BEANS
_Planting Beans_
Bean planting followed immediately after squash planting.
Beans were planted in hills the size and shape of squash hills, or about
seven by fourteen inches; but if made in open ground the hills were not
placed so far apart in the row. Squash hills, like corn hills, stood
about four feet apart in the row, measuring from center to center; but
bean hills might be placed two feet or less in the row.
Beans, however, were very commonly planted not in open ground, but
between our rows of corn; the hills were arranged as shown in diagram
(figure 8, page 25).
Corn hills, I have said, stood four feet, or a little less in the row,
and the rows were about four feet apart,[17] when corn was planted by
itself. But if beans were to be planted between, the corn rows were
placed a little farther apart, to make room for the bean hills.
_Putting in the Seeds_
To make a hill for beans, I broke up and loosened the soil with my
hoe, scraping away the dry top soil; the hill I then made of the soft,
slightly moist under-soil. The hill, as suggested by the measurements,
was rather elongated.
I took beans, three in each hand, held in thumb and first two fingers,
and buried them in a side of the hill, two inches deep, by a simultaneous
thrust of each hand, as I stooped over; the two groups of seeds were six
inches apart.
I have heard that some families planted four seeds in each group, instead
of three; but I always put in three seeds and think that the better way.
Figure 24 will explain the two ways of planting.
I am not sure that I know just why we planted beans always in the side of
the hill; I have said we planted squash thus because the sprouted seeds
were tender and the soil in the side of the hill did not bake hard after
a rain. Also, we were careful not to make our bean hills too large, as
the heavy rains turned the soft soil into mud which beat down over the
vines, killing them.
_Hoeing and Cultivating_
These subjects I have sufficiently described, I think, when I told you
how we hoed and cultivated corn.
_Threshing_
Threshing was in the fall, after the beans had ripened and the pods were
dead and dried. Sometimes, when the weather had been favorable, the
bean vines were quite dry and could be threshed the same day they were
gathered. But if the weather was a little damp, or if, as was usually the
case, the vines were still a little green, they had to be dried a day or
two before they could be threshed.
To prepare for this labor, I went out into the field and pulled up all
the corn stalks in a space four or five yards in diameter; this was for a
drying place.
I pulled up the vines of one bean hill and transferred them to my left
hand, where I held them by the roots; I gathered another bunch of bean
vines in my right hand, as many as I could conveniently carry; and I took
these vines, borne in my two hands, to the drying place, and laid them on
the ground, roots up, spreading them out a little. I thus worked until I
had pulled up all the vines that grew near the drying place.
[Illustration: Figure 24
Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.]
I made several such drying places, as the need required; and on them I
put all the bean vines to dry.
At the end of about three days, when the vines were dry I took out into
the field half of an old tent cover and laid it on the ground in an open
space made by clearing away the corn stalks. This tent cover, so laid,
was to be my threshing floor.
We never laid this tent cover at the edge of the field on the grass,
because in threshing the vines, some of the beans would fly up and fall
outside the tent cover, on the ground. We always picked these stray beans
up carefully, after threshing. This could not be done if we threshed on
the grass.
My threshing floor ready, I took up some of the dry vines and laid them
on the tent cover in a heap, about three feet high. I got upon this heap
with my moccasined feet and smartly trampled it, now and then standing on
one foot, while I shuffled and scraped the other over the dry vines; this
was done to shake the beans loose from their pods.
When the vines were pretty well trampled I pushed them over two or three
feet to one side of the tent cover; and having fetched fresh vines, I
made another heap about three feet high, which also I trampled and pushed
aside. When I had trampled three or four heaps in this manner I was ready
to beat them.
We preferred to tread out our beans thus, because beating them with a
stick made the seeds fly out in all directions upon the ground; when the
vines were trampled, this would not happen. However, after the treading
was over, there were always a few unopened pods still clinging to the
vines; and to free the beans from these pods, we beat the vines at the
end of every three or four treadings.
This beating I did with a stick, about the size of the stick used as a
flail in threshing corn.
I always threshed my beans on a windy day if possible, so that I might
winnow them immediately after the threshing. If the wind died down, I
covered over the threshed beans and waited until the wind came up again.
A small carrying basket or a wooden bowl, was used to winnow with.
After the beans were winnowed, they were dried one more day, either on a
tent cover in the garden, or at home on a skin placed on the ground near
the drying stage. At the end of this day’s drying, they were ready to be
packed in sacks.
Our bean harvests varied a good deal from year to year; in my father’s
family, from as little as half a sack, to as much as three barrels. The
biggest harvest our family ever put up, that I remember, was equivalent
to about three barrelfuls. Of course we did not use barrels in those days.
Bean threshing never lasted long; it was work that could be done rapidly.
Gathering up the vines, threshing, and winnowing took about a day and a
half; the actual threshing lasted only about half a day. But this does
not take into account the time the vines and the threshed beans lay
drying.
I remember that one year, when our crop was of good size, for the whole
work of threshing and labor of getting our bean crop in, I spent but
three days. In this time I had gathered up the vines, threshed them, and
winnowed the threshed beans.
However, the time necessary for these labors varied much with the crop,
the weather, and the greenness of the vines.
_Varieties_
There were five varieties of beans in common use in my tribe, as follows:
Ama´ca ci´pica Black bean
Ama´ca hi´ci Red bean
Ama´ca pu´xi Spotted bean
Ama´ca ita´ wina´ki matu´hica Shield-figured bean
Ama´ca atạ´ki White bean
These varieties we planted, each by itself; and each kind, again, was
kept separate in threshing; also, only beans of the same variety were put
in one bag for storing. Black, red, white, shield-figured, spotted, each
had a separate bag.
Besides the foregoing varieties, there were some families who raised a
variety of yellow beans. I once planted some seed of this variety, but
did not find that they bred very true to color; I do not know if this was
because I did not get very good seed.
I do not think these yellow beans were in use in my tribe in very old
times. Whether they were imported to us by white men, or, as seems
likely, were brought from other tribes, I do not know.
The white beans now raised in this part of the reservation, seed of which
you have purchased, is from white man’s stock. The seed was brought to
us, I think, when I was a little girl, or about sixty years ago. But we
Hidatsas and Mandans had white beans before this. The two strains are
easily distinguished. In the white man’s variety, the eye is a little
sunken in the seed. In the native white beans, the eye is on a level with
the body of the bean.
_Selecting Seed Beans_
In the spring, when I came to plant beans, I was very careful to select
seed for the following points: seed should be fully ripe; seed should be
of full color; seed should be plump, and of good size.
If the red was not a deep red, or the black a deep black, I knew the seed
was not fully ripe, and I would reject it. So also of the white, the
spotted, and the shield-figured.
Did I learn from white men thus to select seed? (Laughing heartily.) No,
this custom comes down to us from very old times. We were always taught
to select seed thus, in my tribe.
White men do not seem to know very much about raising beans. Our school
teacher last year raised beans in a field near the school-house; and when
harvest time came, he tried to pluck the pods directly into a basket,
without treading or threshing the vines. I think it would take him a very
long time to harvest his beans in that manner.
_Cooking and Uses_
Of the several varieties, I like to eat black beans best. Especially I
like to use black beans in making mä´dakapa. However, all the other kinds
were good.[18]
I have already described to you some of the dishes we made, and still
make, with beans. Following are some messes I have not described:
_Ama´ca Di´hĕ_, or _Beans-Boiled_. The beans were boiled in a clay pot,
with a piece of buffalo fat, or some bone grease. If the beans were dried
beans, they were boiled a little longer than squash is boiled—a half hour
or more. Spring salt, or other seasoning, was not used.
Green beans, shelled from the pod, were sometimes prepared thus, boiled
with buffalo fat or bone grease; but green beans did not have to be
boiled quite as long as dried beans.
_Green Beans Boiled in the Pod._ Green beans in the pod we boiled and
ate as a vegetable from the time they came in until fall; but we did not
plant beans, as we did corn, to make them come in late in the season,
that we might then eat them green.
Green beans in the pod were boiled in a clay pot, with a little fat
thrown in. Pods and seeds were eaten together.
But a green bean pod has in it two little strings that are not very good
to eat. At meal time the boiled pod was taken up in the fingers and
carried to the eater’s mouth. At one end of the pod is always a kind of
little hook; the unbroken pod was taken into the mouth with this little
hook forward, between the teeth; and the eater, seizing the little hook
between thumb and finger, drew it out of his mouth with the two little
strings that were always attached to the hook.
_Green Corn and Beans._ Pounded green shelled corn was often boiled with
green beans, shelled from the pod.