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.