came, we could hardly wait until the time came for us to go to the school
house. It was a cheerful scene then, that met our eyes. The tree was a
cedar cut on the Missouri bottoms, lighted, and trimmed with strips of
bright colored paper. Mr. Hall and his family sat at the front, smiling.
My teacher moved about among the children, greeting each as he arrived,
and speaking a kind word to those that were shy. About fifteen school
children of the age of Hollis and myself were present.
We had music and singing, and Mr. Hall explained what Christmas means,
that it is the birthday of Jesus, the Son of God; and that we should be
happy because He loved us. Presents were then given us; each child was
called by name, and handed a little gift taken from the tree.
And now I grieve to say, that Hollis and I acted as badly as two white
children. There was a magnet hanging on the tree, a piece of steel shaped
like a horse shoe, that picked up bits of iron. Hollis and I thought
it the most wonderful thing we had ever seen. We each hoped to receive
it; but it was given to another child. This vexed us; and we left upon
the floor the gifts we had received, and stalked out of the room. The
last thing I saw as I went out of the door was my teacher with her
handkerchief to her eyes. I did not feel happy when I thought of this;
but I was an Indian boy, and I was not going to forgive her for not
giving me the magnet!
I told the story of the magnet to my parents; and finding I was unwilling
to go back to the mission, they sent me to the government school that our
agent had just opened; but I did not go there long. I was taken sick, and
my former teacher came to see me in our earth lodge. She was so kind and
forgiving that I forgot all about the magnet, and when I got well I went
back to the mission school.
I grew to love my teacher, although I was always a little afraid of her.
We boys were not allowed to talk in study hours; but when our teacher’s
back was turned, we would whisper to one another. Sometimes our teacher
turned quickly, and if she caught any of us whispering, she would come
and give each of us a spat on the head with a book; but it did not hurt
much, so we did not care.
We used to sing a good deal in the school. One song I liked was, “I need
Thee every hour.” I loved to sing, although the songs we learned were
very different from our Indian songs. Indians are fond of music; I have
known my grandfather and three or four cronies to sit at our lodge fire
an entire night, drumming and singing, and telling stories.
I found English a rather hard language to learn. Many of the older
Indians would laugh at any who tried to learn to read. “You want to
forsake your Indian ways and be white men,” they would say; but there
were many in the village who wanted their children to learn English.
My grandfather was deeply interested in my studies. “It is their books
that make white men strong,” he would say. “The buffaloes will soon
be killed; and we Indians must learn white ways, or starve.” He was a
progressive old man.
I am sorry to say that I played hookey sometimes. Big dances were often
held in the village; especially, when a war party came in with a scalp,
there was great excitement. The scalp was raised aloft on a pole, and
the women danced about it, screaming, and singing glad songs. Warriors
painted their faces with charcoal, and danced, sang, yelled, and boasted
of their deeds. Everybody feasted and made merry.
When I knew that a dance was going to be held, I would hide somewhere in
the village, instead of going to school. The next day my teacher would
say, “Where were you yesterday?” “At the dance,” I would answer. She
would then tell me how naughty I was; but she never punished me, for she
knew if she did, I would leave the school. My parents also scolded, but
did not punish me. I am afraid I was a bad little boy!
One day, on my way to school, I was overtaken by a very old white man,
with white hair. I had been going to school about a year and could talk a
little English.
”What is your name, little fellow?” the old man asked. He had a friendly
voice.
“My name is Goodbird,” I answered.
“But what is your English name?”
“I have none.”
“Then I will give you mine,” the old man said, smiling. “It is Edward
Moore.”
It is a common custom for an Indian to give his name to a friend; so I
did not know the old man’s words were said in fun. At the school, I told
Mr. Hall what the old man had said, and he laughed. “I think Moore is not
a good name for you,” he said. “Moore sounds like _moor_, a marshy place
where mists rise in the air, but Edward is a very good name.“
So I have called myself Edward Goodbird ever since.
Every Friday Mr. Hall gave a dinner in the mission house to his pupils.
We Indian children thought these dinners wonderful. Many of us had never
tasted white men’s food; some things, as sour pickles, we did not like.
Mr. Hall wanted us to learn to eat white bread and biscuits, so that we
would ask our mothers to bake bread at home. He hoped this would be a
means of getting us to like white men’s ways.
On Saturdays we had no school, and Mr. Hall would go around the village,
shaking hands with the Indians and inviting them to come to church the
next morning. Later, Poor Wolf acted as his crier, and on Saturday
evenings he would go around, calling out, “_Ho Washte, Ho Washte!_ Come
you people, to-morrow, and sit for him!” He meant for them to come to
church the next morning and sit in chairs.
Mr. Hall’s janitor, a young Indian named Bear’s Teeth, swept out the
mission house, made the fires, and got the school room ready for the
services. There was no bell on the mission, so a flag was run up as a
signal for the congregation to gather.
Not many came to the services, fifteen or twenty were a usual
congregation, sometimes only ten. Mr. Hall preached, and to make his
sermons plainer, he often drew pictures on the blackboard.
My father thought the missionary’s religion was good, but would not
himself forsake the old ways. “The old gods are best for me,” he used to
say, but he let me go to hear Mr. Hall preach. I cannot say that I always
understood the sermon. Sometimes Mr. Hall would say, “Thirty years ago,
my friends, I saw the light!” I thought he meant he had seen a vision.
But I learned a good deal from Mr. Hall’s preaching; and my lessons and
the songs I learned at school made me think of Jesus; but I thought an
Indian could be a Christian and also believe in the old ways.
It came over me one day, that this could not be. A story of our Indian
god, _It-si-ka-ma-hi-di_, tells us that the sun is a man, with his body
painted red, like fire; that the earth is flat, and that the sky covers
it like a bowl turned bottom up; but in my geography, at school, I
learned that the earth is round.
In our earth lodge, that night, I said to my parents, “This earth is
round; the sun is a burning ball!” My cousin Butterfly was disgusted.
“That is white man’s talk,” he grunted. “This earth is flat. White men
are foolish!” This I would in no wise admit, and I came home almost daily
with some new proof that the earth was round.
As I grew older and began to read books, I thought of myself as a
Christian, but more because I went to the mission school, than because
I thought of Jesus as my Saviour. I loved to read the stories of the
Bible; and Mr. Hall taught me the Ten Commandments. Some of the Indian
boys learned to swear, from hearing white men; but I never did, because
Mr. Hall told me it was wrong. I thought that those who did as the Bible
bade, would grow up to be good men.
I had a cousin, three years older than myself, in the Santee Indian
school, who had become a Christian. One day I received a letter from
him. “I believe in Jesus’ way,” he wrote. “I believe Jesus is a good
Saviour. I have tried His way, and I want you to try to join in and have
Him for your Saviour.” This letter set me to thinking.
In these years, my life outside the school room was wholly Indian. We
Hidatsa children knew nothing of base ball, or one hole cat, or other
white children’s games, but we had many Indian games that we played. Some
of these games I think better than those now played on our reservation.
In March and early April, we boys played the hoop game. A level place,
bare of snow, was found, and the boys divided into two sides, about
thirty yards apart. Small hoops, covered with a lacing of thongs, were
rolled forward, and were caught by those of the opposite side on sticks,
thrust or darted through the lacings. A hoop so caught, was sent hurtling
through the air, the object being to hit some one of the opposing players.
[Illustration: Hoop and Stick of the Hoop Game.]
The game was played but a few weeks, for as soon as the ice broke on the
Missouri, we boys went to the high bank of the river, and hurled our
hoops into the current. We were told, and really believed, that they
became dead buffaloes as soon as they had passed out of sight, beyond the
next point of land. Such buffaloes, drowned in the thin ice of autumn and
frozen in, came floating down the river in large numbers at the spring
break-up. The carcasses were always fat, and the frozen flesh was sweet
and tender.
After the first thunder in spring, we played _u-a-ki-he-ke_, or throw
stick. Willow rods were cut, peeled, and dried, and then stained red,
with ochre, or a bright green, with grass. These rods, darted against
the ground, rebounded to a great distance. The player won whose rod went
farthest. _U-a-ki-he-ke_ is still played on the reservation.
In June, when the rising waters have softened the river’s clay banks,
we fought sham battles. Each boy cut a willow withe, as long as a buggy
whip, and on the smaller end squeezed a lump of wet clay. With the withe
as a sling, he could throw the clay ball to an astonishing distance.
Hidatsa and Mandan boys often fought against one another, using these
clay balls as missiles.
[Illustration: War Bonnet (On Lodge Post).]
It was exciting play, for we fought like armies, each side trying to
force the other’s position; when an attack was made, a storm of mud balls
would come whizzing through the air like bullets. A hit on the bare flesh
stung like a real wound. Once one of my playmates was hit in the eye, and
badly hurt. I was just over fourteen, when my parents let me join in
the grass dance, or war dance, as the whites call it. The other dancers
made me an officer, and my father was so pleased, that he hung up a fine
eagle’s feather war bonnet in our lodge. “If enemies come against us,” he
said, “my son shall go out to fight wearing this war bonnet!”
One evening, Bear’s Arm, a lad of eighteen years, came in from hunting a
strayed pony; he was much excited. “I saw two Sioux in war dress, hiding
in a coulee,” he told us.
Our warriors ran for their ponies. “Put on your war bonnet,“ my father
said to me. “I am going to take you in the party. Keep close to me; and
if there is a fight, see if you cannot strike an enemy!“
We rode all night, Bear’s Arm leading us. We reached the coulee and
surrounded it a little before daybreak, and with the first streak of
dawn, we closed in, our rifles ready; but we found no enemies.
This was my one war exploit.
[Illustration: Buffaloes.]
VI
HUNTING BUFFALOES
The summer I was twelve years old, our village went on a buffalo hunt,
for scouts had brought in word that herds had been sighted a hundred
miles west of the Missouri. My father, Son-of-a-Star, was chosen leader
of the hunt.
My tribe no longer used travois, for the government had issued wagons to
us. These we took apart, loading the wheels into bull boats while the
beds were floated over the river. We made our first camp at the edge of
the foot hills, on the other side of the river.
The next morning, we struck tents, loaded them into our wagons, and began
the march.
My father led, carrying his medicine bundle at his saddle head; behind
him rode two or three elder Indians, leaders of the tribe, also on
horseback. Then followed the wagons in a long line; and on either side
rode the young men, on their tough, scrubby, little ponies.
Some of our young men as they rode, drove small companies of horses.
Neighbors commonly put their horses together, and a young man, or two or
three young men, acted as herders. Sometimes a girl, mounted astraddle
like a man, drove them.
Now and then a youth might be seen reining in his pony to let the line of
wagons pass, while he kept a sharp watch for his sweetheart. She hardly
glanced at him as she rode by, for it was not proper for a young man’s
sweetheart to let him talk to her in the marching line. The time for
courtship was in camp, in the evening.
[Illustration: Clay Pot with Thong Handle.]
Toward five or six in the afternoon, we made camp. The wagons were
drawn up in a big circle, and the women pitched the tents, while the
men unhitched and hobbled their horses, and brought firewood. The women
brought water and lighted the fires.
Water was carried in pails. I have heard that in old times, they used
clay pots made of a kind of red clay, and burned; a thong went around the
neck of the pot, for a handle.
My mother, an active woman, often had her fire started before her
neighbors. While she got supper, my father sat and smoked. Friends
frequently joined him, and they would sit in a circle, passing the pipe
around, telling funny stories and laughing. My father was a capital story
teller.
For supper we had deer or antelope meat, boiled or roasted, and my mother
often fried wheat-flour dough into a kind of biscuits that were rather
hard. Corn picked green the year before, and boiled and dried, was stewed
in a kettle, making a dish much like the canned com we buy at the store.
More often we had succotash, hominy boiled with fat and beans. We drank
black coffee, sweetened; my mother put the coffee beans into a skin,
pounded them fine with an ax, and boiled them in an iron pot. You see, we
were getting civilized.
When supper was ready, my mother would call “_Mi-ha-dits_—I have done!”
and my father would put up his pipe and come to eat. My mother gave him
meat, steaming hot, in a tin dish, and poured coffee into a cup; another
cup held meat broth, which made a good drink also. We did not bring
wooden feast bowls with us, as some families did.
My mother and I ate with my father, much as white families do; a robe or
blanket was spread for each to sit upon.
I wore moccasins and leggings; and my hair was braided, Indian fashion,
in two tails over my shoulders, but my mother had made me a white man’s
vest, of black cloth, embroidered all over with elk teeth. I was proud of
this vest, and cared not a whit that I had no coat to wear over it.
The seventh day out, we made camp near the Cannon Ball River. My father
had sent two mounted scouts ahead, with a spy glass, to see if they could
find the herds; at evening, they returned with the report, “There is a
big herd yonder!” Everybody got ready for the hunt the next morning, and
my father made me happy by telling me that I might go along.
[Illustration: Quirt (Indian Whip.)]
We arose early. My father saddled two ponies, one of them a pack animal;
and I mounted a third, with a white man’s saddle. My father’s were pack
saddles, of elk horn, covered with raw hide; ropes, looped up like a
figure 8, were tied behind them to be used in binding the packs of meat
we would bring home from the hunt.
There were about forty hunters in our party, mounted, and leading each a
pack horse; eight boys, of twelve or fifteen years of age, and three old
men. I remember one of the old men carried a bow and arrows, probably
from old custom. Only the hunters expected to take part in the actual
chase of the buffaloes; they were armed with rifles.
The party’s leader, _E-di-a-ka-ta_—the same who led our tribe to the
Yellowstone—rode ahead, and we followed at a brisk trot. Five miles out
of camp, the two scouts were again sent ahead with the spy glass. We saw
them coming back at a gallop and knew that the herd was found, and we
urged our horses at the top of their speed. I remember the _slap_ of the
quirts on the little ponies’ flanks; and the _beat-beat, beat-beat!_ of
their hoofs on the hard ground. Indians do not shoe their horses.
We drew rein behind a hill, a half mile to leeward of the herd, and,
having dismounted, hobbled our led horses. Our hunters laid aside their
shirts and leggings, stripped the saddles from their ponies’ backs, and
twisted bridles of thong into their ponies’ mouths; it was our tribe’s
custom to ride bare-back in the hunt.
_E-di-a-ka-ta_ went a little way off and stood, facing in the direction
of the herd; from a piece of red cloth he tore a long strip, ripped this
again into three or four pieces and laid them on the ground. I saw his
lips move, and knew he was praying, but I could not hear his words. The
pieces of red cloth Were an offering to the spirits of the buffaloes.
Our hunters remounted and drew up in a line facing the herd,
_E-di-a-ka-ta_ on the right, and at a signal, the line started forward,
neck-and-neck, at a brisk gallop. A guard, named _Tsa-wa_, or Bear’s
Chief, rode in advance; if a hunter pressed too far forward in the line,
_Tsa-wa_ struck the hunter’s pony in the face with his quirt.
We boys and the three old men rode a little behind the line of hunters;
we did not expect to take part in the hunt, but wanted to see the kill.
As we cleared the brow of the hill we sighted the buffaloes, about four
hundred yards away, and _E-di-a-ka-ta_ gave the signal, “_Ku’kats_—Now
then!” Down came the quirts on the little ponies’ flanks, making them
leap forward like big cats. The line broke at once, each hunter striving
to reach the herd first and kill the fattest. An iron-gray horse, I
remember, was in the lead.
We boys followed at breakneck speed—unwillingly on my part; my pony had
taken the bit in his mouth and was going over the stony ground at a speed
that I feared would throw him any moment and break his neck and mine. I
tugged at the reins and clung to the saddle, too scared to cry out.
_Bang!_ A fat cow tumbled over. _Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!_ The frightened
herd started to flee, swerved to the right, and went thundering away up
wind, in a whirl of dust. Buffaloes, when alarmed, fly up wind if the way
is open; their sight is poor, but they have a keen scent, and running up
wind they can nose an Indian a half mile away.
For such heavy beasts, buffaloes have amazing speed, and only our fastest
horses were used in hunting them; indeed, a young bull often outran our
fastest ponies.
Only cows were killed. The flesh of bulls is tough and was not often
eaten; that of calves crumbled when dried, making it unfit for storing.
Some buffalo calves, forsaken by the herd, were running wildly over the
prairie, bleating for their mothers; two of our hunters caught one of the
smallest with a lariat, and brought it to me. “Here, boy,” they said,
“keep this calf.”
I caught the rope and drew the calf after me; but my pony, growing
frightened, reared and kicked the little animal; paying out more rope, I
led the calf at a safer distance from my horse’s heels.
The hunters came straggling back, and my father seeing the calf, cried
out, “Let that calf go! Buffaloes are sacred animals. You should not try
to keep one captive!“ I was much disappointed, for I wanted to take it
into camp.
My father had killed three fat cows, and these he now sought out and
dressed. The shoulders, hams, and choicer cuts he loaded on our led
horse, covering the pack with a green hide and tying it down with the
rawhide ropes brought for the purpose; the rest he left in a pile on the
prairie, covered with the other two hides. We intended to return for
these with wagons, the next day.
As my father was cutting up one of the carcasses, I saw him throw away
what I thought were good cuts; I did not like to see good meat wasted,
and when I thought he was not looking, I slyly put the pieces back on the
pile.
[Illustration: Drying Meat and Boiling Bones.]
We returned to camp slowly, at times urging our ponies to a gentle trot,
more often letting them walk. My father had to dismount several times to
secure our pack of meat, which threatened to slip from our pack horse’s
back. In our tent that evening, I heard him telling my mother of my
part in the hunt. “Our son,” he said, “is no wasteful lad. He put back
some tough leg pieces that I had thrown away. He would not see good meat
wasted!” And they both laughed.
Stages were built in the camp, and for two days, every body was busy
drying meat or boiling bones for marrow fat. The dried meat was packed in
skin bags, or made into bundles; the marrow fat was run into bladders;
and all was taken to Like-a-fish-hook village, to be stored for winter.
[Illustration: Goodbird at the Age of Twenty. (Redrawn from Portrait by
Gilbert Saul. Report Indian Census, 1890.)]
VII
FARMING
The time came when we had to forsake our village at Like-a-fish-hook
Bend, for the government wanted the Indians to become farmers. “You
should take allotments,” our agent would say. “The big game is being
killed off, and you must plant bigger fields or starve. The government
will give you plows and cattle.”
All knew that the agent’s words were true, and little by little our
village was broken up. In the summer of my sixteenth year nearly a third
of my tribe left to take up allotments.
We had plenty of land; our reservation was twice the size of Rhode
Island, and our united tribes, with the Rees who joined us, were less
than thirteen hundred souls. Most of the Indians chose allotments along
the Missouri, where the soil was good and drinking water easy to get.
Unallotted lands were to be sold and the money given to the three tribes.
Forty miles above our village, the Missouri makes a wide bend around a
point called Independence Hill, and here my father and several of his
relatives chose their allotments. The bend enclosed a wide strip of
meadow land, offering hay for our horses. The soil along the river was
rich and in the bottom stood a thick growth of timber.
My father left the village, with my mother and me, in June. He had a
wagon, given him by the agent; this he unbolted and took over the river
piece by piece, in a bull boat; our horses swam.
We camped at Independence in a tepee, while we busied ourselves building
a cabin. My father cut the logs; they were notched at the ends, to lock
into one another at the comers. A heavier log, a foot in thickness, made
the ridge pole. The roof was of willows and grass, covered with sods.
Cracks between the logs were plastered with clay, mixed with short grass.
The floor was of earth, but we had a stove.
We were a month putting up our cabin.
Though my father’s coming to Independence was a step toward civilization,
it had one ill effect: it removed me from the good influences of the
mission school, so that for a time I fell back into Indian ways. Winter,
also, was not far off; the season was too late for us to plant corn, and
the rations issued to us every two weeks rarely lasted more than two or
three days. To keep our family in meat, I turned hunter.
There were no buffaloes on the reservation, but blacktailed deer
were plentiful, and in the hills were a good many antelopes. I had a
Winchester rifle, a 40.60 caliber, and I was a good shot.
To hunt deer, I arose before daylight and went to the woods along the
Missouri. Deer feed much at night, and as evening came on, they would
leave the thick underbrush by the river and go into the hills to browse
on the rich prairie grasses. I would creep along the edge of the woods,
rifle in hand, ready to shoot any that I saw coming in from the feeding
grounds.
I was careful to keep on the leeward side of the game; a deer running up
wind will scent an Indian as quickly as a buffalo.
I loved to hunt, and although a mere boy, I was one of the quickest shots
in my tribe. I remember that one morning I was coming around a clump of
bushes when I saw a doe and buck ahead, just entering the thicket. I
fired, hardly glancing at the sights; I saw the buck fall, but when I ran
up I found the doe lying beside him, killed by the same bullet.
Independence was a wild spot. The hill from which the place took its
name had been a favorite fasting place for young men who sought visions;
at its foot, under a steep bank, swept the Missouri, full of dangerous
whirlpools. Such spots, lonely and wild, we Indians thought were haunts
of the spirits.