gone, I think, an hour or two, and
Crow-Flies-High’s boat was rounding a point, when I saw him rise to his
knees and back water with his paddle. My husband and I speeded up; and,
as we came near, Crow-Flies-High pointed to the bank just below the
point. It was thickly covered with buffaloes.
Scar’s wife put her hand to her mouth for astonishment, but made no
sound. If buffaloes have not good sight, they have keen ears; and she
knew better than to cry out.
A bit of woodland stretched along the shore farther on. Crow-Flies-High
signed for us to follow, and we floated silently down to the end of the
woods, where the trees hid us from the herd. The men sprang out and
held the boats while we women landed.
The bank was high and rather steep, but at its foot was a narrow bench
of sand a foot or more above the water’s level. We hastily unloaded our
boats and dragged them out upon this sand.
Along the Missouri’s edge are always to be found dead-and-dry willow
sticks, left there by the falling current. I gathered an armful of
these, and, having climbed the bank, laid them together in a kind of
floor. Son-of-a-Star now helped me fetch up our bundles, and we piled
them on this willow floor. He also brought up my two boats. These I
turned, bottom up, over my pile of bundles, to keep off frost and rain.
The men now seized their guns and hastened off after the buffaloes. It
was about noon. I think we had spent less than an hour unloading the
boats and packing them and our stuff to the top of the bank.
While our hunters were stalking the herd, we women stayed in camp,
keeping very quiet, and stilling the dogs if they whined or barked.
Before long we heard the _poh-poh-poh!_ of guns, and knew the herd
was started. We now arose and began gathering sticks for a fire. I
think the first man to return struck fire for us, and we got dinner.
[Illustration]
We did not trouble to set up our tent. “The weather is not cold,”
said Crow-Flies-High’s wife. “We can sleep in the open air.” I cut
buck-brush bushes and spread a robe over them for my bed. Dry grass
stuffed under one end of the robe did for a pillow. My covering was a
pair of buffalo skins. We were weary and went to bed early. The night
was clear; and, with the fresh river air blowing in my face, I soon
fell asleep.
We were astir the next morning at an early hour. While Son-of-a-Star
started a fire, I went to fill my copper kettle at the river. My
husband had asked me to boil him some meat, for the broth; for in old
times we Indians drank broth instead of coffee.
The river’s roar, I thought, sounded louder than usual; and, when I
reached the edge of the high bank, I saw that the current was thronged
with masses of ice. This amazed me, for the river had been running free
for a fortnight. The Missouri is never a silent stream, and now to
the roar of its waters was added the groaning and crashing of the ice
cakes, as they grated and pounded one another in the current.
[Illustration]
When the Missouri is running ice, the mid-current will be thronged,
well-nigh choked, with ice masses, but near the banks, where are
shallows, the water will be free, since here the stream is not deep
enough to float the ice chunks. On the side of the river under our camp
was a margin of ice-free water of this kind; and I now saw, out near
the edge of the floating ice, two bull boats bound together, with a
woman in the foremost, paddling with all her might. She was struggling
to keep from being caught in the ice and crushed.
I ran down the bank to the bench of sand below, just as the boats
came sweeping by. The woman saw me and held out her paddle crying,
“Daughter, save me!” I seized the wet blade, and tugging hard, drew
the boats to shore. The woman was _Amaheetseekuma_,[27] or Lies-on
Red-Hill, a woman older than I, and my friend.
[27] A mä hēēt´ sēē kṳ mä
Lies-on-Red-Hill, though rather fat, scrambled quickly out of the boat
and began tumbling her bundles out upon the sand. The other women of
our party now came down, and we helped my friend carry her bundles up
to the camp.
As we sat by the fire, wringing and drying her moccasins,
Lies-on-Red-Hill told us her story: “My husband, Short Bull, and I were
hunting buffaloes. We dried much meat, which I loaded in my two boats,
to freight down the river. While I paddled, Short Bull was to go along
the shore with our horses. ‘We will meet at Beaver Wood,’ he said, ‘and
camp.’ But I did not find him at Beaver Wood. Then ice came. I was
afraid to camp alone, and tried to paddle down stream, keeping near the
shore, where was no ice. More ice came, and I feared I should be upset
and drown.”
[Illustration]
It was not until afterwards, when we reached our village, that we
learned why Short Bull did not meet his wife. He got to Beaver Wood
ahead of her. Not finding her, and thinking she had passed him, he went
on to the place where they had agreed to make their second camping.
When again she did not come, he became alarmed, and returned up the
river looking for her. In the morning he saw the river was full of ice.
“She is drowned,” he thought. And he went on to Like-a-Fishhook village.
Lies-on-Red-Hill’s father was an old man named Dried Squash. He was
fond of his daughter, and, when he heard she was drowned, he put her
squash basket on his back and went through the village weeping and
crying out, “Lies-on-Red-Hill, dear daughter, I shall never see you
again.” He wanted to leap into the river and die, but his friends held
him.
Lies-on-Red-Hill rested in our camp two days. The third morning the
river was running free again, and she loaded her boats and paddled off
down stream. The rest of us stayed one more day, to finish drying and
packing our meat. Then we, too, loaded our boats and started down the
river.
We floated with the current, and the second day sighted Stands-Alone
Point, or Independence, as white men now call it. Here a party of
Mandans were just quitting camp. They pushed their boats into the
current and caught up with us. “We knew you were coming,” they said.
“Lies-on-Red-Hill told us. She passed us yesterday.”
Our united party floated safely down until we were two miles below what
is now Elbowoods. Here, to our astonishment, we found that the current
was hardly running, and the water was backing up and flooding the
shores. We rounded a point of land, and saw what was the matter. Ice,
brought down on the current, had jammed, bridging the river and partly
damming it.
Fearing to go farther, we were bringing our boats to land, when we
heard the sound of a gun and voices calling to us. On the opposite
shore stood two white men, waving handkerchiefs.
We paddled across and landed. The white men, we found, were traders,
who had married Indian women. They had a flat boat, loaded with buffalo
skins and furs. With them was Lies-on-Red-Hill. One of the traders we
Indians had named Spots, because he had big freckles on his face.
Like-a-Fishhook village was yet about fifteen miles away. While the
rest of our party waited, one of the men went afoot, to notify our
relatives. They came about noon, the next day, with ponies and saddles
to help us bring home our goods. The saddles were pack saddles, made
with horn frames.
It took four ponies to pack the dried meat and skins my husband and I
had brought. I loaded my boats on the travois of two of my dogs.
We reached Like-a-Fishhook village at sunset. Lies-on-Red-Hill came
with us, to the great joy of her father.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
AN INDIAN PAPOOSE
My father was overjoyed to see me and my husband again, and he was glad
for the store of meat that we brought. We had a real feast the next
day. I boiled green corn, shelled from the cob and dried the summer
before, and packed away in skin bags. We were fond of this corn, and
had little of it left. Strikes-Many Woman parched ripe sweet corn,
pounded it in a mortar with roast buffalo fats, and kneaded the meal
into little balls.
With these corn messes and boiled dried buffalo meat we made a big
feast and called in all our relatives. To each woman guest, as she went
away again, I gave a bundle of dried buffalo meat; and I thus gave away
one of the four pony-loads of meat I had brought home. It was an Indian
custom that, when a hunter brought in meat of a deer or buffalo, it
belonged to his wife; and we should have thought her a bad woman, if
she did not feast her relatives and give to them.
My father sat with his cronies at the right of the fireplace, at our
feast. We women ate apart, for men and women do not sit together at an
Indian feast. I heard my father talking with his friend, Lean Wolf:
“Every spring, when I was young, we fired the prairie grass around the
Five Villages. Green grass then sprang up; buffaloes came to graze on
it, and we killed many.”
“Those were good days,” said Lean Wolf. “There were many buffaloes
then.”
“It is so,” said my father. “It is now seven years since a herd was
seen near our village. White men’s guns have driven them away. And each
year we kill fewer deer.”
“I have heard that some Sioux families starved last winter,” said Lean
Wolf.
“They starved, because they are hunters and raise no corn,” said my
father. “We Hidatsas must plant more corn, or we shall starve; and we
must learn to raise white men’s wheat and potatoes.” Small Ankle was a
progressive old man.
One morning, not long after our feast, Red Blossom came in from the
woods with news that the wild gooseberry vines were in leaf. This was a
sign that corn planting time was come, and we women began to make ready
our corn seed and sharpen our hoes.
I had been thinking of my father’s words to Lean Wolf. “They are wise
words,” I told my mothers. “We should widen our fields, and plant more
corn.” While they busied themselves with planting, I worked with my
hoe around the edges of our two fields, breaking new ground.
Having thus more ground to work over, my mothers planted for more than
a month, or well into June. The last week of our planting, Red Blossom
soaked her corn seed in tepid water. “It will make the seed sprout
earlier,” she said, “so that the ears will ripen before frost comes.”
Our fall harvest was good. My two mothers and I were more than a week
threshing and winnowing our corn; but some families, less wise than
ours, had not increased their planting, and had none too much grain to
lay by for winter. This troubled our chief men. “The summer’s hunt has
been poor,” they said. “If our winter’s hunting is not better, we shall
be hungry before harvest comes again.”
They had twice called a council to talk of the matter, when scouts
brought word that buffaloes had been seen. “Big herds have come down
into the Yellowstone country,” they said. The Black Mouths thought
we should make our winter camp there, in tepees; and they went about
choosing a winter chief.
But no one wanted to be winter chief. Camping in the Yellowstone
country in skin tents, was not like our wintering in earth lodges in
the woods near our village. The people expected their chief’s prayers
to keep enemies away and bring them good hunting. If ill luck came to
any in the camp, they blamed the winter chief.
The Black Mouths offered gifts to one or another of our chief men,
whose prayers we knew were strong; but none would take them. At last,
they gave half the gifts to _Eydeeahkata_,[28] and half to Short Horn.
“You shall take turns at being chief,” they said. “_Eydeeahkata_ shall
lead one day and Short Horn the next.”
[28] E̱y dēē äh´ kä tä
The two leaders chose Red Kettle to be their crier. The evening before
we started he went through the village crying, “We move to-morrow at
sunrise. Get ready.”
Our way led up the Missouri, above the bluffs; and most of the time
we were within sight of the river. Now and then, if the current made
a wide bend, we took a shorter course over the prairie. _Eydeeahkata_
and Short Horn went ahead, each with a sacred medicine bundle bound to
his saddle bow. The camp followed in a long line. Some rode ponies, but
most went afoot. We camped at night in our tepees.
[Illustration]
We made our eleventh camp on the north side of the Missouri, a few
miles below the mouth of the Yellowstone. Here the Missouri is not
very wide, and its sloping banks make a good place for crossing. A low
bank of clean, hard sand lay along the water’s edge. We pitched our
tents about noon on this sand. There were about a hundred tepees. They
stood in rows, like houses, for there was not room on the sand to make
a camping circle.
Small Ankle pitched his tent near the place chosen for the crossing.
The day was windy and chill. With flint-and-steel my father struck
a fire, and we soon had meat boiling. After our dinner he drove his
horses to pasture.
Strikes-Many Woman fetched dry grass for our beds, spreading it thickly
on the floor against the tent wall. On the edges of the beds next the
fireplace she laid small logs, to keep in the grass bedding and to
catch any flying sparks from the fire.
The wind died at evening. Twilight fell, and the coals in the fireplace
cast a soft, red glow on the tent walls. I sat near the tent door. With
robe drawn over my shoulders to keep off the chill, I raised the skin
door and looked out. The new moon, narrow and bent like an Indian bow,
shone white over the river, and the waves of the swift mid-current
sparkled silvery in the moonlight. I could hear the swish of eddies,
the lap-lapping of the waves rolling shoreward. Over all rose the roar,
roar, roar of the great river, sweeping onward we Indians knew not
where.
[Illustration: Plate III.—“With horn spoon she filled her mouth with
water.”]
My dogs were sleeping without, snugged against the tent for warmth.
At midnight one of them stirred, pointed his nose at the moon and
broke into a howl. The howl soon grew to a chorus, for every dog
in the camp joined in. Far out on the prairie rose the wailing
_yip-yip-yip-yip-ya-a-ah!_[29] of a coyote. The dogs grew silent again,
and curled up, nose-in-tail, to sleep.
[29] yĭp yĭp yĭp yĭp yä´ ä äh
And my little son came into the world.
The morning sky was growing light when Son-of-a-Star came into the
tent. His eyes were smiling as he stepped to the fireplace, for they
saw a pretty sight. Red Blossom was giving my baby a bath.
She had laid him on a piece of soft skin, before the fire. With horn
spoon she filled her mouth with water, held it in her cheeks until it
was warm, and blew it over my baby’s body. I do not think he liked his
bath, for he squalled loudly.
My husband laughed. “It is a lusty cry,” he said. “I am sure my son
will be a warrior.”
Having bathed my baby, Red Blossom bound him in his wrapping skins. She
had a square piece of tent cover, folded and sewed along the edges of
one end into a kind of sack. Into this she slipped my baby, with his
feet against the sewed end. About his little body she packed cattail
down.
On a piece of rawhide, she put some clean sand, which she heated by
rolling over it a red-hot stone. She packed this sand under my baby’s
feet; and, lest it prove too hot, she slipped a piece of soft buckskin
under them.
Over all she bound a wildcat skin, drawing the upper edge over the
baby’s head, like a hood.
The hot sand was to keep my baby warm. This and the cattail down we
placed in a baby’s wrappings only in winter, when on a journey.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
THE VOYAGE HOME
Meanwhile Small Ankle and other members of the family were making ready
to cross. “We must hasten,” my father said. “Ice chunks are running on
the current this morning. This shows that up in the mountains the river
is freezing over and cold weather is setting in.”
My mothers began packing soon after breakfast and Son-of-a-Star came
in to say that he would take me across in our bull boat; for we had
brought one with us from the village. Old Turtle began unpinning the
tent cover while I was still inside. She made the tent poles into a
bundle and bound them at the tail of the boat. I stepped in with my
baby in my arms and my husband paddled the boat across.
Son-of-a-Star helped me up the bank on the other side and gave me a
place to sit where I could watch the crossing. I folded a robe to sit
upon, and, with another robe drawn snugly over my shoulders and my baby
in my arms, I felt comfortable and warm.
My husband even made a small fire in a hollow place in the ground
near-by. One of my women friends boiled some meat and gave me the hot
broth to drink; for I was weary with the work of crossing and caring
for my babe.
There were not enough boats in the camp for all the people. Most of the
old people and little children were brought over in boats, and some
of the camp goods; but many families floated their stuff over in tent
covers, and, cold as was the water, many of the men swam.
I had left my two mothers and old Turtle loading their tent cover.
Turtle had made a big noose in the end of a lariat and laid it on the
sand. Over this she spread the skin cover, a large one. She bent a
green willow into a hoop, laid it on the tent cover, and within the
hoop piled most of our camp goods. She now gathered the edges of the
cover together over the pile, drew tight the noose, and tied it firm.
This tent-cover bundle my mothers and old Turtle pushed out into the
water as a kind of raft. The willow hoop gave the raft a flat bottom so
that it did not turn over in the water.
The lariat that bound the mouth of the raft was fastened to the tail of
a pony we had named Shaggy, and the end was carried into and about the
pony’s mouth like a halter. Shaggy was driven into the stream and swam
across, towing the raft. The lariat was fastened to his tail so that,
if the raft was swept down stream by the current, it would not drag the
pony’s head, and turn him from his course.
[Illustration]
As I have said, many families floated their goods over in these
tent-cover rafts; and not a few women, in haste to cross, swam clinging
to their rafts. One woman put her little four-year-old son on the top
of her raft, while she swam behind, pushing and guiding it. Another old
woman, named Owl Ear, mounted her raft and rode astraddle. Her pony
landed in a place where the shore was soft with oozy mud, so that he
could not climb out. Owl Ear had to wade in the mud up to her middle to
get her raft ashore; and when she was climbing out she slipped and sat
down backwards again in the ooze. She came up sputtering mud from her
mouth and much vexed with herself. “I think there must be bad spirits
in that mud, and they are trying to pull me back,” she called to me, as
she came waddling up the steep bank.
Before evening my mothers had brought all their camp goods across. They
raised the poles of our tent and drew on the cover. It was wet, but
soon dried in the wind. We built a fire inside. My baby had wakened up
and was crying. I loosened his wrapping and warmed him by the tent
fire, and he soon fell asleep. Red Blossom dug a hole, slipped into it
a kind of sack of raw hide, for a mortar. We had brought a pestle with
us from the village, and with this we pounded parched corn to a meal to
boil with beans. We ate a late supper and went to bed.
We camped on the bank three days, until all had crossed. Our chiefs
would not remain longer, for they wanted to get into winter camp before
snow fell; and, on the morning of the fourth day, we struck tents and
made ready to march.
[Illustration]
There was a mule in our family herd, a slow-going, gentle beast, that
I had bought of a Sioux for a worthless pony and some strings of corn.
Son-of-a-Star harnessed this mule to a travois, and my baby and I
rode. Had our march been in olden days, I should have had to go afoot,
carrying my baby on my back.
My husband had spread a heavy bull-skin robe over the travois basket
and set me on it, with another skin folded under me for a cushion.
Through holes in the edge of the bull skin Son-of-a-Star passed a
lariat; and when I was seated, with my baby in my arms and my robe
belted snugly about us, my husband drew the lariat, drawing the bull
skin about my knees and ankles. The day was windy and cold, and the
bull skin kept the chill air from me and my babe.
Our leaders had chosen for our winter camp a place called Round Bank,
on a small stream named Bark Creek. There were no trees here for
building earth lodges, so we camped in our tepees, pitching them in a
hollow, to shelter them from the wind. The ground was frozen so that we
could not peg our tents to the ground, but laid stones around the edges
of the tent covers. Such was our older-fashioned way. We did not use
wooden tent pegs much until after we got iron axes.
My mothers fetched dry grass into our tent for our beds, and made a
fire under the smoke hole. A tepee was kept warm with a rather small
fire, if it was well sheltered from the wind.
Ours was a big tent, for we had a big family. With my two half
brothers, Bear’s Tail and Wolf Chief, and their wives; and Red Kettle,
Full House, and Flies Low, younger sons of Red Blossom and Strikes-Many
Woman, we numbered fourteen in all. This was a large number for one
tent. Ten were as many as a tepee usually sheltered. Every member of
the family had his own bed, where he slept at night and sat in the
daylight hours.
My little son was ten days old the second day we were in winter camp;
and, though we were hardly well settled, I found time to make ready his
naming feast. Having filled a wooden bowl with venison and boiled dried
green corn—foods I knew well were to his liking—I set it before Small
Ankle.
“I want you to name your grandson,” I said to him.
[Illustration]
Small Ankle ate, thinking the while what name he should give my son.
Then he arose and took my baby tenderly in his arms, saying, “I name
him _Tsakahka Sukkee_,[30] Good Bird.” Small Ankle’s gods were birds,
and the name was a kind of prayer that they remember and help my little
son.
[30] Tsä käh´ kä Sŭk´ kēē
Winter passed without mishap to us. We had found no buffaloes on the
Yellowstone; but our hunters thrice discovered small herds near our
camp and brought in meat; and a good many deer were killed.
Rather early in the spring, the women of the Goose Society danced and
hung up meat for the goose spirits, praying them for good weather for
corn planting. Then we all broke camp.
Most of the tribe returned to the Yellowstone for the spring hunt, but
my father wanted to go up the Missouri. “We have not found the herds
our scouts saw in the fall,” he said. “I am sure they are farther up
the river.” One Buffalo and his family joined us and we went up the
river and made camp. A small herd was sighted and ten buffaloes were
killed.
We were building stages to dry the meat when four more tents caught up
with us, those of Strikes Backbone, Old Bear, Long Wing, and Spotted
Horn, and their families. To each tent owner my father gave a whole
green buffalo hide and a side of meat. The hides were for making bull
boats, for we were planning to return home by water.
Ice broke on the Missouri and flocks of wild ducks began coming north.
My mothers were eager to be home in time for the spring planting. I
made four new boats, giving one of them to my father, and we made ready
to go.
Son-of-a-Star partly loaded one of my boats with dried meat, and put
in his gun and ax. A second boat, also partly loaded, he lashed to the
first; and a third, loaded to the gunwale with meat and hides, he bound
to the tail of the second. In this second boat sat my half brother,
Flies Low, a seventeen-year-old lad, with my baby in his arms. My
husband and I sat in the first boat and paddled.
There were eleven boats in the six families of our party. One or two
families, having no meat to freight, rode in single boats. My father
and two of the men did not come in the boats, but rode along the bank,
driving our horses. They kept back near the foot hills, but in sight of
the river.
We were in no haste, and we made a jolly party as we floated down the
broad current. At night we paddled to the shore. The men joined us with
the horses, and we camped under the stars.
The Missouri is a swift stream, and at places we found the waves were
quite choppy. Especially if a bend in the river carried the current
against the wind, the waves rolled and foamed, rocking our boats and
threatening to swamp us. At such times we drew together, catching hold
of one another’s boats. Thus bunched, our fleet rode the choppy current
more safely than a single boat could have done.
The weather had set in rather warm when we left our winter camp and the
grass had already begun to show green on the prairie. But, as we neared
the mouth of the Little Missouri, a furious storm of snow and wind
arose. The storm blew up suddenly, and, as we rounded a bend in the
river, we rode into the very teeth of the wind.
Son-of-a-Star shouted to me to turn in to the shore, though I could
hardly hear his voice above the wind. We plied our paddles with all our
might. Suddenly my husband stopped paddling and leaned over the side of
the boat, nigh upsetting it. “_Eena, eena_”[31] I cried, scared nearly
out of my wits, and I grasped at the boat’s edge to keep from being
tumbled in upon him. Then I saw what was the matter. My husband was
lifting my little son out of the water.
[31] ēē nä´
I have said that Flies Low sat in our second boat, with my little son
in his arms. The baby had grown restless, and Flies Low had loosened
the babe’s wrappings to give freedom of his limbs. A sudden billow
rocked the boat, throwing Flies Low against the side and tumbling my
little son out of his arms into the water.
[Illustration]
His loosened wrappings, by some good luck, made my baby buoyant, so
that he floated. He was crying lustily when my husband drew him out;
but he was not strangling, and under his wraps he was not even wet.
“I could not help it,” said Flies Low afterwards. “The boat seemed to
turn over, and the baby fell out of my arms.” We knew this was true and
said nothing more of it.
Our party reached shore without further mishap. We hastily unpacked two
tents; and, while some busied themselves pitching them, others gathered
wood and made fires.
That night the snow turned to a cold rain, which the next day turned
again into a heavy snow. The summer birds had come north, and after the
storm was over we found many of them frozen to death. It snowed for
four days.
Small Ankle and his brother, Charging Enemy, were driving their horses
along the bank when the storm overtook them. They did not stop to camp
with us, but pushed on through the storm to Like-a-Fishhook village.
They reached the village safely and drove their horses down into the
thick timber out of the cold wind. There was a pond there, and the
horses found it warmer to wade out into the water than to stand on the
bank in the cold rain. But after a while, grown weary with standing,
they came out; and, as the wind was blowing a gale, the horses were
chilled and three of them died. Many others of our village herd died in
the same way.
Our own party, as soon as the storm was over, re-embarked and floated
safely down to Like-a-Fishhook village.
[Illustration]
AFTER FIFTY YEARS
I am an old woman now. The buffaloes and black-tail deer are gone, and
our Indian ways are almost gone. Sometimes I find it hard to believe
that I ever lived them.
My little son grew up in the white man’s school. He can read books, and
he owns cattle and has a farm. He is a leader among our Hidatsa people,
helping teach them to follow the white man’s road.
He is kind to me. We no longer live in an earth lodge, but in a house
with chimneys; and my son’s wife cooks by a stove.
But for me, I cannot forget our old ways.
Often in summer I rise at daybreak and steal out to the cornfields;
and as I hoe the corn I sing to it, as we did when I was young. No one
cares for our corn songs now.
Sometimes at evening I sit, looking out on the big Missouri. The sun
sets, and dusk steals over the water. In the shadows I seem again
to see our Indian village, with smoke curling upward from the earth
lodges; and in the river’s roar I hear the yells of the warriors, the
laughter of little children as of old. It is but an old woman’s dream.
Again I see but shadows and hear only the roar of the river; and tears
come into my eyes. Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever.
[Illustration]
GLOSSARY OF INDIAN WORDS
English equivalents are in italics
Ä hä he̱y´ An exclamation; _Ho there!_
Ä hä hṳts´ _They come against us._
Ä kēē´ kä hēē _Took-from-Him_; name of a dog.
Ä lä lä lä lä´ Cry of triumph by women; made by curling the
tip of the tongue backward and vibrating
it against the roof of the mouth.
Ä mä hēēt´ sēē kṳ mä _Lies-on-Red-Hill_; name of a woman.
Ēē´ kṳ pä _Chum_.
Ēē nä´ An exclamation.
Ēēt sēē pä däh´ pä kēē _Foot moving_; name of a game.
Ēēt sṳ´ tä Name of the large tendon of a buffalo’s neck.
E̱y An exclamation.
E̱y dēē äh´ kä tä Name of an Indian.
Hau (how) The Indian salutation.
He̱y dä e̱y´ An exclamation of pleasure.
Hwēē _Hasten_; an exclamation.
Mä hō´ hēē shä A species of willow.
Mä kṳt´ sä tēē _Clan cousin._
Mä pēē´ _Meal made by pounding._
Mä pṳk´ sä ō kï hĕ _Snake Head-Ornament_; a man’s name.
Mēē dä´ hēē kä _Gardeners’ songs._
Mēē dēē päh´ dēē _Rising water_; name of a Hidatsa clan, or
band.
Näh _Go, come._
Nä kä päh´ _Mush._
O kēē mēē´ ä _Head-Ornament Woman_; a woman’s name.
Shēē´ pēē shä _Black._
Sŭk´ kēēts (or Sŭkkēē) _Good._
Tsä käh´ ka Sŭk´ kēē Name of Waheenee’s son; from _tsakahka_,
bird, and _sukkee_, good.
Tsïst´ skä _Prairie chicken._
Ṳ´ ï The Hidatsa war whoop.
Wä hēē´ nēē _Cowbird_, or _Buffalo-bird_; name of the
Indian woman whose story is told in this
book.
Wē´ä _Woman._
Wṳ ṳ ṳ Imitation of a dog’s bark.
Yĭ yĭ yĭ yĭ yäh´ A war cry of triumph, made with hand vibrated
over the mouth or against the throat.
Wē´ äh tēē A woman’s name.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
_Page 9, l. 24_: “We had corn a-plenty” The Hidatsas and Mandans
were the best agriculturists of the north-plains Indians. Varieties
of corn developed by them mature in the semi-arid climate of western
North Dakota where our better known eastern strains will not ripen.
The varieties include flint, flour, and a kind of sweet corn called
_maikadishake_,[32] or gummy, which the Indians use for parching.
Hidatsa seed planted at the United States Agricultural Experiment
Station at Bozeman, Montana, has made surprising yields.
[32] mä´ ï kä dï shä kĕ
_Page 10, l. 29_: “the ghost land.” A Hidatsa Indian believed he had
four ghosts. At death, one ghost went to the Ghost village, to live in
an earth lodge and hunt buffaloes as on earth; a second remained at the
grave until after a time it joined the first in the Ghost village where
they became one again. What became of the other two ghosts does not
seem to be known.
_Page 11, l. 20_: “The march was led by the older chiefs.” A Hidatsa
chief was a man who by his war deeds, hospitality, and wisdom, came
to be recognized as one of the influential men of the tribe. He was
not necessarily an officer. When translating into English, Hidatsas
usually call the officer elected for any executive duty a _leader_,
as war-party leader, winter-camp leader, leader of the buffalo hunt.
It should be remembered that the activities of an Indian tribe are
decided in councils; and in these councils the eloquence and wisdom of
the chiefs had greatest weight. The Hidatsa word for chief, literally
translated, is excellent man, superior man.
_Page 13, l. 8_: “At this hour fires burned before most of the tepees.”
In fall or winter the fire was within the tepee, under the smoke hole.
_Page 15, l. 13_: “for a woman to ... begin building her earth lodge.”
While the work falling to an Indian woman was far from light, she did
not look upon herself as overburdened. Women were more kindly treated
by Hidatsas and Mandans than by some tribes.
_Page 17, l. 28_: “dried prairie turnips.” The prairie turnip,
_psoralea esculenta_, is a starchy, bulbous root, growing rather
plentifully on the plains. Its food value is high. Attempts have been
made unsuccessfully to cultivate it.
_Page 17, l. 30_: “June berries.” The June berry, _amelanchier
alnifolia_, is a small, hardwood tree, bearing sweet, dark-red berries.
Its branches were much used for making arrow shafts.
_Page 21, l. 14_: “young men fasted and cut their flesh.” Such
self-inflicted tortures were not, as is often believed, for the
purpose of proving the warrior’s fortitude, but were made as a kind of
sacrifice to the gods that these might pity the devotee and answer his
prayers. See Bible, I Kings, XVIII; 28.
_Page 24, l. 30_: “It was a long pipe with black stone bowl.” The stone
bowl was carved from a hard kind of grey clay, anointed with grease and
baked in a fire to turn it black. It took a high polish.
_Page 35, l. 11_: “Telling tales ... in ... autumn and winter.” Tribal
myths, told of the gods, were often forbidden in summer when nature was
_alive_. In winter nature was _asleep_ or _dead_. One could talk of
sleeping spirits without fear of offending them.
_Page 36, l. 5_: “Making ready her seed.” The Hidatsas used the
greatest care in selecting their seed corn. Only large and perfect ears
were chosen. The best ear for seed was the _eeteeshahdupadee_,[33] or
muffled-head, so called because the kernels cover the cob quite to the
tip, making the ear look like an Indian with his head muffled up in his
robe.
[33] ēē tēē shä dṳ´ pä dēē
_Page 36, l. 14_: “Wooden bowl.” In olden days almost every family
owned several of these feast bowls. A large knot was split out of a
tree trunk with wedges and, after being hollowed out with fire, was
slowly carved into shape with flint tools. Some of these bowls are
beautiful examples of carving.
_Page 37, l. 16_: “Trying to parch an ear of corn.” Parched corn
entered largely into the diet of our corn raising Indians. Among
eastern tribes, a warrior set forth on a long journey with a sack of
parched corn pounded to a meal. When hungry, he swallowed a spoonful of
the parched meal, washing it down with a pint of water. In a short time
the meal had absorbed the water, filling the stomach with a digestible
mass like mush.
Every farmer’s lad should put away some ears of ripened sweet corn in
the fall, to parch of a winter’s evening. Sweet corn was raised by the
Hidatsas and Mandans for parching only.
_Page 38, l. 21_: “Ground beans,” or hog peanut; _amphicarpa falcata_.
These beans, like peanuts, are borne under ground.
_Page 38, l. 22_: “Wild potatoes,” or Jerusalem artichoke. Roots of
_helianthus tuberosus_, a plant of the sunflower family.
_Page 41, l. 25_: “Who had been a black bear.” Tradition has it that
the art and mysteries of trapping eagles were taught the Hidatsas by
the black bears. An eagle hunters’ camp was conducted as a kind of
symbolic play, the hunters acting the ceremonies of the delivery to the
Indians of the eagle-hunt mysteries.
_Page 44, l. 17_: “Earth lodges well-built and roomy.” The earth lodge
of the Mandans and Hidatsas was the highest example of the building art
among our plains tribes. Some of these lodges were quite large, having
a height of eighteen feet or more, and a floor diameter exceeding sixty
feet. Usually two or more families of relatives inhabited the same
lodge.
An earth lodge had four large central posts and beams, supporting the
roof; twelve surrounding posts and beams, supporting the eaves; and a
hundred rafters. The roof was covered with a matting of willows over
which was laid dry grass and a heavy coating of earth.
An earth lodge lasted but about ten years, when it was abandoned or
rebuilt. The labor of building and repairing these imposing structures,
especially in days when iron tools were unknown and posts and beams had
to be burned to proper lengths, must have been severe.
When the author first visited Fort Berthold reservation in 1906, there
were eight earth lodges still standing; in 1918 there were two.
_Page 47, l. 18_: “An earthen pot.” The potter’s craft was practiced
professionally by certain women who had purchased the secrets of the
art. The craft was an important one, as much of Hidatsa cooking was by
boiling. Some of the earthen boiling pots held as much as two gallons.
A collection of earthen pots, fired in 1910 by Hides-and-Eats, a Mandan
woman nearly ninety years old, is in the American Museum of Natural
History.
_Page 49, l. 18_: “From her cache pit.” The cache pit was a jug-shaped
pit within or without the lodge, six or eight feet deep. It was floored
with willow sticks and its walls were lined with dry grass. It was used
to store the fall harvest.
Strings of braided ears were laid in series against the wall. Within
these was poured the threshed grain, in which were buried strings of
dried squash and sacks of beans and sunflower seed. Buffalo-Bird Woman
says there were five cache pits in use in her father’s family.
Many families had a cache pit within the lodge to serve as a cellar.
Besides corn for immediate use, it held sacks of dried berries, prairie
turnips, packages of dried meat and even bladders of marrow fat.
The pits without the lodge with their stores of grain were carefully
sealed with slabs and grass, over which were trampled earth and ashes.
This was done to conceal the pits from any Sioux who might come
prowling around when the tribe was away in winter camp. If a family
lacked food in winter, they returned to their summer village and opened
one of these cache pit granaries for its stores of corn.
_Page 49, l. 31_: “Red Blossom pounded the parched corn ... in a
corn mortar.” The corn mortar, or hominy pounder, is a section of a
cottonwood or ash trunk, hollowed out by fire. The pestal is of ash.
The mortar was sunk in the floor of the earth lodge and covered, when
not in use, by a flat stone.
Corn mortars are still used by the Hidatsas. Our grandmothers in
pioneer days also used them.
_Page 51, l. 4_: “Chief.” A Hidatsa chief, as explained, was not
necessarily a tribal officer. His position was like that of an
influential citizen of a country village, who is often a member of
the local school or hospital board, is chosen to preside at patriotic
meetings, and is expected to extend hospitality and charity to those in
need.
Hospitality, indeed, is the Indian’s crowning virtue. In tribal days,
when one had food, all had food; when one starved, all starved. A
reservation Indian does not like to take pay for a meal, especially
from one of his own race; and he can not comprehend how any white man
having food can let another go hungry.
His hospitality is often a hindrance to the Indian’s progress. Indolent
Indians eat up the food stores of industrious relatives.
_Page 56, l. 14_: “Dried meat pounded fine and mixed with marrow fat.”
This was regarded as a delicate dish. Old people especially were fond
of it. The plains Indians usually had sound teeth, but their coarse
diet wore the teeth down so that old men found it hard to eat dried
meat unless it was thus pounded to shreds. Marrow fat was used much as
we use butter.
_Page 57, l. 1_: “A doll, woven of rushes.” Very good mats were also
woven of rushes.
_Page 58, l. 4_: “Tossing in a blanket.” The blanket tossing game has
been found among widely separated peoples. In Don Quixote, we are told
how Sancho Panza unwilling participated in the game.
_Page 66, l. 6_: “Every Hidatsa belonged to a clan.” The clan was,
nevertheless, relatively weak among the Hidatsas, its functions
apparently having been usurped at least in part by the age societies.
(The Black Mouths were an age society. See chapter V).
In many tribes a man was forbidden to marry within his clan.
_Page 68, l. 25_: “He was a great medicine man.” The story of Snake
Head-Ornament is a good example of the tales told of the old time
medicine men. Snake Head-Ornament’s friendship for the bull snake would
seem uncanny even to a white man.
_Page 73, l. 1_: “In old times we Indian people had no horses.”
At the time of America’s discovery the Indians had domesticated the
llama in the Peruvian highlands; the guinea pig, raised for food by
many South American tribes; turkeys, and even bees, in Mexico; dogs,
developed from wolves or coyotes, were universally domesticated among
the North American tribes.
Indian dogs were used as watch dogs and as beasts of burden. Dog flesh
was eaten by many tribes. An edible, hairless variety of dog, bred by
the Mexican Indians has become extinct.
_Page 77, l. 23_: “My grandmother brought in some fresh sage.” The sage
was a sacred plant.
_Page 81, l. 10_: “Our dogs dragged well-laden travois.” Older Indians
say that a well-trained dog could drag a load of eighty pounds on a
travois.
_Page 85, l. 6_: “The big tendon ... we Indians call the
_eetsuta_.”[34] When dried this tendon becomes hard, like horn; and
arrow points and even arrow shafts were carved from it.
[34] ēēt sṳ´ tä
_Page 87, l. 32_: “Coyote Eyes, a Ree Indian.” The Rees, or Arikaras,
are an offshoot of the Pawnee tribe, whose language they speak. They
removed to Fort Berthold reservation and settled there with the
Hidatsas and Mandans in 1862.
_Page 92, l. 7_: “To embroider with quills of gull.” The tribe used
to make annual journeys to the lakes near Minot, North Dakota, where,
older Indians say, the gulls nested. The feathers were gathered along
the beach. The quill was split, the flat nether half being the part
used. Quills were dyed with native vegetable colors.
_Page 99, l. 10_: “Bear Man was an eagle hunter.” The tail feathers
of the golden eagle were much worn by all the plains tribes. These
feathers, in eagles under two years of age, are of a pure white, with
dark brown or black tips, and were much prized. Eagle hunting was a
highly honored occupation.
_Page 112, l. 17_: “The huskers came into the field yelling and
singing.” Buffalo-Bird Woman laughingly adds, that the yelling was by
young men who wanted their sweethearts to hear their voices.
_Page 114, l. 2_: “The hollow buffalo hoofs rattled.” The earth lodge
door was a heavy buffalo skin, stretched when green on a frame of light
poles. It was swung from the beam above by heavy thongs. The puncheon
fire screen stood between it and the fireplace, about which the family
sat or worked. As the moccasined tread of a visitor made little noise,
a bunch or two of buffalo hoofs was hung to a bar running across the
middle of the door.
The hoof was prepared by boiling and removing the pith. Its edges were
then trimmed and a hole was cut in the toe. Through this hole a thong
was run with a knotted end, to keep the hoof from slipping off. As the
door dropped after an entering visitor, the hollow hoofs fell together
with a clittering noise, warning the family.
_Page 118, l. 28_: “Hanging Stone.” A literal translation of the
Hidatsa word. It refers to a form of war club, a short stick, from an
end of which swung a stone sewed in a piece of skin.
_Page 125, l. 3_: “With ankles to the right, as Indian women sit.” A
warrior sat Turkish fashion, or, often, squat-on-heels. An Indian woman
sat with feet to the right unless she was left-handed, when feet were
to the left.
_Page 125, l. 6_: “Mixed with marrow fat.” Marrow fat was obtained by
boiling the crushed bones of a buffalo in a little water. The yellow
marrow as it rose was skimmed off and stored in bladders or short
casings made of entrails, like sausage casings.
_Page 126, l. 10_: “I have come to call you.” Buffalo-Bird Woman means
that her father invited his son-in-law to come and live in his earth
lodge. If he had not sent this invitation, the young couple would have
set up housekeeping elsewhere.
_Page 128, l. 37_: “Only a strong, well-fed pony could go all day on
wet ground.” Nature designed the solid hoof of the horse for a prairie
or semidesert country. A pony finds it hard to withdraw his hoof in wet
spongy soil, and soon tires. A deer or buffalo, with divided hoof, runs
upon wet ground with comparative ease. Every farmer’s boy knows that an
ox will walk through a swamp in which a horse will mire.
_Page 142, l. 26_: “With two fingers crooked like horns, the sign for
buffaloes.” So many languages were spoken by our Indian tribes, that
they found it necessary to invent a sign language so that Indians,
ignorant of each other’s speech, could converse. A well-trained deaf
mute and an old plains Indian can readily talk together by signs.
_Page 143, l. 4_: “Creeping up the coulees.” A coulee in the Dakotas is
a grassy ravine, usually dry except in spring and autumn, and after a
heavy rain.
_Page 157, l. 19_: “They starved, because they are hunters and raise
no corn.” The Hidatsas and Mandans as agriculturists felt themselves
superior to the hunting tribes. Small-Ankle refers here to the western,
or Teton, Sioux. The eastern Sioux were corn raisers.
_Page 158, l. 10_: “My mothers and I were more than a week threshing.”
In the summer of 1912, the author had Buffalo-Bird Woman pace off on
the prairie the size of her mothers’ field, as she recollected it. It
measured one hundred and ninety yards in length by ninety yards in
width. Such were some of the fields which in olden days were cultivated
with wooden sticks and bone hoes.
SUPPLEMENT
HOW TO MAKE AN INDIAN CAMP
Young Americans who wish to grow up strong and healthy should live much
out of doors; and there is no pleasanter way to do this than in an
Indian camp. Such a camp you can make yourself, in your back yard or an
empty lot or in a neighboring wood.
The Lodge
Buffalo-Bird Woman has told us of the earth lodges of her people. They
were for permanent abode. Hunters, however, camping but a day or two in
a place, usually put up a pole hunting lodge.
Four forked poles were stacked, as in Figure 1.
[Illustration: Figure 1]
[Illustration: Figure 2]
Around these in a circle, other poles were laid, as in Figure 2, for a
frame.
For cover buffalo skins, bound together at the edges, were drawn around
the frame in two series, the lower series being laid first. The peak of
the pole frame was left uncovered, to let out the smoke.
Instead of buffalo skins, gunny sacks may be used, fastened at the
edges with safety pins or with wooden skewers; or strips of canvas or
carpet may be used. Three or four heavier poles may be laid against the
gunny-sack cover to stay it in place.
The door may be made of a gunny sack, hung on a short pole.
Indians often raised a piece of skin on a forked pole for a shield, to
keep the wind from driving the smoke down the smoke hole.
Figure 3 shows the finished lodge with gunny-sack cover, door, and wind
shield. The last is made of a piece of oil cloth.
[Illustration: Figure 3]
[Illustration: Figure 4]
Booth
Buffalo-Bird Woman tells of the booth which Turtle made in her
cornfield. A booth is easily made of willows or long branches.
A short digging stick will be needed. This was of ash, a foot or two
in length, sharpened at one end by burning in a fire. The point was
often rubbed with fat and charred over the coals to harden it. (Such a
digging stick was not the kind used for cultivating corn.)
[Illustration: Figure 5]
[Illustration: Figure 6]
If you have no ash stick, a section of a broom handle will do.
With a stone, drive the digging stick four inches in the ground, as in
Figure 4. Withdraw digging stick and repeat until you have six holes
set in a circle. The diameter of the circle should be about five feet.
Into the six holes set willows, or branches, five or six feet high, as
in Figure 5.
Weave or bind tops together so as to make a leafy roof, or shade, as
in Figure 6. For binding, use strips of elm bark; or slender willows,
twisted, so as to break the fibers.
Fireplace
Indians, when journeying, made the campfire outside the lodge in
summer; inside the lodge, in winter. Usually a slight pit was dug for
the fireplace, thus lessening danger of sparks, setting fire to prairie
or forest. The fire was smothered with earth when camp was forsaken.
[Illustration: Figure 7]
[Illustration: Figure 8]
Broiling Meat
Indians broiled fresh meat on a stick thrust in the ground and leaning
over the coals. Often a forked stick was cut, the meat was laid on the
prongs, and it was held over the coals until broiled. In Figures 7 and
8 both methods are shown.
[Illustration: Figure 9]
Drying Meat
Buffalo-Bird Woman often speaks of dried buffalo meat. If you want to
know what it was like, cut a steak into thin pieces, and dry on a stage
of green sticks, three feet high. This may be done in the sun; or, a
small fire may be made beneath, to smoke as well as dry the meat. In
Figures 9 and 10 two forms of drying stage are shown.
[Illustration: Figure 10]
Cooking Dried Meat
A pail or small bucket will do for kettle. It should be swung from a
tripod by stick-and-thong, as in Figure 11. Put in dried meat with
enough water to cover, and bring to a boil. The broth may be used as
the Indians used it, for a drink.
Parching Corn
Ripe sweet corn, thoroughly dried, is best for parching; but field corn
will do nearly as well. Drop a handful of the shelled corn in a skillet
with a little butter. Cover skillet and set on the fire. Shake skillet
from side to side to keep corn from scorching.
In the earth lodge, Hidatsa women parched the grain in an earthen pot,
stirring it with a stick. Indian boys, when out herding horses, often
carried two or three ears of corn for lunch. An ear was parched by
thrusting a stick into the cob, and holding it over the coals, as in
Figure 12.
[Illustration: Figure 11]
[Illustration: Figure 12]
A steak broiled Indian fashion over the coals, or a kettle of boiled
dried meat, with a cupful of parched corn, will make just such a meal
as Indians often ate.
HINTS TO YOUNG CAMPERS
Do not throw away bits of unused food, but burn or bury them. Unless
thus destroyed, the decaying food will attract insects, which often
bring disease. Bury all tin cans.
Potatoes may be kept fresh as in your cellar by burying them in loose
earth or sand.
Hang out your blankets and bed clothing to be aired an hour or two each
day, preferably in the morning.
Indians had no soap. Indian women scoured out their earthen cooking
pots with rushes. You may clean your camp kettle and pans in the same
way; or, if no rushes can be found, scour with coarse grass dipped in
wet sand or sandy mud, and drench with clean water.
Axes, clothing, shoes, and the like may be stored out of the way by
making them into a long bundle, with a cloth or thick paper, and
lashing them to one of the upright tent poles within the tent.
Indian children were fond of chewing green cornstalks, for the sweet
juice they contained. If your camp is near a cornfield about the time
the corn is in milk, you will find the chewed stalks almost as sweet as
some varieties of sugar cane.
INDIAN COOKING
Young people often wonder what Indian cooking is like, and groups of
them—as a class in Sunday school or day school—may like to eat a meal
of Indian foods. Following are a few common Hidatsa dishes. Usually,
but one kind of food was eaten at a single meal.
=Madapozhee Eekteea[35]=, _or Boiled Whole Corn_
Pour three pints of water into a kettle and set on the fire. Drop in
a pint of shelled field corn, a handful of kidney beans and a lump of
suet the size of an egg. Boil until the corn kernels burst open.
[35] Mä dä pō´ zhēē Ēēk tēē´ ä
=Manakapa=[36], _or Mush_
Put a pint of shelled field corn into a canvas cloth, and with ax or
stone pound to a coarse meal; or the corn may be ground in a coffee
mill. To this meal add a handful of kidney beans, and boil in two pints
of water. The Hidatsa mortar for pounding corn into meal is shown in
cut on page 156.
[36] Mä´ nä kä pä
=Dried, or Jerked, Meat=
Cut some beefsteak, round or sirloin, into thin strips. Dry the strips
on a stage of small poles (see cut on page 141) in the open air or over
a slow fire, or in the kitchen oven, until brittle and hard. Meat thus
dried could be kept for months. Warriors and hunters often ate jerked
meat raw or toasted over a fire. In the lodge, it was more often boiled
a few minutes to soften it; and the broth was drunk as we drink coffee.
(See also “Drying Meat”, page 185.)
=Pemmican=
Take strips of beef, dried as described above, and pound them to shreds
between two hard stones. Put the shredded mass in a bowl, and pour over
it a little marrow fat from a boiled soup bone, or some melted butter.
=Corn Balls=
The Hidatsas raised sweet corn for parching. Hunters often carried a
pouch of the parched grain for a lunch. Parched ripe sweet corn was
often pounded to a fine meal, kneaded with lumps of hot roasted suet,
and rolled between the palms into little lumps, or balls, the size of
one’s thumb.
Hidatsa custom did not permit a woman to speak to her son-in-law; but
she often showed her love for him by making him a bowl of corn balls.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Surrounded by the powerful and hostile Sioux, the two little Hidatsa
tribes were compelled to keep relatively close to their stockaded
villages and cornfields, which, however, they most sturdily defended.
Their weakness proved a blessing. The yearly crops of their cornfields
were a sure protection against famine, and in their crowded little
villages was developed a culture that was remarkable. The circular
earth lodges of the Mandans and Hidatsas represent the highest
expression of the house-building art east of the Rocky Mountains.
Three members of Small Ankle’s family are now living: Small Ankle’s
son, Wolf Chief, his daughter, Waheenee, or Buffalo-Bird Woman, and
her son, Good Bird, or Goodbird. Goodbird was the first Indian of his
tribe to receive a common school education. Like many Indians he has a
natural taste for drawing. Several hundred sketches by him, crude but
spirited and in true perspective, await publication by the Museum.
Goodbird’s mother, Waheenee, is a marvelous source of information of
old-time life and belief. Conservative, and sighing for the good old
times, she 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. The stories in this book, out of her own
life, were told by her with other accounts of scientific interest for
the Museum. In the sweltering heat of an August day she has continued
dictation for nine hours, lying down but never flagging, when too weary
to sit longer in a chair. She is approximately 83 years old.
The stories in this book are true stories, typical of Indian life.
Many of them are exactly as they fell from Waheenee’s lips. Others
have been completed from information given by Goodbird and Wolf Chief,
and in a few instances by other Indians. The aim has been not to give
a biography of Waheenee, but a series of stories illustrating the
philosophy, the Indian-thinking of her life.
In story and picture, therefore, this book is true to fact and becomes
not only a reader of unusual interest but a contribution to the
literature of history and of anthropology. The author and the artist
have expressed and portrayed customs, places, and things that are
purely Indian and perfect in every detail.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| NED DAWSON |
| IN WILFUL LAND |
| BY |
| JAMES LEE ORR |
| |
| A very fascinating realistic |
| story characteristic of boys, |
| written in allegorical style and |
| impressing a splendid moral |
| lesson. For libraries and |
| supplementary reading. |
| |
| _Cloth, illustrated, 80 cents._ |
| |
| WEBB PUBLISHING COMPANY |
| Saint Paul, Minn. |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| RULES OF ORDER |
| FOR EVERY-DAY USE |
| _and_ |
| CIVIL GOVERNMENT |
| MADE PLAIN |
| |
| _HENRY SLADE GOFF_ |
| |
| Parliamentary Procedure Simplified |
| With a Graphic Explanation and Tabular |
| Illustration of Local, State and |
| National Institutions |
| |
| _Cloth, 116 pages, 75 cents._ |
| |
| WEBB PUBLISHING COMPANY |
| SAINT PAUL, MINN. |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Text enclosed by equals is in bold (=bold=).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
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