Waheenee

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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;157 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. ”

“ Had it been in summer, my tribe could have broken up into small bands and scattered; and the smallpox would have died out. This they could not do in winter, and many died. My brother, my mother Weahtee, and her sister Stalk-of-Corn, died, of my father’s family.
Although my old grandmother was good to me, I often wept for my mother. I was lonesome in our winter lodge, and we Indian children did not have many playthings. Old Turtle made me a dolly of deer skin stuffed with antelope hair. She sewed on two white bone beads for eyes. ”

“ Young men who owned ponies were sent ahead to hunt meat for the evening camp. Others rode up and down the line to speed the12 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”