Figure 22Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
Figure 22
Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
I now took big leaves of the sunflower and thrust them, stem upward, between the squashes and the sides of the pot; the leaves then stood in a circle around the inside of the pot, with the upper surface of each leaf inward. I added more squashes until the pot was quite full, even heaping. The sunflower leaves I then bent inward, folding them naturally over the squashes. I now set the pot on the fire.
Under my direction Goodbird has made a sketch of a pot of fresh squashes (figure 22); the sunflower leaves are placed and ready to be folded down.
Squashes thus prepared were boiled a little longer than beef is boiled. The sunflower leaves were put over the pot merely as a lid or covering. It is hard to cook squashes without a cover, and this was our way of providing one. Blossoms were not added when squashes were thus prepared.
When the cooking was done, the green sunflower leaves, used as a cover, were removed with a stick, and thrown away.
I had a bowl of cold water near by. I dipped my hand into the water and lifted out the squash pieces one by one, and laid them on a bowl or dish. The cold water protected my hand; for the squashes were quite hot.
Most of the water in the pot had boiled out, only a little being left in the bottom of the pot. The pieces of squash immersed in this hot water I lifted out with a horn spoon. Not much water was ever put in the pot anyhow, for it was the steam mostly that cooked the squashes. The potwas quite heaped with squashes at the first, but the cooking reduced the bulk, making the heap go down.
The squash pieces in the bottom of the pot were apt to be a little burned or browned; and so were made sweeter, and were very good to eat.
This was the way we cooked fresh squashes in my father’s family until I was eighteen years old; at that time we got an iron dinner pot, and began to boil our food in it instead of the old fashioned clay pot.
Fresh squashes, to be at their best, should be cooked on the day they are picked; left over to the next day they never taste so good.
Squashes Boiled with Blossoms.Fresh squashes were sometimes boiled with fresh blossoms and fats. Sunflower leaves were not then used as a covering. Squashes so cooked were usually small; and when done, they were lifted out of the pot with a horn spoon. Cooking this mess was really by boiling, not steaming, as in the mess above described.
When I wanted to cook fresh squash blossoms, I plucked them early in the morning, stripping them of the little points, or spicules shown asa,a´, anda´´infigure 23. These spicules I stripped backward, or downward. I do not know why we did this; it was our custom. Then I broke the blossom off the stem at the place in the figure marked with a dotted line. The green bulbous part of the blossom I crushed or pinched between my thumb and finger, to make it soft and hasten cooking; for the yellow, blossom part soon cooked.
Figure 23
Figure 23
I will now give you recipes for some messes made with these fresh, crushed, spicule-stripped blossoms; however, dried blossoms were often used in these messes instead, and were just as good.
Boiled Blossoms.A little water was brought to boil in a clay pot. A handful of blossoms, either fresh or dried, was tossed into the pot and stirred with a stick. They shrunk up quite small, and another handful of blossoms was tossed in. This was continued until a small basketful of the blossoms had been stirred into the pot.
Into this a handful of fat was thrown, or a little bone grease was poured in; and the mess was let boil a little longer than meat is boiled, and a little less than fresh squash is boiled. The mess was then ready to eat.
Blossoms Boiled with Mạdạpo´zi I’ti´a.Mạdạpo´zi i’ti´a was made, the pot being put on the fire in the early afternoon and boiled for the rest of the day. In the night following the fire would go out and the mess would get cold.
In the morning the pot was set on the fire again, and if I was going to use fresh blossoms I went out to the field to gather them, expecting toreturn and find the pot heated and ready. The newly gathered blossoms, crushed as described, I dropped in the rewarmed mess, and boiled for half an hour, when the pot was taken off, and the mess was served.
Sometimes this mess was further varied by adding beans.
Blossoms Boiled with Mäpi´ Nakapa´.The blossoms were first boiled. Meal of pounded parched corn and fats were then added and the whole was boiled for half an hour.
Like the previous mess, this was sometimes varied by adding beans.
Seed squashes were chosen at the first or second picking of the season. At these pickings, as we went from hill to hill plucking the four-days-old squashes, we observed what ones appeared the plumpest and finest; and these we left on the vine to be saved for seed. We never chose more than one squash in a single hill; and to mark where it lay, and even more, to protect it from frost, we were careful to pull up a weed or two, or break off a few squash leaves and lay them over the squash; and thus protected, it was left on the vine.
There was a good deal of variety in our squashes. Some were round, some rather elongated, some had a flattened end; some were dark, some nearly white, some spotted; some had a purple, or yellow top. We did not recognize these as different strains, as we did the varieties of corn; and when I selected squashes for seed, I did not choose for color, but for size and general appearance. Squashes of different colors grew in the same hill; and all varieties tasted exactly alike.
In later pickings, while we continued to gather the four-days-old squashes we did not disturb the seed squashes. They were easily avoided, for if not plainly marked by the leaves I have said we laid over them, they could be recognized by their greater size, and their rough rind. A four-days-old squash is smaller and has a smoother rind than a mature squash.
The time for plucking the seed squashes was after we had gathered the first ripe corn, but had not yet gathered our seed corn. It was our custom to pluck our corn until the first frost fell; then to gather our seed squashes; and afterwards our seed corn. Some years the first frost fell very early, before we had plucked our first corn; in such seasons we gathered our seed squashes first, for we never let them lie in the field after the first frost had set in.
On this reservation the first frost falls at the end of the moon following this present moon. We Indians call the present moon the wild cherrymoon, because June berries ripen in the first half, and choke-cherries in the second half of the moon; and we reckon June berries as a kind of cherry. Our next moon we call the harvest moon; and in it wild plums ripen and the first frost falls.
The seed squashes when plucked, were all taken into the earth lodge and laid in a pile, on a bench. The bench was made of planks split from cottonwood trunks, laid lengthwise with the lodge wall. The squashes were piled in a heap on this bench; they were bigger than four-days-old squashes and their rinds were rougher and hard, like a shell.
When now we wanted to have squash for a meal, I went over to this heap of ripe seed squashes and brought a number over near the fire. There I broke them open, carefully saving the seeds. I would lay a squash on the floor of the lodge; with an elk horn scraper I would strike the squash smart blows on the side, splitting it open.
The broken half rinds I piled up one above another, concave side down, until ready to put them in the pot. Ripe squashes were less delicate than green four-days-old squashes, and did not spoil so quickly.
I was able to boil about ten ripe squashes in our family pot; but it took three such cookings of ten squashes each to make a mess for our family, which I have said was a large one. We boiled these ripe squashes like the four-days-old, in a very little water.
Always near the fireplace in our lodge there lay a piece of scraped hide about two feet square. It had many uses. When boiling meat we would lift the steaming meat from the pot and lay it on the hide before serving. We also used the hide for a drying cloth.
This piece of hide I drew near me when I was breaking ripe squashes; and as I removed the seeds I laid them in a pile on the hide. Squash seeds, freshly removed from the squash, are moist and mixed with more or less pulpy matter. To remove this pulp I took up a small handful of the fresh seeds, laid a dry corn cob in my palm and alternately squeezed and opened my hand over the mess. The porous surface of the cob absorbed the moisture and sucked up the pulpy matter, thus cleansing the seeds. As the cleansed seeds fell back upon the hide I took up another handful and repeated the process.
If there was a warm autumn sun, I often carried the hide with the cleansed seeds upon it, and laid it on the floor of the drying stage outside for the seeds to dry; but if the day was chill or winter had set in, I dried the seeds by the fire.
When quite dried, the seeds were put in a skin sack to be stored in a cache pit. The storing bag was often the whole skin of a buffalo calf, with only the neck left open for a mouth; or it might be made of a small fawn skin; or it might be made of a piece of old tent cover and shaped like a cylinder.
Sometimes we boiled ripe squashes whole, seeds and all; and we then ate the seeds. They tasted something like peanuts.
These seeds of boiled squashes were eaten just as they came from the squash. I would take up two or three seeds in my mouth, crushing them with my teeth; and with my tongue I would separate the kernels from the shells which I spat out. I was rather fond of squash seeds.
I have also heard of families who prepared squash seeds by parching or roasting; but I never did this myself.
I have heard that in old days my tribe used to roast fall-kept ripe squashes. They were buried in the ashes and roasted whole. I never did this myself, however.
There is a story that an old man who was blind, was handed a squash thus roasted. He found the squash to his liking, but did not know how it had been cooked.
“Girl,” he cried, “let me have the broth this was boiled in!”
“The squash was roasted in the ashes; it has no broth,” answered the girl who had handed it to him.
The blind man laughed. “I thought it was boiled in a pot,” he said.
I judge from this story that several squashes had been roasted, and that the blind man got one as his share.
It was our custom to remove to our winter village in the mida´-pạx´di widi´c, or leaf-turn-yellow moon; it corresponds about to October. I remember the leaves used to be falling from the trees while we were working about our winter lodges, getting ready for cold weather.
When moving time came in the fall, any squashes left over in the lodge, uneaten, were stored in a cache pit until spring. But it was a difficult thing to store these squashes so that they would keep sound; and when spring came many of them would be found to have rotted. Some families were more careful in making ready and storing their cache pits than were others. Squashes kept best when stored in carefully prepared pits.
On the family’s return the next spring the cache pit was opened; and the squashes that had kept sound could be used for cooking, and their seeds could be planted. The number thus stored over winter was not large.
The seeds of rotted squashes were just as good to plant as were the seeds of the sound squashes.
We carried no squash seeds with us to our winter village. For our spring planting we depended on the seed we had left stored in the cache in our summer lodge, in my father’s family.
The seeds of a ripe squash are swelled and plump in the center; those of a four-days-old squash are flat. We could tell in this way if squash seeds were ripe.
I grew our native squashes in my son Goodbird’s garden until four years ago. I stopped cultivating them because my son’s family did not seem to care to eat them. Last year a squash vine came up wild in my son’s garden. The squashes that grew on it were of two colors. I saved some of the seed and planted them this year. It is from their yield that I have given you seed.
As I have said, squashes were of different colors and varied a good deal in shape; yet we recognized but one strain of seed. “We plant but one kind of seed,” we said, “and all colors and shapes grow from it, dark, white, purple, round, elongated.”
There is one other thing I will tell before we forsake the subject of squashes. Little girls of ten or eleven years of age used to make dolls of squashes.
When the squashes were brought in from the field, the little girls would go to the pile and pick out squashes that were proper for dolls. I have done so, myself. We used to pick out the long ones that were parti-colored; squashes whose tops were white or yellow and the bottoms of some other color. We put no decorations on these squashes that we had for dolls. Each little girl carried her squash about in her arms and sang for it as for a babe. Often she carried it on her back, in her calf skin robe.
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.
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 24will 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.
These subjects I have sufficiently described, I think, when I told you how we hoed and cultivated corn.
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.
Figure 24Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
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, Imade 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.
There were five varieties of beans in common use in my tribe, as follows:
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.
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.
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, orBeans-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.
We stored our corn, beans, sunflower seed and dried squash in cache pits for the winter, much as white people keep vegetables in their cellars.
Figure 25Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
Figure 25
Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
A cache pit was shaped somewhat like a jug, with a narrow neck at the top. The width of the mouth, or entrance, was commonly about two feet; on the very largest cache pits the mouth was never, I think, more than two feet eight, or two feet nine inches. In diagram (figure 25), the width of pit’s mouth atBB´should be a little more than two feet, narrowing to two feet a little higher up.
In my father’s family, we built our cache pits so that they were each of the size of a bull boat at the bottom. Other measurements were, asI here show with my hands, one foot eight inches from the top of the mouth, where it is level with the ground, down to the puncheon cover that lay in the trench dug for the purpose; and two feet and a half from this plank cover to the lower part of the neck, markedBB´in the diagram.
Descent into one of these big cache pits was made with a ladder; but in a small one, such as I have made you in vertical-section model, in a bank by the Missouri, and which you have photographed, the depth was not so great. In one of these smaller pits, when standing on the floor within, my eyes just cleared the level of the ground above, so that I could look around. When such a pit was half full of corn, I could descend and come out again, without the help of a ladder. At other times I had to be helped out; I would hold up my hands, and my mother, or some one else, would come and give me a lift.
Usually, two women worked together thus in a cache pit, one helping the other out, or taking things from her hands. One of my mothers was usually my helper.
The digging and storing of a cache pit was women’s work. For digging the pit, a short handled hoe was used; of iron, in my day; of bone, I have heard, in olden times.
I have dug more than one cache pit myself. I began by digging the round mouth, dragging the loosened earth away with my hoe. As the pit grew in depth, the excavated earth was carried off in a wooden bowl. I stood in the pit with the bowl at my feet and labored with my hoe, raking the earth into the bowl. When it was full, I handed the bowl to my mother, who bore it away and emptied it.
It took me two days and a good part of a third to dig a cache pit, my mother helping me to carry off the dirt; such a cache pit, I mean, as we used in my father’s family, and which, as I have said, was large enough for a bull boat cover to be fitted into the bottom.
A trench for the puncheon cover of the mouth was the very last part of the cache pit to be dug; but I will describe the use of this trench a little farther on.
When the cache pit was all dug, it had next to be lined with grass. The grass used for this purpose, and for closing the mouth of the cache pit, was the long bluish kind that grows near springs and water courses on this reservation; it grows about three feet high. In the fall, this kind of grass becomes dry at the top, but is still green down near the roots; and we then cut it with hoes and packed it in bundles, to the village.
This bluish grass was the only kind used for lining a cache pit. We knew by repeated trials that other kinds of grass would mold, and did not keep well.
I remember, one time, I went out with my mother to cut grass. I took a pony along to pack our loads home. I loaded the pony with four bundles of grass, two on each side, bound to the saddle. A bundle was about four feet long, and from two and a half to three feet thick, pressed tight together. One bundle made a load for a woman.
Besides the four bundles loaded on my pony, my mother packed one bundle back to the village, and three or four dogs dragged each a bundle on a travois.
We reckoned that three of these bundles would be needed to line and close a large cache pit; and two and a half bundles, for a smaller pit. A hundred such bundles were needed to cover the roof of an earth lodge. Long established use made us able to make the bundles about alike in weight, though of course we had no scales to weigh them in those days.
Each bundle was bound with a rope of grass. In a bed of this grass as it stands by the spring or stream, there is often found dead grass from the year before, or even from two years previous, standing among the other grass stems that are still somewhat green at the roots. To make a binding rope I must use only dead grass. I did so in this manner:
I stooped, took a wisp of grass in my hands, twisting it to the left and at the same gently lifting it, when all the dry stems would break off at the roots. I took a half step forward, laid the twisted end of the strand on the ground, and grasped another wisp of grass, which I twisted to the left and broke off as before; but I twisted the new wisp in such manner that it made part of the continued twisted strand. I continued thus until I had a strand long enough to tie my bundle.Figure 26is a sketch made after my description of a grass bundle, showing the grass rope and the tie.
Figure 26Exact reproduction of sketch by Goodbird. The tie is pronounced accurate by Buffalobird-woman.
Figure 26
Exact reproduction of sketch by Goodbird. The tie is pronounced accurate by Buffalobird-woman.
These grass bundles we fetched home and laid on the drying stage until we were ready to use them. Just before using, we took the bundles up on the roof of the earth lodge, broke the binding ropes and spread the grass out to dry, for one day.
The walls of the cache pit were left bare for the grass lining; but a floor was laid on the bottom. This was rather simply made by gathering dead and dry willow sticks, and laying them evenly and snugly over the bottom of the pit.
Over this willow floor, the grass, now thoroughly dried, was spread evenly, to a depth of about four inches. Grass was then spread over the walls to a depth of three or four inches, and stayed in place with about eight willow sticks. These were placed vertically against the walls and nailed in place with wooden pins made each from the fork of a dead willow, as shown infigure 27. The ends of the sticks should reach to the neck of the cache pit, at the place markedB, in diagram (figure 25, page 87).
We were careful to spread the grass lining evenly over the walls; and we were especially careful not to let the root ends get matted together, as they were very apt to do.
It will be noticed that the willow flooring of the pit, the willow staying rods, and the wooden pins that held them in place, were all made of dead and dry willows; this was done that everything within the pit might be perfectly dry.
It did not take long to place the grass lining of the cache pit.
Figure 27
Figure 27
If the cache pit was a small one, we covered the bottom with a circular piece of skin, cut to fit the pit bottom, and laid it directly on the grass matting that covered the willow floor; but if the cache pit was a large one, we fitted into the bottom the skin cover of a bull boat, with the willow frame removed.
The cache pit was now ready to be stored.
My mother and I—and by “my mother” I mean always one of my two mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead—fetched an old tent cover from the earth lodge, and laid it by the cache pit so that one end of the cover hung down the pit’s mouth. Upon this tent cover we emptied a big pile of shelled ripe corn, fetched in baskets from the bull boats in which it had been temporarily stored inside the lodge. We also fetched many strings of braided corn, and laidthem on one side of the tent cover. Lastly, we fetched some strings of dried squash and laid them on the tent cover.
Of dried squash, I fetched but one string at a time, doubled and folded over my left arm. A string of dried squash, as I have said, was always seven Indian fathoms long; and I have described an Indian fathom as the distance from the tips of the fingers of one hand to the tips of the fingers of the other, with both hands outstretched at either side. As these measurements were made by the women workers, an Indian fathom averaged about five and a half feet in length. A string of dried squash, seven Indian fathoms in length, we knew by experience to be just about the weight that a woman could conveniently carry. A string eight fathoms long would be too heavy; and one six fathoms long would be rather short.
Figure 28Plan of cache in horizontal section: A, floor ready for storing; B, the first series of braided strings; C, loose corn; D, first squash string.In vertical section: E, the first series of braided strings of corn; F, adding loose corn; G, the first squash string; H, loose corn filled in around squash.
Figure 28
Plan of cache in horizontal section: A, floor ready for storing; B, the first series of braided strings; C, loose corn; D, first squash string.
In vertical section: E, the first series of braided strings of corn; F, adding loose corn; G, the first squash string; H, loose corn filled in around squash.
All being now ready, my mother descended into the cache pit. Leaning over the mouth, I handed her a string of braided corn. In my father’s family, we usually braided fifty-four, or fifty-five ears, to a string; and a woman could carry about three strings on her left shoulder. These braided strings, as I have said, my mother and I fetched from the drying stage; she stood on the stage floor and handed me the braided strings, and I bore them off to the cache pit.
Leaning over the pit then, as I have said, I handed my mother one of the braided strings that now lay in a heap on the tent cover. My mothertook the string of corn, folded it once over, and laid it snugly against the wall of the cache pit, on the skin bottom covering, with the tips of the ears all pointed inward. Folding a string thus kept the ears from slipping, and stayed them more firmly in place; and the ears, laid husk end to the wall, were better preserved from danger of moisture.
My mother continued thus all around the bottom of the pit, until she had surrounded it with a row of braided corn laid against the wall, two ears deep; for the strings, being doubled, lay therefore two ears deep.
My mother now started a second row, or series, of strings of braided corn doubled over, laying them upon the first series; and like these, with the ears all pointed inward. When this series was completed, the bottom of the cache pit was surrounded by strings of braided corn, which, because doubled, now lay four ears deep.
My mother now called to me that she was ready for the shelled, or loose, corn. Obeying her, I pushed the shelled corn that lay on the tent cover, down the overhanging end of the skin into the cache pit, until the floor of the pit was filled up level with the top of the four-tiered series of strings of braided corn. It will be seen now how necessary it was that a hide or bull boat cover be put in the bottom of the cache pit, to receive this shelled grain.
I next passed down a string of dried squash, seven fathoms long; and this my mother coiled and piled up in the center of the cache pit upon the shelled corn. This loose corn, I have already said, lay level with the topmost row of ears laid against the pit’s wall, but did not quite cover the ears. I remember, as I looked down into the pit, I could see these corn ears lying in a circle about the loose corn within.Figure 28, drawn under my direction, shows in a series of rough sketches how the cache pit was filled.
Again I passed down strings of braided corn to my mother. These she doubled, as before, and laid them around the wall of the cache pit, until they came up level with the top of the squash heap coiled in the center. We did not have any fixed number of rows of corn to place now; my mother just piled the doubled braids around the wall until they came even with the top of the coiled squash string.
My mother then called to me, and again I shoved loose corn into the cache pit, until it just barely covered the coiled squash pile and the topmost row of braided ears.
The object of our putting the squash in the center of the shelled corn was to protect it from dampness. The shelled ripe corn did not spoil very easily, but dried squash did. We were careful, therefore, to store the strings of squash in the very center of the cache pit and surround them on every side with the loose corn; this protected the squash and kept it dry.
We continued working, my mother and I, until the cache pit was filled. In an average sized cache pit we would usually store four seven-fathomstrings of dried squash, coiled each in a heap in the center of the cache and hidden as described, in the loose corn; and as I recollect it, I think it took about thirty or more strings of braided corn to lie around the wall of an average sized pit; but my memory here is a little uncertain, and this estimate may not be quite accurate.
We filled the pit about up to the point markedBin the diagram (figure 25), the last two feet being filled with shelled corn only; thus the last string of squash put in the cache pit should be covered with at least two feet of loose corn.
Over this shelled corn, atBin the diagram, we snugly fitted a circular cover, cut from the thick skin of the flank of a buffalo bull. A bull’s hide is thicker than a buffalo cow’s, and for this reason was seldom made into a robe; but there were purposes for which a bull’s hide was preferred. Thus the heavy thick-haired parts of a bull’s hide were much used for making saddle skins, because the heavy wool protected the horse’s back; and the short haired parts were much used for making cache pit covers. Using these parts of the hide for covers, we did not have to bother to scrape off the hair, which in summer is very short on a buffalo’s flanks. The skin cover was laid hair side up, so that the flesh side would come next to the loose corn.
On this hide cover my mother and I laid grass,[19]of the same kind as used for lining the cache pit wall.