Figure 29Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
Figure 29
Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
Upon this grass, if the pit was one of the smaller ones, we laid puncheons; and these puncheons, as I have said, rested in a trench.
The puncheons, split from small logs, were laid in the trench flat side down, so that they would not rock. There were about five main planks, or puncheons, the middle one being the heaviest, the better to sustain the weight of any horse that might happen to walk over the cache pit’s mouth. On either side of these main puncheons were two shorter ones, laid to cover the small area of the pit’s mouth not covered by the main puncheons.
Figure 29by Goodbird, drawn from the small model I made for you in Wolf Chief’s yard, will explain this. The puncheons shown in the figureexactly fit the trench; and their circumscribed outline represents also the shape of the trench. The dotted circle represents the pit’s mouth, now hidden by the over-lying puncheons.
Upon the puncheons we now laid grass, quite filling the pit’s mouth, and even heaped, it might be, a foot high above the level of the ground; this we trampled down hard, well into the mouth of the pit.
Over this grass we fitted a second cover, cut as was the first from a buffalo bull’s hide; and upon this we heaped earth until the pit was filled level with the ground.
Lastly, we raked ashes and refuse dirt over the spot, to hide it from any enemy that might come prowling around in the winter, when the village was deserted.
I have said that puncheons, resting in a trench, were used to cover the mouth of a cache pit of smaller size. If the pit was of the larger size, I dug about two feet down in the neck or opening, a rectangular place on either side, with my knife. Puncheons were thrust down into one of these rectangular openings and drawn through into the other, covering the mouth of the pit; and as in the smaller pit, there were several main puncheons, with one or two smaller and shorter ones at either side. Grass was stuffed into the two openings, above the ends of the puncheons, to firm the latter. Above the puncheons, the mouth of the pit was filled in, as was that of the smaller pit, with grass, a circular skin cover, and earth.
The two rectangular openings which I dug with my knife in the neck of the larger pit, were, as will be noted, a little farther down than was the floor of the trench of the smaller pit. This was because the neck was longer in a pit of the larger size.
In diagram (figure 30), I have marked the positions of the cache pits we had in use in my father’s family, when I was a girl. CacheAwas used for hard yellow shelled corn; but the braids piled against the wall of the pit were of white corn; so also ofBandC. In cacheDwere stored dried boiled corn and strings of dried squash.
Figure 30
Figure 30
Sometimes in one of the cache pits outside of the lodge we put a bag of beans, or sometimes two bags. Each bag was of skin and was about as long as one’s arm; its shape was long and round.
In the fall, when we went to our winter lodges, corn, squash, beans, and whatever else was needed, we loaded on our horses and took with us. As soon as we came to our winter lodge we made ready a cache pit at once and stored these things away.
We opened a cache pit whenever we got out of provisions. When should this be, you ask? When we got out of provisions. This might happen at any time. One winter, I remember, we got out of provisions and a number of our people left the winter village and went to the lodges at Like-a-fishhook village, to open a cache. The Sioux surrounded them there. Our people took refuge in a kind of fort that belonged to the traders and fired down from an upper room; they killed two of the Sioux.
Cache pitFin the diagram, we made afterwards. PitEwas also of later make; we dug it after we got potatoes; it was inside the lodge and near the corral for horses.
Cache pitCwe had to abandon because mice got into it and we could not get rid of them. So we filled it up with earth and dug pitD. We stored gummy corn in cache pitDand used it for two years. The third year the Sioux came against our village in the winter time and stole our corn and burned down my father’s lodge.
I have been telling you how the cache pit was used for storing things for winter; but I do not mean that it was of no use in summer time. In early spring we put into a cache pit two big packages of dried meat and a bladder full of bone grease. We did not take them out until about August or a little earlier. The meat would still be good, and the bone grease would be hard and sweet, just as if it were frozen.
A cache pit lasted for a long time, used year after year.
We had four cache pits to store grain for my father’s family; one held squash, vegetables, corn, etc.
A second held shelled yellow corn. In this cache the usual strings of corn laid around to protect the shelled grain from the wall, were of white corn. We did not braid hard yellow corn. It was corn that we did not often use for parching.
A third cache held white shelled corn, protected by the usual braided strings of white corn.
A fourth cache pit was a small one inside the lodge; here we stored dried wild turnips, dried choke-cherries, and dried June berries; and any valuables that we could not take with us to our winter village.
Our cache pits were for the most part located outside the lodge, because mice were found inside the lodge, and they were apt to be troublesome.
In the cache pit where we stored our yellow corn, we stored the grain loose, not in sacks.
I knew of course where each cache pit was located.
The Sioux sometimes came up against us in winter and raided our cached corn. One winter (about 1877) they came up and burned our lodges and stole all that was in our cache pits.
We returned from our winter quarters to our permanent village a little before ice breaks on the Missouri, or in the latter part of March.
Figure 31Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.A. Bed of Small Ankle and Strikes-many-women.B. Bed of Wolf Chief and wife.C. Bed of Bear’s Tail and wife.D. Bed of Son-of-a-Star and his wife Buffalo-bird-woman.E. Bed of Flies-low, Yellow Front Hair and Fell-upon-his-house, three boys.F. Bed of Turtle.G. Place for storing ax, hay, wood, or any thing that could be piled or laid away.H. Bed of Small Eyes, elder sister of Strikes-many-women; the bed here by the fireplace being the warmest was commonly reserved for an elderly person. (Small Eyes is probably the same as Red Blossom).K. Corn mortar and pestle.L. and M. Cache pits.N. Platform of slabs on which were stored food, utensils, etc.P. Lazy-back or native chair.XXX. Small Ankle’s medicines, or sacred objects.
Figure 31
Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.
A. Bed of Small Ankle and Strikes-many-women.
B. Bed of Wolf Chief and wife.
C. Bed of Bear’s Tail and wife.
D. Bed of Son-of-a-Star and his wife Buffalo-bird-woman.
E. Bed of Flies-low, Yellow Front Hair and Fell-upon-his-house, three boys.
F. Bed of Turtle.
G. Place for storing ax, hay, wood, or any thing that could be piled or laid away.
H. Bed of Small Eyes, elder sister of Strikes-many-women; the bed here by the fireplace being the warmest was commonly reserved for an elderly person. (Small Eyes is probably the same as Red Blossom).
K. Corn mortar and pestle.
L. and M. Cache pits.
N. Platform of slabs on which were stored food, utensils, etc.
P. Lazy-back or native chair.
XXX. Small Ankle’s medicines, or sacred objects.
Figure 31is a diagram of Small Ankle’s lodge, as I remember it. My three brothers slept in bedE, but often Wolf Chief or Bear’s Tail and their wives would be away, staying at some other lodge, perhaps at the wife’s mother’s; sometimes they visited thus for a long time. The boys might then make use of the vacant bed of the visiting couple.
All beds were covered with skins, as I have before described to you.
Small children slept with their parents.
I do not know why my father put his medicine shrines in the rear of the lodge. Ours was a big family and there was not room enough for all the beds on one side. Probably Small Ankle wanted the medicine objects near his bed and not where the children were.
There were about seventy lodges in Like-a-fishhook village, when I was a girl. A corn drying stage stood before every lodge.
That before Small Ankle’s lodge was a three-section stage, of eight posts. White Feather, or his wives, owned two of these big eight-post stages, one before each of their two lodges; for White Feather had four wives. Many Growths—a woman—had a big eight-post stage. There were a few other eight-post stages in the village, but they were small, with narrow sections and posts placed relatively rather close to one another.
The rest of the stages in the village, as I recollect, were all six-post, or two-section, stages.
In all cases, whether of a six-post or eight-post stage, the floor was upheld by two long, but narrow beams, that ran the whole length of the stage.
The description I shall now give of the making of a drying stage, is of an eight-post stage, such as always stood before my father’s lodge.
The timbers we used for building a drying stage were all of cottonwood. Being thus of a soft wood, the timbers did not last so very long when exposed to the weather; and a stage built of cottonwood timbers lasted only about three years; the fourth year, unless the stage was rebuilt, the posts rotted and the stage would fall down. Unlike the posts of a watchers’ stage, those of a drying stage were always carefully peeled of bark, as they rotted more quickly if the bark was left on.
My mother’s drying stage, as I have said, had eight posts; and these posts we cut with forks at the top. If we could find them, or if we had time to hunt for them in the woods, we cut double-forked posts, like that offigure 32. But it was much easier to get the smaller posts, of the height of the stage floor. Such a post had but one fork at the top, in which lay one of the beams that supported the floor; and a companion post, longer and not so heavy, stood by it to support the railing at the top of the stage. However, in reckoning the number of posts of a stage, I count a single-forked post and its companion as but one post.
For the two long beams on which the floor of the stage was to be laid, we cut two rather slender logs, the longest we could find in the woods.
All these timbers we cut in the summer time, peeling off the bark and letting them lie until winter, to dry. Then when there was snow on the ground, we hitched ropes to the seasoned timbers and dragged them into the village.
The stage was built the following spring or summer, to be ready for the fall harvest; so that we commonly cut the timbers for a stage nine months or a year before they were to be used in building it.
When we were ready to begin building, the first thing we had to do was to mark the post holes. We laid the two long floor beams parallel on the ground, at such a distance apart as to enclose the space necessary for the stage. We then marked the places for the post holes, at proper distances along the inside of the two beams; there were eight of these post holes, four on a side.
These post holes were dug with a long digging stick, and the dirt removed, to the depth of a woman’s arm from the shoulder to the hand; that was as far as one could reach down to lift out the dirt. To get the post holes all of a depth, I took a stick and measured on it the length of my arm from shoulder to fingers; this stick I used to probe the holes to see that they were of a proper depth.
We now laid down all the posts in a row, and so adjusted them that the forks that were to receive the floor beams lay all in a straight line; that is, if the posts were two-forked posts, all the forksC(figure 32) would lie in a straight line; and if the posts, or some of them, were single-forked posts, their tops would lie in a line with forkCof the double-forked posts.
Figure 32
Figure 32
On all the posts a charcoal line was now drawn atA(figure 32). The distance fromAtoB(figure 32) should be the length of a woman’s arm, which also was the depth of the post hole. But in cutting the posts, no matter how careful we were, there was always some irregularity in lengths so that the part fromAtoBupon the various posts might slightly vary.
All having now been marked with the charcoal line, the posts were rolled each to its proper post hole and the partABon the post was carefully measured and compared with the hole’s depth. For this purpose the stick used to probe the post holes came again into use. If the length of the partABon any post happened to be an inch or two longer than my arm its post hole was deepened to the same extent. All this was necessary in order that when the posts were dropped into their holes, the forks that were to receive the floor beams would lie all at the same height.
I have said that a charcoal line was drawn around each post atA(figure 32). The position of this line, after the first one was drawn, was obtained by measuring from the forkC; and care was taken that the measurements on all the posts should be exactly alike. The charcoal line quite encircled the post.
The posts were now raised and dropped into the post holes; raising was by hand. The posts were turned so that the forks lay in proper position to receive the floor beams and upper rails; a two-forked post was placed with the prongC(figure 32) turned inward.
A single-forked post had to have a companion post beside it, also forked, to support the railing at the top of the stage. This companion post was not so heavy, but of course was longer. It stood just beside the main post and was carefully adjusted to receive the upper rail properly. It was lashed to the main post by a green-hide thong.
This thong might pass around the shorter post just below its fork; or it might bind the companion post to one of the prongs of the fork itself.
If I had several two-forked posts and several one-forked posts with companion posts beside them, it required some little bit of fitting to adjust them all so that the floor beams and rails would lie properly. To better permit this to be done, it was not my custom to firm the earth about the post, until the frame had been set up and adjusted; for little irregularities in the fitting could be cured by slightly moving the posts as they stood unfirmed, in their holes. When the frame was properly adjusted, I took my digging stick—it was always a long one that was used for digging holes—and rammed the earth around the foot of each post, firming it.
It was the custom of my tribe when digging the post holes, to dig each one just the diameter of its post, or as nearly to it as we could; then the posts when raised fitted snugly into the holes.
The two long floor beams having been raised into position, the two poles that were to make the top railing were also raised. These rails were of the same length, but were not so heavy, as the floor beams. We were now ready to lay the floor.
The floor of the stage was of cottonwood planks. Cottonwood logs, nine to twelve inches in diameter, had been cut of proper length. Out of the center of each was split a plank, or board, with ax and wedge. These planks were laid to make the floor, the ends of the planks resting on the two floor beams that lay on the forks of the posts. We took care to make the floor as snug as possible. The planks were carefully fitted together, and if there was any little crooked place in a plank that left a crack in thefloor, we stuffed a dry cornstalk into the crack so that no ear of corn could fall through.
The planks that made the floor were not bound to the floor beams, nor weighted down in any way; their own weight stayed them in place.
I have said that the drying stage had to be rebuilt about every three years because the posts rotted down in that time. This was not true of the floor planks; they lasted much longer and were used year after year.
The eight posts of the stage stood in pairs, a post on either side of the floor; and between the tops of each pair of posts a green-hide thong was bound, and left to dry. These thongs stayed the stage and made it stronger and firmer; often they were also made to bind down the upper rails to the forks of the posts.
The stage stood always in front of the earth lodge with its longer side to the door. A ladder stood at the right hand nigher corner post—as one comes out of the lodge—with the foot of the ladder resting a little way from the stage. The top of the ladder leaned against the end of the floor beam on the side next the lodge.
Of course if the ladder were left here with nothing to stay it, it would fall against the loose planks of the stage floor and force them out of position. To prevent this a pole was bound firmly to the two postsAandB(figure 12) and resting on the two floor beams just outside the posts. The ladder rested against this pole. To receive the pole, the floor beams were made to project a little bit forward at the ladder end of the stage.
The ladder was made of a cottonwood trunk, about ten inches in diameter, with notches cut in it for steps. At its lower end it was brought to an edge that it might more firmly rest on the ground and not turn when someone stepped on it. At the upper end a notch was cut in the back to receive the end of the floor beam against which the ladder rested. (Seefigure 33.)
Figure 33
Figure 33
The ladder had always one fixed place; or, if for any reason it had to be moved during labors, we took pains to warn our friends. A woman in our village once moved her ladder to another place on her stage and forgot about it. When she started to come down she stepped in the oldplace and fell and broke both her arms. We did not like to have a ladder removed from its accustomed place for fear of just such accidents.
When the owner descended from her drying stage, she took down her ladder and laid it on the ground beside the stage. It was not proper for strangers to go up on the drying stage, nor were children allowed to go up there.
Neighbors sometimes came in and borrowed the ladder; but when not in use, its proper place was on the ground by the stage.
You ask me how we Indian women ascended and descended a ladder. I never thought of our having any particular custom in this; but now that you call my attention to it, I remember that a woman ascended and descended a ladder with her face toward the stage, giving her the appearance of going up sidewise, and coming down in the same manner.
In going up a ladder I usually placed my left foot on the lowest step; brought my right foot around in front and over my left to the second step; then my left foot past and behind my right foot, with my face toward the drying stage. My left hand might or might not touch the ladder, as I was used to ascending it and felt no fear.
In descending a ladder I placed my right foot on the highest step, and overlapped with my left; and so until the bottom was reached.
I do not know if other women had exactly this custom, for I never observed or thought anything about it; but I do know that always, ascending or descending, an Indian woman went sidewise, with her face toward the stage.
Some years, if our family’s corn crop was very large, we extended our drying stage, making it five posts long instead of four posts long, on a side. Other families did likewise, as they had need; one family might have corn enough to require a stage five posts long, while another family needed one only four posts long, on a side. Stages, indeed, varied in length with the needs of the family, but they were all of about the same width.
The stage that I have been describing is of the kind that was in use in my tribe when I was a young girl of twelve or thirteen years of age. At present we no longer use this, our old form, but the Arikara form instead.
The Arikara stage differs in having a floor of willows, and is easier to make. It took two days to erect a stage of the old fashioned kind, such as I have been describing.
Building the drying stage was women’s work, although the men helped raise the heavy posts and floor beams. In my father’s family, my twomothers and I built the stage; but my father also helped us, especially if there was any heavy lifting to do.
I will now give you the measurements of such a stage as we used in my father’s family.
Pacing it off here, on the ground, the length of the stage was, I think, about so long—thirty feet.[20]Its width was about thus—twelve feet. From the ground to the top of the stage floor was a little higher than a woman can reach with her hand, or about six feet, six inches; there were horses in the village, and the stage floor must be high enough so that the horses could not reach the corn. From the floor of the stage to the upper railing was about so high (holding up a stick), or five feet and nine inches.
I will now give you the measurements of the posts and beams; and for this, we will use the little model which I have made for you. In this model I have used double-forked posts on one side, and single-forked posts, with companion posts, on the other side.
Figure 34
Figure 34
In the diagram (figure 34),A,B,C,D, are double-forked posts;a,b,c,d, are single-forked posts; andxa,xb,xc,xd, are companion posts.
The double-forked posts,A,B,C, andD, should be about ten inches in diameter between the lower fork and the ground, but tapering slightly toward the upper fork. This upper fork, if it was not in the post naturally, might be cut to receive the upper rail. The postsa,b,c, andd, should be ten inches in diameter; and the companion posts,xa,xb,xc, andxd, should be, perhaps, four inches in diameter. All of these posts are set in the ground with the smaller, or branch end upward.
The floor beams should each be about nine and one-half inches in diameter at one end, tapering to four or five inches in diameter at the other end. This tapering was the natural growth of the trunk; it was not, I mean, cut tapering with an ax. The beams were so laid that the heavy ends were always at the front of the stage as we called it; that is, at the end where the ladder stood.
The upper rails were about three and a half inches in diameter. They were chosen for strength, if possible of trunks that were branchless, or nearly so. These upper rails were also laid with the heavy ends toward the front, or ladder end, of the stage.
I have said that if the long posts,A,B,C,D, had no natural fork at the top, one was cut; but all other forks, and those also on the tops of the shorter posts were natural.
We took pride in building the stage of well chosen timbers, and in making the parts fit snugly. The floor especially was laid as smooth and as evenly as possible; and here and there, if a crack appeared, a dry corn stalk was caulked in to make the floor snug and smooth. We were also careful to choose straight, well formed trunks for posts and floor beams.
Lying across the top of the stage in harvest time, with their ends resting on the upper rails, were often a number of drying rods. A drying rod was a pole averaging a little more than two inches in diameter and about thirteen feet long, its length permitting six or seven inches to project over the rail on which either end rested.
These drying rods were much used in harvest time. When old women came to the stage to slice squashes, they spitted the slices, as I have described, on willow spits; and these spits again were laid on the drying rods, each end of a spit resting on one of the rods.
The drying rods had other uses. If the day was warm, old women working on the floor of the stage would lay two or three of these rods across the upper rails and throw a buffalo robe over them, and thus have shade while they worked. They bound the robe down with thongs to hold it firm.
When not in use the drying rods were laid lengthwise on the floor of the stage that the wind might not blow them about.
By far the chief use of the drying stage, was to dry our vegetables, especially our corn and sliced squashes. Firewood, collected from the Missouri river in the June rise, was often piled on and under the stage floor, to dry.
The keepers of the O´kipạ ceremony used to bring out their buffalo head masks, and air them on the drying stage that stood before their lodge door.
Iron hoes had come into general use when I was a girl, but there were two or three old women who used old fashioned bone hoes. I think my grandmother, Turtle, was the very last to use one of these bone hoes. I will describe the hoe she used, as I remember it.
The blade was made of the shoulder bone of a buffalo, with the edge trimmed and sharpened; and the ridge of bone, that is found on the shoulder blade of every animal, was cut off and the place smoothed.
The handle of the hoe was split, and grooves were cut in the split to receive the bone blade; this was slightly cut to fit and was so set that the edge pointed a little backwards.
Raw-hide thongs bound the split firmly about the blade and a stout thong, running from a groove a little way up the handle, braced the blade in place. (Seefigure 3, page 12).
Under my directions, Goodbird has made a hoe such as I saw my grandmother use, using the shoulder bone of a steer for a blade. You can make necessary measurements from it.
Hoe handles were made of cottonwood or some other light wood.
We Hidatsas began our tilling season with the rake.
We used two kinds,[21]both of native make; one was made of a black-tailed deer horn (figure 5, page 14), the other was of wood (figure 4, page 14).
Of the two, we thought the horn rake the better, because it did not grow worms, as we said. Worms often appear in a garden and do much damage. It is a tradition with us that worms are afraid of horn; and we believedif we used black-tailed deer horn rakes, not many worms would be found in our fields that season.
We believed wooden rakes caused worms in the corn. These worms, we thought, came out of the wood in the rakes; just how this was, we did not know.
However, horn rakes were heavy and rather hard to make; and for this reason, the handier and more easily made wooden rakes were more commonly used.
All this that I tell you of our tools and fields is our own lore. White men taught us none of it. All that I have told you, we Indians knew since the world began.
Figure 35
Figure 35
Squash knives of bone were still in use when I was young. I have often seen old women using them but, as I recollect, I never saw one being made.
The knife was made from the thin part of a buffalo’s shoulder bone; never, I think, from the shoulder bone of a deer, elk, or bear.
The bone of a buffalo cow was best, because it was thinner. If the squash knife was too thick, the slices of squash were apt to break as they were being severed from the fruit. Bone squash knives, as I remember, were used for slicing squashes and for nothing else.
A squash knife should be cut from green bone; it would then keep an edge, for green bone is firm and hard. I do not think I ever saw anyone sharpening a bone knife so far as I can now recollect.
There was no handle to a bone squash knife, beyond the natural bone.
A bone squash knife lasted a long time. Old women in our village who used these bone knives, brought them out each summer in the squash harvest. It was their habit, I think, to keep the knives in the back part of the lodge, by the owner’s bed. Whether it was customary to keep the knives in bags, or in some other receptacle, I do not know.
My mothers used a white man’s steel knife for slicing squashes; but as I have said, there were old women in the village who still used the older bone knives.
Yellow Squash, I remember, was one; an old Hidatsa woman named Blossom was another; so also was Goes-around-the-end.
This model of a squash knife (figure 35) that I have had my son Goodbird make for you, is of rather dry bone; I have had him grease it, that it may be more like green bone.
Figure 36MAP of GARDENS S.E. of VILLAGE.
Figure 36
MAP of GARDENS S.E. of VILLAGE.
Figure 36is a map I have made of the gardens east, or better, southeast, of Like-a-fishhook village. The fields lay, as indicated on the map, upon a point of land that went out into the Missouri river. The map is only approximately correct. There were many other gardens than those represented here on the map; for I have made no attempt to indicate any but those that lay in the immediate vicinity of the field my family tilled. These, however, I remember pretty clearly, and believe my map to be, as far as it goes, fairly accurate.
Our family garden is the one marked “Strikes-many-women’s and Buffalobird-woman’s.” It lay just south of Lone Woman’s and Want-to-be-a-woman’s. The field was rather irregular at first; a corner of it, as I have said, was claimed by Lone Woman and Goes-to-next-timber, as they had started to clear it. My mothers bought out the rights of the claimants, in order to keep our field more nearly rectangular, so that we could count our Indian acres more accurately. This corner is marked by a dotted line, on the map.
I remember that when I was a little girl, the boundaries of the field were rather irregular at first; and my grandmother, Turtle, would go along the edge with her digging stick and dig up the ground to make the corners come out more nearly squared, and the sides of the field be straightened.
The field was also enlarged from year to year toward the sides; and much of this work my grandmother did with her digging stick. The garden when completed was the largest ever owned in my family; it was this field whose size I measured off for you on the prairie the other day.
The village gardens varied in size. Some families tilled large fields; others rather small ones. Some families did not work very energetically; and these were often put to it to have food. Other families worked hard, and always had a plenty. Families were not all equally industrious.
There were no watchers’ stages nor booths in these east-side fields. The ground rose in a shelf, or bluff, just north of the gardens; from this shelf the watchers could watch their fields and sing to the growing corn without the trouble of having to build stages.
The soil of the east-side gardens was bottom land and prairie, with little or no timber.
Our fields on the east-side of the village were fenced, as will be seen from the map. The fences were made thus:
Posts were cut of any kind of wood two or three inches in diameter and forked at the top. These were set in holes, at distances about as we now use for corral posts, or twelve feet from post to post. Posts were sunk the length of my forearm and fingers into the ground. Holes were made with digging stick and knife, and the dirt drawn out by hand.
Rails were laid in the forks of the posts and bound down with strips of bark; elm bark was strongest, but other kinds were used. The railing thus made ran about three and a half feet from the ground, the height of the posts that upheld it. All the rails were peeled of bark.
No attempt was made to firm the structure, as we did our drying stages. Our object was but to keep out the horses, and if the fence was strong enough to withstand the winds we thought that enough.
As will be seen from the map, some of the fields were fenced quite around; but this was done only when the field was isolated. When several gardens adjoined, a single fence usually ran around them all, and not around each individual field.
When several gardens were enclosed in a single fence, each owner looked after that part of the fence that bordered her own land, and kept it in repair.
We did not run our fences close to the boundary of our gardens as white men do. As we built our fences chiefly to keep horses out of the gardens, we placed them far enough away so that even if the horses approached the fence, they could not reach over and nibble the growing corn.
I think our fences stood twelve or fifteen feet away from the cultivated ground, as I pace it here on the ground. I know no reason why they were run thus, except as I have said, to keep the horses from nibbling the corn. You see, fifteen feet is quite a little distance; and the fence could have stood closer to the cultivated ground and still been far enough away to keep the horses from nibbling the crops. All I know is, that it was a custom of my tribe, and I always followed this custom if I had a fence to build.
As will be seen by the map, the corners of the fences were turned rather round; not built squared, as white men build their fences. We could not square the corners as white men do when they build wire fences, because we could not lay the rails in the forks of the posts and bind them down firmly if we did so. Perhaps that is the reason we ran the fences so far from the cultivated ground, that the fence, turning the corners, might not invade the cultivated ground—if you will look at the map you will see what I mean. However, I do not know if this is the reason or not.
Horses did not trouble us much, as we did not permit them to graze near our garden lands; they were pastured on the prairie.
We always had fences around our fields as long ago as I know anything about; and I have heard that our tribe had such fences in the villages they built at the mouth of the Knife River, to protect their fields therefrom their horses. Such, I have heard, has been our Indian custom since the world began.
At the very first it is true, we did not own ponies; but we soon got them.
I think my tribe obtained ponies from the western tribes. In my own youth we Hidatsas got many of our horses from western tribes, especially from the Crows.
On the map there appears a garden marked as belonging to a woman named Idikita´c. She made her garden after all the others had been fenced in. There was a road that went down to some June-berry and choke-cherry patches, in the small timber that stood beyond the gardens; it was a mere path used by villagers afoot, by women with their dogs, and sometimes by horsemen.
Now, Idikita´c laid out her field so that it enclosed a small section of this road; and she built a fence around it and tried to keep the villagers from going across her land. The people did not like this. Idikita´c would tie up her fence tight, but the villagers going down to the choke-cherry patch, would go right through her garden, following the road that had been there; sometimes they even went through with horses.
“You must not make your garden here,” the people said to Idikita´c, “this is a road!”
And Idikita´c answered, “I do not want you to do damage to my garden!”
There was quite a deal of talk in the village about this matter, and quite a bit of trouble came of it.
The first field cleared by my father’s family on the west side of the village, is that markedA, on the plot legended with Turtle’s name, on the map (figure 37), which I have had my son Goodbird draw for you of our west-side fields. A coulee bordered one end of the field; and in the rainy months the water washed out much of the good soil. Willows growing up along the edge of the coulee also gave us much trouble. We therefore extended our field to the other side of the coulee, to include the part markedB.
Afterwards we added another field, marked on the map with my name, Maxi´diwiac.
In Turtle’s garden there was a watchers’ stage,C, with a tree beside it. There was also a booth,D.
Peppermint and Yellow Hair had each a watchers’ stage and a booth in her garden, as indicated on the map. Another stage and a tree stood in a garden near by, the name of whose owner I have now forgotten. I have marked the position of stage and tree in each field only approximatelyexcept in Turtle’s garden; as this was one of our own family fields, I remember the position of stage and tree very accurately.
In this map, as in that of the east-side gardens, I have indicated only the fields that lay in the vicinity of those cultivated by my own family; there were many others, but I can not, after so many years, accurately mark their positions, nor tell the names of the owners.
Figure 37
Figure 37
A fence protected our west-side gardens also, but only on the side nearest the village, probably because the horses could be expected to come from that direction. This fence differed somewhat from those on the east side.
The fence was built thus:
A heavy stick was sharpened at one end and driven into the ground with an ax; it was loosened by working it from side to side with the hands, and withdrawn, leaving a hole about a foot deep.
Into this hole was thrust a diamond willow, butt end downward, for post. The long tapering top with the twigs and leaves still on it, was bent over and around a rail (that was raised into position for the purpose) and then twisted around the post and tied down with bark. A second rail was bound to the post below the first. The sketch on the map gives an idea of what is meant, and infigure 38is sketch and diagram by Goodbird.