years old. “You are getting to be a big girl,” they said. “Soon you
will be a woman, and marry. Unless you learn to work, how will you feed
your family?”
One of the things given me to do was fetching water from the river. No
spring was near our village; and, anyhow, our prairie springs are often
bitter with alkali. But the Missouri river, fed by melting snows of
the Montana mountains, gave us plenty of fresh water. Missouri river
water is muddy; but it soon settles, and is cool and sweet to drink. We
Indians love our big river, and we are glad to drink of its waters, as
drank our fathers.
A steep path led down the bank to the watering place. Down this path,
the village girls made their way every morning to get water for
drinking and cooking. They went in little groups or in pairs. Two
girls, cousins or chums, sometimes swung a freshly filled pail from a
pole on their shoulders.
[Illustration]
But there were few pails of metal in my tribe, when I was a
little girl. I used to fetch water in a clay pot, sometimes in a
buffalo-paunch lining skewered on a stick; but my commonest bucket was
of a buffalo heart skin. When my father killed a buffalo, he took out
the heart skin, and filled it with grass until it dried. This he gave
to Red Blossom, who sewed a little stick on each side of the mouth; and
bound a short stick and sinews between them for handle. Such a bucket
held about three pints. It was a frail looking vessel, but lasted a
long time.
We girls liked to go to the watering place; for, while we were filling
our buckets, we could gossip with our friends. For older girls and
young men it was a place for courtship. A youth, with painted face and
trailing hair switch, would loiter near the path, and smile slyly at
his sweetheart as she passed. She did not always smile back. Sometimes
for long weeks, she held her eyes away, not even glancing at his
moccasins. It was a shy smile that she gave him, at last. Nor did she
talk with her love-boy—as we called him—when others were about. We
should have thought that silly. But he might wait for her at sunset, by
her father’s lodge, and talk with her in the twilight.
But I had other tasks besides fetching water. I learned to cook,
sweep, and sew with awl and sinew. Red Blossom taught me to embroider
with quills of gull and porcupine, dyed in colors. Sometimes I helped
at harder work; gathered drift wood at the river, dressed or scraped
hides, and even helped in our cornfield.
I liked to go with my mothers to the cornfields in planting time, when
the spring sun was shining and the birds singing in the tree tops. How
good it seemed to be out under the open sky, after the long months in
our winter camp! A cottonwood tree stood at a turn of the road to our
field. Every season a pair of magpies built their nest in it. They were
saucy birds and scolded us roundly when we passed. How I used to laugh
at their wicked scoldings!
I am afraid I did not help my mothers much. Like any young girl, I
liked better to watch the birds than to work. Sometimes I chased away
the crows. Our corn indeed had many enemies, and we had to watch that
they did not get our crop. Magpies and crows destroyed much of the
young corn. Crows were fond of pulling up the plants when they were
a half inch or an inch high. Spotted gophers dug up the roots of the
young corn, to nibble the soft seed.
When our field was all planted, Red Blossom used to go back and replant
any hills that the birds had destroyed. Where she found a plant
missing, she dug a little hole with her hand and dropped in a seed, or
I dropped it in for her.
It was hard work, stooping to plant in the hot sun, and Red Blossom
never liked having to go over the field a second time. “Those bad
crows,” she would groan, “they make us much trouble.”
[Illustration]
My grandmother Turtle made scarecrows to frighten away the birds. In
the middle of the field she drove two sticks for legs, and bound two
other sticks to them for arms; on the top, she fastened a ball of
cast-away skins for a head. She belted an old robe about the figure to
make it look like a man. Such a scarecrow looked wicked! Indeed I was
almost afraid of it myself. But the bad crows, seeing the scarecrow
never moved from its place, soon lost their fear, and came back.
In the months of midsummer, the crows did not give us much trouble;
but, as the moon of Cherries drew near, they became worse than ever.
The corn had now begun to ear, and crows and blackbirds came in flocks
to peck open the green ears for the soft kernels. Many families now
built stages in their fields, where the girls and young women of the
household came to sit and sing as they watched that crows and other
thieves did not steal the ripening grain.
We cared for our corn in those days, as we would care for a child; for
we Indian people loved our fields as mothers love their children. We
thought that the corn plants had souls, as children have souls, and
that the growing corn liked to hear us sing, as children like to hear
their mothers sing to them. Nor did we want the birds to come and steal
our corn, after the hard work of planting and hoeing. Horses, too,
might break into the field, or boys might steal the green ears and go
off and roast them.
A watchers’ stage was not hard to build. Four posts, forked at the
tops, upheld beams, on which was laid a floor of puncheons, or split
small logs, at the height of the full grown corn. The floor was about
four feet long by three wide, roomy enough for two girls to sit
together comfortably. Often a soft robe was spread on the floor. A
ladder made of the trunk of a tree rested against the stage. The ladder
had three steps.
A tree was often left standing in the field, to shade the watchers’
stage. If the tree was small and more shade was wanted, a robe was
stretched over three poles leaned against the stage. These poles could
be shifted with the sun.
Girls began to go on the watchers’ stage when about ten or twelve
years of age, and many kept up the custom after they were grown up and
married. Older women, working in the field and stopping to rest, often
went on the stage and sang.
[Illustration]
There was a watchers’ stage in my mothers’ field, where my sister, Cold
Medicine, and I sat and sang; and in the two weeks of the ripening
season we were singing most of the time. We looked upon watching our
field as a kind of lark. We liked to sing, and now and then between
songs we stood up to see if horses had broken into the field or if
any boys were about. Boys of nine or ten years of age were quite
troublesome. They liked to steal the green ears to roast by a fire in
the woods.
I think Cold Medicine and I were rather glad to catch a boy stealing
our corn, especially if he was a clan cousin, for then we could call
him all the bad names we wished. “You bad, bad boy,” we would cry. “You
thief,—stealing from your own relatives! _Nah, nah_,—go away.” This was
enough; no boy stayed after such a scolding.
Most of the songs we sang were love-boy songs, as we called them; but
not all were. One that we younger girls were fond of singing—girls,
that is, of about twelve years of age—was like this:
You bad boys, you are all alike!
Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;
Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;
You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you
have no moccasins!
This song we sang to tease the boys who came to hunt birds in the
near-by woods. Small boys went bird hunting nearly every day. The birds
that a boy snared or shot he gave to his grandparents to roast in the
lodge fire; for, with their well-worn teeth, old people could no longer
chew our hard, dried buffalo meat.
Here is another song; but, that you may understand it, I will explain
to you what _eekupa_[20] means. A girl loved by another girl as her
own sister was called her _eekupa_. I think your word “chum,” as you
explain it, has nearly the same meaning. This is the song:
“My _eekupa_, what do you wish to see?” you said to me.
What I wish to see is the corn silk peeping out of the growing ear;
But what _you_ wish to see is that naughty young man coming!
[20] ēē´ kṳ pä
Here is a song that older girls sang to tease young men of the Dog
Society who happened to be going by:
You young man of the Dog Society, you said to me,
“When I go east with a war party, you will hear news of me how
brave I am!”
I have heard news of you;
When the fight was on, you ran and hid;
And you still think you are a brave young man!
Behold, you have joined the Dog Society;
But I call you just plain _dog_!
Songs that we sang on the watchers’ stage we called _meedaheeka_,[21]
or gardeners’ songs. I have said that many of them were love-boy
songs, and were intended to tease. We called a girl’s sweetheart her
love-boy. All girls, we know, like to tease their sweethearts.
[21] mēē dä´ hēē kä
[Illustration]
At one side of our field Turtle had made a booth, diamond willows
thrust in the ground in a circle, with leafy tops bent over and tied
together. In this booth, my sister and I, with our mothers and old
Turtle, cooked our meals. We started a fire in the booth as soon as we
got to the field, and ate our breakfast often at sunrise. Our food we
had brought with us, usually buffalo meat, fresh or dried. Fresh meat
we laid on the coals to broil. Dried meat we thrust on a stick and held
over the fire to toast.
Sometimes we brought a clay cooking pot, and boiled squashes. We were
fond of squashes and ate many of them. We sometimes boiled green corn
and beans. My sister and I shelled the corn from the cob. We shelled
the beans or boiled them in the pod. My grandmother poured the mess in
a wooden bowl, and we ate with spoons which she made from squash stems.
She would split a stem with her knife and put in a little stick to hold
the split open.
I do not think anything can taste sweeter than a mess of fresh corn and
beans, in the cool morning air, when the birds are twittering and the
sun is just peeping over the tree tops.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ELEVENTH CHAPTER
PICKING JUNE BERRIES
June berry time had come. I was now fourteen years, old and had begun
to think myself almost a young woman. Some of the young men even smiled
at me as I came up from the watering place. I never smiled back, for
I thought: “My father is a chief, and I belong to one of the best
families in my tribe. I will be careful whom I choose to be my friends.”
A little north of my father’s, stood the earth lodge of Bear Man’s
family. Bear Man was an eagle hunter. He had magic snares of sacred
hemp plant which he tossed into the air as he prayed to the eagle
spirits. After doing so he was sure to catch many young golden eagles
at his eagle pit. We thought him a great medicine man.
Bear Man had a son named Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing, a straight-limbed,
rather good-looking lad, a year older than myself. Bear Man’s
father died, and Bear Man cut off his long hair in mourning.
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing made a switch of his father’s hair, tastefully
spotting it with little lumps of spruce gum mixed with red ochre. He
looked quite manly, I thought, wearing this switch, in spite of his
fifteen years.
[Illustration]
My father’s earth lodge and Bear Man’s both faced eastward, with the
lodge of Blue Paint’s family standing between; but, as I stood at my
father’s lodge entrance, I could see the flat top of Bear Man’s lodge
over Blue Paint’s roof. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing had joined the Stone
Hammer Society a short while before, and had begun to paint his face
like a young man. He would get up on his father’s roof, painted, and
decked out in hair switch, best leggings, and moccasins, and sing his
society’s songs. He had a fine voice, I thought; and when I went out
with my buck-brush broom to sweep the ground about our lodge entrance,
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing would sing harder than ever. I thought perhaps he
did this so that I would hear him. I was too well-bred to look up at
him, but I did not always hurry to finish my sweeping.
There had been plenty of rain, and the June berry trees were now loaded
with ripe fruit. We Indians set great store by these berries, and
almost every family dried one or more sackfuls for winter. June berries
are sweet, and, as we had no sugar, we were fond of them.
We were sitting one evening at our supper. Red Blossom had gone into
the woods earlier in the day and fetched home some ripe June berries
which we were eating. Perhaps that is why we ended our meal with
our kettle half-full of boiled meat. “We will save this meat until
morning,” Red Blossom said. “We must breakfast early, for Strikes-Many
Woman and I are going with a party to pick June berries. Our daughter
may go with us, if she will.”
I was quite happy when I heard this. I had seen my two mothers getting
ready their berry sacks; and, looking over to the bench where they lay,
I now saw that a small sack had been laid out for me.
Red Blossom dipped her fingers into the kettle for a lump of fat and
continued: “The mother of that young man, Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing, said
to me to-day, ‘If your daughter goes berrying to-morrow, my son wishes
to go with her. He will take his bow and keep off enemies.”
I did not blush, for we Indian girls had dark skins and painted our
cheeks; but I felt my heart jump. I looked down at the floor, then got
up and went about my work, humming a song as I did so; for I thought,
“I am going berrying in the morning.” I felt quite grown-up to know
that a young man wanted to go berrying with me.
[Illustration]
We were off the next morning before the sun was up. I walked with my
mothers and the other women. The men went a little ahead, armed, some
with guns, others with bows. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing walked behind the
men. On his back I saw a handsome otter-skin quiver, full of arrows.
I felt safer to see those arrows. Enemies might be lurking anywhere
in the woods, ready to capture us or take our scalps. We Indian women
dared not go far into the woods without men to protect us.
At the woods the men joined us, and our party broke up into little
groups, the older men helping their wives, and the younger men
their sweethearts. I made my way to a clump of June berry trees
bent nearly to the ground with fruit. I did not look to see if
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing was following me. I thought, “If he wants to
help me, he may; but I shall not ask him.” I spread a skin under the
branches, and I was looking for a stout stick when I saw my boy friend
breaking off the laden branches and piling them on the skin, ready to
be beaten.
I sat on the ground and with my stick beat off the berries.
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing fetched me fresh branches, and in an hour or two
I had enough berries to fill my sack. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing’s arrows
lay at my feet. Once, when a near-by bush stirred, my boy friend leaped
for his bow and laid an arrow on the string; but it was the wind, I
guess.
[Illustration]
All the time that we worked together Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing and I spoke
not a word. Older couples, I knew, talked together, when they thought
of marrying; but I was a young girl yet and did not want to be bothered
with a husband.
When my sack was filled, I tied it shut and slung it on my back by my
packing strap. Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing laid some sweet smelling leaves
under the sack that the juices from the ripe berries might not ooze
through and stain my dress.
I am sorry to say that I am not sure I even thanked
Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing for all he did to help me.
I walked back to the village with the women as I had come. Ahead of us
walked a young woman named Pink Blossom, with her chin in the air as
if she were angry. The older women, coming after her, were laughing
and slyly jesting with one another. I asked my mothers what it was all
about.
It seems there was an old man in our party named Old Bear, whose wife
had died. He wanted to marry again and smiled at Pink Blossom whenever
she passed him; but she did not like Old Bear, and she turned her eyes
away whenever he came near.
When she came to the June berry woods, Pink Blossom set her sack under
a tree, while she picked berries. Old Bear saw the sack. He folded his
robe under his arm into a kind of pocket, picked it full of berries,
and emptied them into Pink Blossom’s sack.
This vexed Pink Blossom. She went to her sack and poured Old Bear’s
berries out on the ground. “I do not want that old man to smile at me,”
she told the other women.
It was because the women were laughing at her and Old Bear, that Pink
Blossom walked ahead with her chin in the air. The others were having a
good deal of fun with one another at her expense.
“I think Pink Blossom did wrong to waste the berries,” said one, a clan
cousin. “If she did not want them herself, she should have given them
back to Old Bear, for him to eat.”
“Old Bear’s is a sad case,” said Elk Woman. “But I knew a man in a
worse case.”
“Tell us of it,” said Red Blossom.
“Years ago,” said Elk Woman, “I went berrying with some others on the
other side of the Missouri. In the party was a young man named Weasel
Arm. He was a good singer, and he liked to sing so that his sweetheart
could hear his voice. His sweetheart was also in the party. Weasel Arm
helped her fill her sack; and when she went back with the other women
and they were waiting for some that had not yet come in, Weasel Arm lay
down on the grass a little way off and sang, beating time on the stock
of his gun.
“As he lay there he heard some one riding toward him, but thought it
was one of his party. It was a Sioux; and right in the midst of the
song—_poh!_—the Sioux fired, wounding Weasel Arm in the hip. Luckily
the wound was slight, and Weasel Arm sprang for the near-by woods. The
Sioux dared not follow him, for he saw that Weasel Arm had a gun.”
“I do not think Weasel Arm’s case as sad as Old Bear’s,” said one of
the women. “Weasel Arm was wounded in his body, but Old Bear is wounded
in his heart.”
Elk Woman laughed. “Have no fear for Old Bear,” she said. “He is an old
man and has had more than one sweetheart. His heart will soon heal.”
[Illustration]
“But I am sorry for the spilled berries,” she continued. “Pink Blossom
should not waste good berries, even if Old Bear does look like an old
man.”
All laughed at this but Pink Blossom.
“I knew a young woman who once wasted good rose berries, just as Pink
Blossom wasted the June berries,” said Old-Owl Woman.
“Tell us the story,” said one of my mothers.
“When I was a girl,” said Old-Owl Woman, “Ear-Eat, a Crow Indian,
married Yellow Blossom, a Hidatsa girl. They went to live with the
Crows, but after a year they came back to visit our tribe at Five
Villages.
“It was in the fall, when the rose berries are ripe. Now the Crow
Indians like to eat rose berries, and gather them to dry for winter as
we dry squashes. We Hidatsas eat rose berries sometimes, but we never
dry them for winter. We think they are food for wild men.
“Ear-Eat was riding in the woods near our villages, when he found a
thicket of rose bushes bending over with their load of ripe berries.
‘_Ey_,’ he cried, ‘how many berries are here! I never saw it thus in
our Crow country.’ And he got off his horse and began to pick the
berries.
“He had no basket to put them in, so he drew off his leggings, tied the
bottoms shut with his moccasin strings, and, when he had filled the
leggings with berries, he slung them over his horse’s back like a pair
of saddle bags.
“He rode home happy, for he thought, ‘My wife will be glad to see so
many berries.’
“When Yellow Blossom saw her husband riding home without his leggings,
and with the tops of his moccasins loose and flapping, she could
hardly believe her eyes. As she stood staring, Ear-Eat got off his
horse and handed her his bulging leggings. ‘Here, wife,’ he cried,
‘look at these fine berries. Now we shall have something good to eat.’
“The village women, hearing what Ear-Eat said, crowded close to look.
When they saw that his leggings were filled with rose berries, they
cried out with laughter.
“Yellow Blossom was angry. ‘You are crazy,’ she cried to her husband.
‘We Hidatsas raise corn, beans, sunflower seed, and good squashes to
eat. We are not starving, that we must eat rose berries.’
“‘The Crow Indians eat rose berries,’ said Ear-Eat. ‘My mother used to
dry them for winter food.’
“His words but vexed Yellow Blossom more.
“‘I am a Hidatsa woman, not a Crow,’ she cried. ‘We Hidatsas are not
wild people. We live in earth lodges and eat foods from our gardens.
When we go berrying we put our berries into clean baskets, not into our
leggings.’ And she turned the leggings up and poured the rose berries
out on the ground.”
We all laughed at Old-Owl Woman’s story.
“We had other use for rose berries when I was a girl,” said Red
Blossom. “If a young man went at evening to talk with his sweetheart,
he put a ripe rose berry in his mouth to make his breath sweet.”
“I wonder if Old Bear put a rose berry in his mouth,” said Old-Owl
Woman.
“I think he put two rose berries in his mouth,” said Red Blossom,
smiling.
All laughed again but Pink Blossom; she walked on, saying nothing.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TWELFTH CHAPTER
THE CORN HUSKING
After the June berry season came choke-cherries. We did not gather so
big a store of these, but they were harder to prepare for drying. I
can yet see old Turtle, with her gnarled, wrinkled fingers, plying the
crushing stones. She dropped three or four cherries on a round stone
and crushed them with a smaller stone held in her palm. The pulp she
squeezed through her palms into lumps, which she dried in the sun.
And then came the corn harvest, busiest and happiest time of all the
year. It was hard work gathering and husking the corn, but what fun
we had! For days we girls thought of nothing but the fine dresses we
should wear at the husking.
While the ears were ripening my sister and I went every morning to sit
on our watch stage and sing to the corn. One evening we brought home
with us a basketful of the green ears and were husking them by the
fire. My father gathered up the husks and took them out of the lodge. I
wondered why he did so.
“I fed the husks, daughter, to my pack horses,” he said, when he came
back. “To-morrow I go hunting to get meat for the husking.” He had
brought his hunting pony into the lodge, but he had penned his pack
horses for the night under the corn stage.
My two mothers, I knew, were planning a big feast. “We have much corn
to husk,” they said, “and we must have plenty of food, for we do not
want our huskers to go away hungry.”
Small Ankle left us before daybreak. He returned the fourth day
after, about noon, with two deer loaded on his pack horses. “One is
a black-tail,” he told us when he came in the lodge, “a buck that I
killed yesterday in some bad lands by the Little Missouri. He was
hiding in a clump of trees. As I rode near, he winded me and ran out
into the open. I checked my pony, and the buck stopped to look around.
I fired, and he fell; but, when I got off my horse, the buck rose and
tried to push me with his horns. I killed him with my knife.” A wounded
black-tail often tried to fight off the hunters: a white-tail hardly
ever did so.
The next morning we women rose early, and with our baskets hastened to
the cornfield. All day we plucked the ripe ears, bearing them in our
baskets to the center of the field, where we laid them in a long pile.
That night my father and Red Blossom slept on the watchers’ stage, to
see that no horse broke in and trampled our corn pile. There was not
much danger of this. Around the field ran a kind of fence, of willows,
enough to keep out the ponies.
[Illustration]
The rest of us returned to the lodge to make ready for the feast the
next day. Turtle fetched out three great bundles of dried buffalo meat
and piled them on the puncheon bench with the freshly killed deer meat.
Our three kettles were scoured and set by, ready to be taken to the
field.
At nightfall Bear’s Tail went around the village to lodges of our
relatives and friends, and invited the young men to come to our husking.
I was too excited that night to sleep much. Early in the morning my
sister and I rose and went to the river for a dip in its cold waters.
After a hasty breakfast I put on my best dress, of deer skin, with
hoofs hanging like bangles at the edge of the skirt and three rows of
costly elk teeth across the front. Cold Medicine helped me paint my
face, and was careful to rub a little red ochre in the part of my hair.
The sun was just coming over the prairie when we started for the field.
We had loaded our kettles and meat on two pack horses, and old Turtle
led the way. My father and Red Blossom had risen early and eaten
breakfast, and now had a brisk fire going. We put our kettles on, after
filling them with water. In one we put dried, in another fresh, meat;
the third kettle we filled with green corn, late planted for this
purpose. The meat and corn were for our feast.