Waheenee

“ 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. ”

“ When we dried squash in the fall we strung the slices upon strings of twisted grass, each seven Indian fathoms long; an Indian fathom is the distance between a woman’s two hands outstretched on either side. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In my father’s family we always observed this custom of putting away seed for two years; and we did this not only of our corn, but of our squash seeds, beans, sunflower seeds, and even of our tobacco seeds; for if I remember rightly, the tobacco fields were sometimes injured by frost just as were our corn fields.
Not all families in our village were equally wise. Some were quite improvident, and were not at all careful to save seed from their crops. Such families, in the spring, had to buy their seed from families that were more provident. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The watchers sometimes rose and stood upon the stage as they looked to see if any boys or horses were in the field, stealing corn. Older girls and young married women, and even old women, often worked at porcupine embroidery as they watched. Very young girls did not embroider.
Boys of nine to eleven years of age were sometimes rather troublesome thieves. They were fond of stealing green ears to roast by a fire in the woods. Sometimes—not every day, however—we had to guard our corn alertly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The owner of a field would come and notify the crier of some society, as the Fox or Dog society, or some other. The crier would go on the roof of the society’s lodge and call, ‘All you of the Fox society come hither; they want you to husk. When you all get here, we will go to that one’s garden and husk the corn!’
“We young men of the society all gathered together and marched to the field to which we were bidden. In old times we took our guns with us, for the Sioux might come up to attack us. As we approached the field we began to sing, that the girls might hear us. ”

“ The first corn was ready to be eaten green early in the harvest moon, when the blossoms of the prairie golden rod are all in full, bright yellow; or about the end of the first week in August. We ate much green corn, boiling the fresh ears in a pot as white people do; but every Hidatsa family also put up dried green corn for winter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These gardens by Devils Lake I think must have been rather small. I know that in later times, whenever my tribe removed up the Missouri to build a new village, our fields, the first year, were quite small; for clearing the wooded bottom land was hard work. A family usually added to their clearing each year, until their garden was as large as they cared to cultivate.
As yet, my people knew nothing of corn or squashes. One day a war party, I think of ten men, wandered west to the Missouri River. They saw on the other side a village of earth lodges like their own. It was a village of the Mandans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I knew when the corn ears were ripe enough for boiling from these signs: The blossoms on the top of the stalk were turned brown, the silk on the end [37] of the ear was dry, and the husks on the ear were of a dark green color.
I do not think the younger Indians on this reservation are as good agriculturists as we older members of my tribe were when we were young. I sometimes say to my son Goodbird: “You young folks, when you want green corn, open the husk to see if the grain is ripe enough, and thus expose it; but I just go out into the field and pluck the ear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An old woman would draw a robe up over her lap, as she sat Indian fashion, with ankles to the right, on the floor of the stage. She took a squash in her left hand, and with her bone knife in her right, she sliced the squash into slices about three eighths of an inch thick.
The squash was sliced from side to side, not from stem to blossom. An old woman slicing squash would take up a squash, cut out the stem pit and the blossom, then turn the squash sidewise and slice, beginning on the side nearest her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When our corn was in, we began planting beans and squashes. Beans we commonly planted between corn rows, sometimes over the whole field, more often over a part of it. Our bean and squash planting I will describe later; and I speak of it now only because I wish to explain to you how a Hidatsa garden was laid out.
The largest field ever owned in my father’s family was the one which I have said my grandmother Turtle helped clear, at Like-a-fishhook village, or Fort Berthold, as the whites called it. The field, begun small, was added to each year and did not reach its maximum size for some years. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ When the pounded corn meal had now all cooked and the salt had been added, the beans were put in—red, spotted, black, or shield-figured, we did not have white beans in very old times; they were brought in by white men. The pot was now let boil until the beans were done. Beans were always added to the pot.
“A pot of corn meal and beans was [almost] always on the fire in the lodge. The boys of the lodge liked to come around when the corn was cooking and dip horn spoons into the thick, rising liquor, and lick it off as I have described the woman doing as she cooked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The owner of the garden would weed out the weak plants, leaving only the stronger standing.
The earth about each plant was hilled up about it with a buffalo rib, into a little hill like a corn hill. It was a common thing to see an old man working in his tobacco garden with one of these ribs. Young men seldom worked in the tobacco gardens; not using tobacco very much, they cared little about it.
Arrow-head-earring’s Tobacco Garden
An old man, I remember, named Arrow-head-earring, or Ma ́iạ-pokcahec, had a patch of tobacco along the edge of a field on the east side of the village. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We did not like to quarrel about our garden lands. One’s title to a field once set up, no one ever thought of disputing it; for if one were selfish and quarrelsome, and tried to seize land belonging to another, we thought some evil would come upon him, as that some one of his family would die. There is a story of a black bear who got into a pit that was not his own, and had his mind taken away from him for doing so!
Turtle Breaking Soil
Lone Woman and Goes-to-next-timber having withdrawn, my grandmother, Turtle, volunteered to break the soil of the corner that had been in dispute. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These green ears belonged to him, to eat or to feed to his pony.
Last year a white man hired me to gather the corn in his field and husk it; and I kept all the green ears for myself, for that is my custom. I do not know whether that white man liked it or not. It may be he thought I was stealing that green corn; but I was following the custom that I learned of my tribe.
I am an Indian; if a white man hires me to do work for him, he must expect that I will follow Indian custom. ”

“ 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. ”