[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.