Uses of the Varieties

Figure 18

Sometimes two women, owning adjoining fields, would make an agreement; they would divide their fields into sections and plant the corresponding sections on opposite sides of the division line alike. Thus in the diagram (figure 18),AandA´may be planted in a variety of yellow corn;BandB´may be planted in beans and squashes; andCandC´may be planted in a variety of white corn; but even this did not make so very much difference; still the corn traveled.

We thought that perhaps the reason of this was that the ground here was soft, or mellowed and broken by cultivation. We thought corn could not travel readily over hard, or unbroken ground; and as you notice in the diagram, although the two patches of yellow corn are separated from the white corn by the two patches of squashes and beans, yet the beans and squashes are in soft, or cultivated ground. We thought corn traveled more easily over soft ground.

However, we really did not know what made corn travel; we just knew that it did.

I think that perhaps at first, there was but one variety of corn, atạ´ki tso´ki, or hard white; and that all other varieties have sprung from it. I know that when we plant hard white seed, ears often develop that show color in the grain. Sometimes ears are produced bearing pink grains toward the beard end of the cob; such ears we call i´puta (top) hi´tsiica (pink); that is, pink top, or light-red top. In color these ears differed in no wise from atạ´ki aku´ hi´tsiica.

Hard white was very generally raised, nearly every family in the tribe having a field of it.

There were two chief dishes chiefly prepared from hard white corn; these I will now describe.

Mäpi´ Nakapa´.I put water in a pot, and in this I dropped a section of a string of dried squash, with some beans. Dried squash was always strung on long grass strings; and having, from one of these strings, cut off a piece I tied the ends together, making a wreath, or ring, four or five inches in diameter. It was this ring of dried squash slices that I dropped into the pot. When well boiled, I lifted the squash slices out by the string and dropped them into a wooden bowl, where I mashed them and chopped them fine with a horn spoon. The mashed squash I dropped back into the kettle again, with the beans; the now empty string I threw away.

Meanwhile corn had been parched, and some buffalo fats had been held over the coals on a stick, to roast. The parched corn and roast fats I pounded together in the corn mortar; and the pounded mass I stirred into the kettle. The mess was now ready to be eaten.

This dish we called mäpi´-nakapa´, or pounded-meal mush; from mäpi,´ something pounded, and nakapa´, mush, something mushy.

The dish was especially a morning meal; after eating it we started to work.

Mä´nakapa.A second way of preparing hard white corn was as follows: I pounded the corn in a mortar to a meal, but without first parching it. Most of this meal was fine, but there were many coarser bits in it, some of them as big as quarter grains of corn.

Water was put in a kettle; I added the pounded meal, and when it boiled put in beans. No fats were added.

As the mess boiled. I stirred it with a wooden paddle to prevent scorching; I did not stir with a horn spoon as the hot water softened and spoiled the horn.

When well boiled, the mess was served.

We called this dish mä´nakapa´.[16]

A seasoning of spring salt, as we called it, was often added. A small palmful of the salt was mixed with a little water in a horn spoon; thisdissolved the salt and let the sand and dirt drop to the bottom. The dissolved salt was poured off through the fingers, held to the mouth of the horn spoon; this strained out the sand and dirt. The salt turned the mush slightly yellow.

As the soft mush boiled up in the cooking, we were fond of dipping a horn spoon into it, and licking off the back of the spoon. This was especially a children’s habit.

Also at morning and evening meals we ate hard white corn parched and mixed with fats; or mạdạpo´zi i’ti´a, boiled whole corn.

This is a soft, or as you call it, a flour corn, and was perhaps the favorite variety grown by us. The word atạ´ki means white; but when applied to corn we translate soft white, to distinguish from atạ´ki tso´ki, or hard white.

The use of atạ´ki, or soft white, was very general, since it could be made into almost every kind of corn food used by us. “It is the one variety,” we used to say, “that can be used in any and every way.”

Soft white corn, parched and pounded into a meal, was boiled with squash and beans to make mäpi´ nakapa´. The unparched grain was pounded for meal to make mä´nakapa; but although good, we did not think the mush made from soft white meal was as good as that from the hard white corn meal.

Boiled Corn Ball.A less frequent dish made from soft white corn was boiled corn balls; it was made only from the dried ripe grain.

I pounded a quantity of grain into meal, and poured the meal into a pot having hot water—but not too much water—stirring it well about. I now lifted out some of the mass into my left palm and patted it down with my right, making a cake about as big around as a baking powder biscuit, but not so thick. This cake I dropped into a pot of boiling water, where it sank to the bottom. I continued until the pot was full, or until I had all I wished to cook.

No salt or other seasoning was added.

As the pot boiled, one could see the corn cakes move around in the water; but they never floated, nor did they break apart. The boiling lasted about an hour.

In olden days we ate these corn balls alone; now we more often eat them with coffee.

The two varieties of tsï´di, or golden yellow corn, could be pounded and boiled to make mush, or mä´dakapa; or they could be boiled whole, to make mạdạpo´zi i’ti´a.

Mạdạpo´zi I’ti´a.For this dish I put the shelled ripe grain, with fats, in a pot and boiled them until I saw the kernels break open; then I added beans, and when these were boiled, the mess was served. This dish we called mạdạpo´zi i’ti´a. I do not know the derivation of mạdạpo´zi; i’ti´a means large. I think you can translate “corn boiled whole.”

Hard yellow and soft yellow corn, roasted in the green ear, tasted sweet, as if a little sugar were in them. Especially was this true at the time when kernels were beginning to turn yellow. At this time each kernel shows a little yellow spot on the very top. For this reason this season was called tsi´dotsxĕ, or yellow-drop time; for the little yellow spot looked like a drop on the top of the kernel.

Do´ohi, or blue, hi´ci cĕ´pi, dark red, and hi´tsiica, light red, were all soft corns and were cooked and prepared and stored just like atạ´ki; these four varieties tasted exactly alike, if cooked in the same way.

Ma´ikadicakĕ, or gummy corn, is of different colors; some is of a light red; some yellow flaked with red; and some is in color like hard white; but all these slightly differing strains are alike in this, that when the kernels dry they shrink up and become rough, or wrinkled. The name, ma´ikadicakĕ, comes from kadi´cakĕ, or gum-like.

Ma´ikadicakĕ was the least grown of our five principal varieties of corn; however, a good deal of this variety is still raised on this reservation.

Ma´ikadicakĕ was sometimes roasted green, when the kernels chewed up gummy in the mouth; but the one recognized use of this variety was to make corn balls.

Mä´pĭ Mĕĕ´pĭ I’´kiuta, orCorn Balls. Into a clay pot while yet cold, I put shelled corn and set it on the fire. As the grain parched, I stirred it with a stick. The heat made the kernels pop open somewhat, but not much.

Meanwhile fats were roasted over the coals on the point of a stick; and these and the parched grain were dropped into the corn mortar and pounded together. I then reached into the mortar and took out a handful of the meal, which being oily with the fats, held together in a lump. This lump I squeezed in my fingers and then tapped it gently on the edge of the mortar, making a slight dent or groove, lengthwise, in one side of the lump. The lump or ball—it was not exactly round—I dropped into a wooden bowl. The process was repeated until the bowl was full.

Our native name for corn ball is mä´pi mĕĕ´pĭ i’´kiuta, from mä´pi, something pounded, mĕĕ´pĭ, mortar, and i’´kiuta, hit or pressed against;that is pounded meal pressed against the mortar; but we translate, just corn ball.

Corn balls were an acceptable present for a woman to give her daughter to take to her husband; the son-in-law might himself eat the corn balls, or share them with his parents or sisters.

As I have said, the one recognized use of gummy corn was for parching to make corn balls; but any of the soft corns could be used to make corn balls, as soft yellow, soft white, blue, light red, and the like.

Parched Soft Corn.Corn of any of the soft varieties parched in a pot as just described, was often carried by hunters or travelers to be eaten as a lunch. The corn was carried in a little bag made by drying a buffalo’s heart skin.

Parching Whole Ripe Ears.We parched the whole ears, sometimes, of ripe soft white and soft yellow corn. We had many squash spits piled up in the rear of the lodge behind the beds; these made excellent roasting sticks. The ear was stuck on the end of the stick and held over the coals.

Parching ripe corn on the ear was a winter custom; but boys herding horses in the summer also parched whole ears sometimes for their midday lunch.

We did parch other kinds of corn thus, besides soft white and soft yellow, but they were not so good.

The gummy was not cooked in this way.

Parching Hard Yellow Corn with Sand.We sometimes parched hard yellow corn in a clay pot of our own make, with sand. Down on the sand bars by the Missouri we found clean, pure sand; if I wanted to parch hard yellow, I put a handful of this sand in my clay pot.

The pot I now set on the coals of the fire place until the sand within was red hot. With a piece of old tent skin to protect my hand, I drew the pot a little way from the coals and dropped a double handful of corn within. I stirred the corn back and forth over the sand with a little stick.

When I thought the corn was quite heated through, I put the pot back on the coals again, still stirring the corn with the stick. Very soon all the kernels cracked open with a sharp crackling noise; they burst open much as you say white man’s popcorn does.

Hard yellow corn parched in this way was softer than even the soft corns parched in a pot without sand.

No variety of corn was good cooked in this way, except hard yellow; no other kind would do.

Mạdạpo´zi Pạ´kici, or Lye-Made Hominy.There was another way in which we prepared hard and soft yellow and hard and soft white; this was to make it into hominy with lye.

I collected about a quart of ashes; only two kinds were used, cottonwood or elm wood ashes. When I was cooking with such wood and thoughtof making hominy, I was careful to collect the ashes, raking away the other kinds first.

I put on an iron kettle nearly full of water, and brought it to a boil. Into the boiling water I put the ashes, stirring them about with a stick. Then I set the pot off to steep for a short time.

When the ashes had settled I poured the lye off into a vessel and cleaned the pot thoroughly.

In earlier times the ashes were boiled in an earthen pot as indeed I have often seen it done when I was a girl. I was not quite twenty when we bought an iron pot for cooking. Before that we used only earthen pots for cooking in our family.

Having cleaned the pot I poured the lye back into it, put the pot on the fire, and added shelled, ripe, dried corn. This I boiled until the hulls came off the grain and the corn kernels appeared white.

I added a little water, and took the pot off the fire; I drained off the lye.

I poured water into the pot and washed the corn, rubbing the kernels between my palms; I drained off the water.

I poured in water and washed the corn a second time, in the same way; I drained off the water.

Again I put water in the pot and boiled the corn in it. As the corn was already soft, this boiling did not take long. I now added fats, and beans, and sometimes dried squash, all at the same time; and the pot I replaced on the fire. When the beans and squash were cooked, the mess was ready to eat.

Corn so prepared we call mạdạpo´zi pạ´kici, or boiled-whole-corn rubbed. It is so called because the hulls of the kernels were rubbed off between the palms at the time the corn was washed in water after the lye was poured off.

We Hidatsas thought that our five principal varieties of corn, hard and soft white, hard and soft yellow, and gummy, had characteristics that marked them quite distinctly one from the other.

For one thing, they had each a distinct taste. If at night I were given to eat of hard white corn, or hard yellow or soft yellow, I could at once tell each from any of the others. If I were given mush at night made from these three varieties, each by itself, I could distinguish each variety, not by its smell, but in my mouth by taste.

Meal made by pounding ripe hard white corn became thick and mushy when boiled in a pot.

Tsï´di tapa´, or soft yellow corn, was quite soft to pound when we made meal of it; and the boiled meal, or mush, seemed to contain a good deal of water in it—that is, it seemed thin and gruel-like when we came to eat it.

To pound tsï´di tso´ki, or hard yellow corn, into meal took a long time; but when it had been pounded and the meal boiled into food, it was very good to eat and had an appetizing smell.

Of the nine varieties I have named, the atạ´ki, or soft white, was the earliest maturing. If seeds of all nine varieties were planted at the same time, the soft white would always be the first to ripen in the fall; and the tsï´di tso´ki, or hard yellow, would be the last to ripen.

Although the blue, light red, dark red, pink top, and soft white were all soft or flour corns, yet the soft white was the earliest to ripen. I reckon the soft white, also, to be the softest of all our varieties of corn.

I also rate the hard yellow and hard white as equal in value. Both are equally hard, and can not be pounded up into the fine flour or meal which we get from the soft varieties.

The hard yellow and soft yellow we thought were the best varieties from which to prepare half-boiled dried corn for winter storing. The dark and light reds were also used, and if not quite so good, were but little inferior. Indeed, for half-boiled dried corn, all varieties were used, even the ma´ikadicakĕ, or gummy; but this last we did not think a good variety for this way of putting up corn. Our gummy corn had but one well recognized use; it was good for parching to make corn balls.

Figure 19Figure 20

Figure 19

Figure 20

I do not think there was any perceptible difference in the fodder yield of the various races of corn which we Hidatsas cultivated; but the fodder yield was always much heavier in rainy years. In a dry season, the stalks of the corn would be small and weak; and the leaves would be smaller than in seasons of good rainfall.

We Hidatsas knew that slightly differing varieties could be produced by planting seeds that varied somewhat from the main stock. A woman named Good Squash used to raise a variety of corn that tasted just like soft white. This corn had large swelling kernels with deep yellow, almost reddish, stripes running down the sides of the grain. We called it Adaka´-dahu-itako´xati, or Arikaras’ corn, though it was not Arikara corn at all. Good Squash’s daughter, Hunts Water, lives on this reservation; she may have some of the seed of this variety.

Quite often ears of corn appear that are marked by some unusual form; and for the more marked of these forms, we had special names. Following are some of them:

Na’´ta-tawo´xi.From na’´ta, grain; and tawo´xi, a name applied to youth, or the young, and conveying the idea of small. This is an ear of corn having seventeen or eighteen rows of very small kernels. Our largest ears of corn had usually but fourteen rows of kernels of normal size.

In the old legends of my tribe appear many women bearing this name Na’´ta-tawo´xi.

Wi´da-Aka´ta.From wi´da, goose; and aka´ta, roof of the mouth. This is an ear having two rows of corn on either side, with vacant spaces on the cob between the double rows; often, toward the larger end of the ear, the two rows will expand into three. Goodbird has made a drawing of such an ear (figure 19). A wi´da-aka´ta ear, we thought, looks like the roof of the mouth of a goose.

I´ta-Ca´ca.Forked face, or cloven face; from i´ta, face. A kind of double ear. Goodbird has made a drawing of one (figure 20).

Okĕi´jpita.From o´kĕ, or o´ki, head-ornament, plume; i´jpu, top; and i´ta, fruit. This is a small ear that sometimes appears at the top, on the tassel of the plant.

Okĕi´jpita ears, if large enough, we gathered and put in with the rest of the harvest; but smaller ears of this kind, hardly worth threshing, we gathered and fed to our horses. Sometimes, if the harvesters were in haste, these ears were left in the field on the stalk; a pony was then led into the field to crop the ears.

I´tica´kupadi.I´tica´kupadi, or muffled head; so called because the kernels come down and cover the face or bearded end of the cob quite to the point. We thought such an ear looked like a man with his head muffled up in his robe.

Muffled-head ears were more numerous in good crop years than in poor years; and we thought such ears, if otherwise well favored, made good seed corn.

Squash seed was planted early in June; or the latter part of May and the first of June.

In preparation for planting, we first sprouted the seed.

I cut out a piece of tanned buffalo robe about two and a half feet long and eighteen inches wide, and spread it on the floor of the lodge, fur side up.

I took red-grass leaves, wetted them, and spread them out flat, matted together in a thin layer on the fur. Then I opened my bag of squash seeds, and having set a bowl of water beside me, I wet the seeds in the water—not soaking them, just wetting—and put them on the matted grass leaves until I had a little pile heaped up, in quantity about two double-handfuls.

I next took broad leaved sage, the kind we use in a sweat lodge, and buck brush leaves, and mixed them together. At squash planting time, the sage is about four inches high

Into the mass of mixed sage-and-buck-brush leaves, I worked the wetted squash seeds, until they were distributed well through it. The mass I then laid on the grass matting, which I folded over and around it. Finally I folded the buffalo skin over that, making a package about fifteen by eighteen inches. We called this package kaku´i kida´kci, squash-thing-bound, or squash bundle.

This squash bundle I hung on the drying pole near one of the posts. The bundle did not hang directly over the fire, but a little to one side. Sed si femina in domo menstrua erat, she should tell it so that the package of seeds could be removed to the next lodge, or they would spoil.

After two days I took the bundle down and opened it. From a horn spoon I sipped a little tepid water into my mouth and blew it over the seeds. I took care that the water was neither too hot nor too cold, lest it kill the seeds. I rebound the bundle and hung it up again on the drying pole. At the end of another day the seeds were sprouted nearly an inch and were ready to plant.

I took a handful of the grass-and-leaves, and from them separated the sprouted squash seeds. A wooden bowl had been placed beside me with a little moist earth in it. Into this bowl I put the seeds, sprinkling a little earth over them to keep them moist. I was now ready to begin planting.

Usually two or three women did the family planting, working together.

One woman went ahead and with her hoe loosened up the ground for a space of about fifteen inches in diameter, for the hill. Care was taken that each hill was made in the place where there had been a hill the year before. I am sure that in olden times we raised much better crops, because we were careful to do so; using the same hill thus, each year, made the soil here soft and loose, so that the plants thrived.

One woman, then, as I have said, with her hoe, loosened up the soil where an old hill had stood, and made a new hill, about fifteen inches in diameter at the base. Following her came another woman who planted the sprouted seeds.

Four seeds were planted in each hill, in two pairs. The pairs should be about twelve inches apart, and the two seeds in each pair, a half inch apart. The seeds were planted rather under, or on one side of the hill, and about two inches deep in the soil. A careful woman planted the seeds with the sprouts upright; but even if she did not do this, the sprouts grew quickly and soon appeared through the soil.

We had a reason for planting the squash seeds in the side of the hill. The squash sprouts were soft, tender. If we planted them in level ground the rains would beat down the soil, and it would pack hard and get somewhat crusted, so that the sprouts could not break through; but if we planted the sprouts on the side of the hill, the water from the rains would flow over them and keep the soil soft. Likewise, we did not plant the sprouted seeds on the top of the hill because here too the rain was apt to beat the soil down hard.

We Indian women helped one another a good deal in squash planting; especially would we do turns with our relatives. If I got behind with my planting, some of my relatives, or friends from another family, would come and help me. When a group of relatives thus labored together, four women commonly went ahead making the hills, and two women followed, planting the sprouted seeds.

The squash harvest began a little before green corn came in. It was our custom to pick squashes every fourth morning; and the fourth picking—twelve days after the first picking—brought us to green corn time.

The first picking was, naturally, not very large—three or four basketfuls, I think, in my father’s family; and these we ate ourselves. The basket used for bringing in the squashes was about fifteen inches across the mouth and eleven inches deep.

The second picking was about ten basketfuls, enough for us to eat and spare a little surplus to our neighbors. After this each picking increased until a maximum was reached, and then the pickings decreased in size. The fifth or sixth picking was usually the largest.

The pickings were made before sunrise. In my father’s family, one of my mothers and I usually attended to the actual picking. It was her habit to get up early in the morning, go to the field and pluck the squashes from the vines, piling them up in one place in the garden. She returned then to the lodge; and after the morning meal, the rest of us women of the household went out and fetched the squashes home in our baskets.

Squashes grow fast, and unless we picked them every four days, we did not think them so good for food. Moreover, squashes that were four days old we could slice for drying, knowing that the slices would be firm enough to retain their shape unbroken. If the squashes were plucked greener, the slices broke, or crumbled.

We could tell when a squash was four days old. Its diameter then was about three and a quarter inches; some a little more, some a little less; but we chiefly judged by the color of the fruit. A white squash should just have rid itself of green; a green colored squash should have its color a dark green. We could judge quite accurately thus, by the state of the colors.

The hills yielded some three, some two, some only one squash at a picking. I have made as many as six trips to our family garden for the squashes of a single picking; our garden was distant as far as from here to Packs Wolf’s cabin—three quarters of a mile.

We picked a good many squashes in a season. One year my mother fetched in seventy baskets from our field. I have known families to bring in as many as eighty, or even a hundred baskets, in a season.

The baskets, as they were brought in, were borne up on the drying stage, and the squashes emptied out on the floor for slicing and drying; squashes not cooked and eaten fresh were sliced and dried for winter, excepting those saved for seed.

Slicing squashes for drying began about the third picking. Sometimes, in good years, a few squashes might be sliced at the second picking; but at the third picking, slicing and drying began in earnest.

When the squashes, emptied from the baskets, made a great heap on the floor of the drying stage, the women of the family made a feast, cooking much food for the purpose; some old women were then invited to come and cut up the squashes with knives, into slices to dry. We regarded these old women as hired; and I remember that in my father’s family we hiredsometimes eight, sometimes ten, sometimes only six. I think that at the time I was a young woman, when my mothers made such a feast, about ten old women came.

These old women ascended the drying stage, and sat, five on either side of the pile of squashes. Each of the old women had a squash knife in her hand, made of the thin part of the shoulder bone of a buffalo, if it was an old-fashioned one; butcher knives of steel are now used.

The squashes were cut thus:

An old woman would draw a robe up over her lap, as she sat Indian fashion, with ankles to the right, on the floor of the stage. She took a squash in her left hand, and with her bone knife in her right, she sliced the squash into slices about three eighths of an inch thick.

The squash was sliced from side to side, not from stem to blossom. An old woman slicing squash would take up a squash, cut out the stem pit and the blossom, then turn the squash sidewise and slice, beginning on the side nearest her. The cut was made by pressing the bone blade downward into the squash as the latter lay in her palm.

The first three slices and the last three of a large squash; or the first two and the last two of a smaller squash, the old woman put beside her in a pile, as her earnings for her work; upon this pile also went any squash thought too small to be worth slicing.

These end slices we thought less valuable than those from the middle of the squash; and unlike the latter, they were not spitted on willow sticks, but were taken home by the old woman worker in her blanket, or her robe, or in something else in which she could carry them. About three sacks of these inferior slices would be carried home at one time by an old woman worker.

These less valuable slices being cut close to the rind were of solid flesh. The better slices had each a hollow in the center, caused by the seed cavity. The old women did not spit their solid slices on willows, but dried them on the ground, carefully guarding them against rain; for if wet, the drying slices would spoil.

All the better slices, the ones to be retained by the family that hired the old women workers, were spitted on willow rods to dry.

These rods we called kaku´iptsa; from kaku´i, squash; and i´ptsa, spit, stringer. The word may be translated squash spit.

Squash spits were usually made of the small willows that we call mi´da hatsihi´ci, or red willow; from mi´da, wood; and hi´ci, light red. When the outer skin of one’s finger, for example, is peeled off, the color of the flesh beneath we call hi´ci. This red willow however is not kinikinik, which white men call red willow.

A squash spit should be about half an inch in diameter; and its length should be measured from the center of my chest to the end of my index finger, as I do now; or about two feet, six, or two feet, seven inches.

A spit was sharpened at one end to a point. At the other end there was left about an inch of the natural bark like a button, to keep the squash slices from slipping off. The rest of the rod was peeled bare.

Small Ankle used to make our drying spits for us. He cut the rods in June or early July when the bark peeled off easily; he peeled off the bark with his teeth.

It was his habit to cut quite a number of rods at a time and after peeling them, he would tie them up in a bundle of about three hundred rods, so that they would dry straight—would not warp, I mean, in drying.

In seasons when they were not in use our squash spits were made into a bundle as big as I could hold in my two arms and bound about with two thongs. The bundle was stored away on the floor of the lodge, under the eaves, or in the atu´ti, as we called the space under the descending roof. The next year, in harvest time, the bundle was unbound and the spits examined to see if any had warped. Such warped ones were thrown away, and new ones were made to take their places.

Each of the old women hired to slice our squashes worked with a pile of these squash spits beside her; and as she sliced a squash she laid aside those slices which she retained as her pay; and taking the others up in her right hand, she spitted them with a single thrust, upon one of the willow spits. The spitted slices were then separated about a half inch apart, so that the first two fingers of the hand could be thrust astraddle the spit between each slice and its neighbor. This was to give the slices air to dry.

One willow spit held the slices of four squashes, and two slices from a fifth squash, if the squashes were of average size.

Sometimes an old woman brought her granddaughter along to help her, the little girl spitting the slices as her grandmother cut them.

Drying rods, which I have already described, were laid across the upper rails of the stage; and each spit as it was loaded was laid with either end resting on a drying rod. The spits were laid with a certain method. Each projecting end bore two squash slices, which acted as a button to stay the spit from being blown down by the wind.

As the drying rods rested transversely on the upper rails, the spits which the rods bore lay parallel with the rails, and therefore lengthwise with the stage. The spits were laid with the heavier, or bark covered end toward the front, or ladder end of the stage, which in our family, was the right, as one came out of the lodge door.

Owl Woman putting squash slices on a spit

Squash slices dryingAre on squash spits and on stage built to resemble the top of an old time corn stage.

Squash slices drying

Are on squash spits and on stage built to resemble the top of an old time corn stage.

When a pair of drying rods was quite filled with these loaded spits, they made what we called one i´tsạki—one walking stick, or one staff. We counted the quantity of squash we dried as so many staves.

We never laid the loaded spits on the floor of the stage, as the weight of the load caused the drying squash slices to warp, thus making them hard to handle.

If a sudden rain came up the day we began drying squash, we felt no concern, for the slices having just been cut, were still green and would not be harmed.

But if rain threatened the second day, or thereafter, we women ran up on the stage and drew the loaded spits toward the middle of the drying rods; and over them we spread hides, upon which we laid poles, or unused drying rods to weight the hides against the wind. Sometimes we even lashed the poles down with thongs.

If the drying squash got wet after the first day, the slices swelled up, and the fruit spoiled.

When the squash slices had dried for two days, two women of the family went up on the stage; and working, one from the front, the other from the rear end of the stage, they took the spits one by one, and with thumb and fingers of each hand slipped the drying slices into the middle of the spit, thus loosening them from it; and for the same purpose, the spit itself was turned and twisted around as it lay skewered through the slices. When well loosened, the squash slices were again spaced apart as before, and the spit was replaced on the rods, to be left for another day. On the evening of the third day the slices were dry enough to string.

The strings, three to six in number, had been prepared from dry grass. Each string was seven Indian fathoms long; we Hidatsas measure a fathom as the distance between a woman’s two outstretched hands. Each grass string had a wooden needle about ten inches long, bound to one end.

All the slices on one spit were now slid off and the worker by a single thrust skewered the wooden needle through them and slid them down the long string to the farther end; this end of the string was now looped back and tied just above the first three or four slices of the dried squash that fell down the string; doing thus made these slices act as a button or anchor to prevent the rest of the squash slices from slipping off the string.

In stringing the squash slices, the spit was held in the right hand, the left hand straddling the spit with the index and second fingers. The slices were slid down the spit toward the right hand, the spit being then drawn out and cast away. The squash slices were held firmly in the first two fingersand thumb of the left hand and the needle was run through the hole left by withdrawing the spit. As the spit had a greater diameter than the grass string, the slices easily slid down the string.

Figure 21

When stringing slices of squash myself, I always sat on the floor of the drying stage with a pile of loaded spits at my left side. As I unloaded a spit, I dropped it at my right side. The grass string hung over the edge of the stage floor, on the side nearest the lodge. On the ground below I had spread some scraped hides, so that the squash slices, falling down the string, would not touch the ground and become soiled.

When a string became full, I tossed the end over the edge of the floor, letting it fall down upon the heap on the scraped hides.

The needle used to skewer the slices was bound to the end of the grass string two inches or more from its extremity, as shown infigure 21. When the string was filled, one had but to turn the needle athwart, and it became a button or anchor, preventing the slices from slipping off.

The strings filled with dried squash slices, were now taken into the lodge. Between the right front main post of the lodge and the circle of outer posts and near the puncheon fire screen at the place it bent in toward the wall, a stage had been built. Two forked posts, about as high as my head, supported a pole ten or twelve feet long; and over this pole the strings of squash were looped, care being taken that they hung at a height to let the dogs run under without touching and contaminating the squash. I speak of the right front main post; I use right and left in the Indian sense, which assumes that an earth lodge faces the doorway; the door indeed is the lodge’s mouth.

On sunny days these strings were taken outside. Several of the long poles, or drying rods, already described, were brought down from the top of the stage and lashed to the outside of the stage posts on either side. If the harvest was a good one, a row of these rods might extend the whole length of either side of the stage, and even around the ends. On the railing thus made the squash strings were taken out and hung on a fair day; in the morning, on the east side; in the afternoon, on the west side of the stage.

On wet days, the squash strings were left inside the lodge; and if the rain was falling heavily, a tent skin, or scraped rawhides, dried and readyto tan, were thrown over them to protect from dampness. The air in the lodge was damp on a rainy day; and sometimes the roof leaked.

When the strings of squash were thought to be thoroughly dried, they were ready for storing. A portion was packed in parfleche bags, to be taken to the winter lodge, or to be used for food on journeys. The rest was stored away in a cache pit, covered with loose corn.

Several seasons, as I recollect, the women of my father’s family were a month harvesting and drying their squashes.

Besides our squashes, we also gathered squash blossoms, three to five basketfuls at a picking; and they were a recognized part of our squash harvest.

On every squash vine are blossoms of two kinds; one kind bears a squash, but the other never bears any fruit, for it grows, as we Indians say, at the wrong place among the leaves. We Indians knew this, and gathered only these barren blossoms; if we did not they dried up anyway and became a dead loss, so we always gathered them.

These blossoms we picked in early morning while they were fresh, but not if rain had fallen in the night, as the rain splashed dirt and sand into the blossoms, making them unfit for food.

The blossoms we took home in baskets. On the prairie there is a kind of grass which we Indians call “antelope hair.” We chose a place where this grass grew thick and was two or three inches high, to dry the blossoms on. They were taken out of the basket one by one; the green calyx leaves were stripped off and the blossom was pinched flat, opened, and spread on the grass, with the inside of the blossom upward, thus exposing it to the sun and air. A second blossom was split on one side, opened, and laid upon the first, upon the petal end, so that the thicker, bulbous part of the first—the part indeed that had been pinched flat—remained exposed to dry. This was continued until quite a space on the grass was covered with the blossoms.

They remained all day drying. In the evening I would go out and gather them, pulling them up in whole sheets. Splitting them open and laying them down one upon another, caused them to adhere as they dried, so that they lay on the grass in a kind of thin matting. I always began pulling up the blossoms from one side of this matting, and as I say, they came away in whole sheets.

We put away the dried blossoms in bags, like those used for corn. These bags were made with round bottom and soft-skin mouth that tied easily. Bags were usually made of calf skin.

In my father’s family we always put away one sack full of dried squash blossoms for winter.

The first squashes of the season that we plucked were about three inches in diameter; that is, they were gathered as soon as we thought they were fit for cooking; and that same day we picked blossoms also.

There might be three or four basketfuls of squashes at this first picking. These squashes we did not dry, but ate fresh; as they were the first vegetables of the season, we were eager to eat them. We cooked fresh squashes as follows:

Boiling Fresh Squash in a Pot.I took a clay pot of our native manufacture, partly filled it with fresh squashes and added water. The smaller squashes I put in whole; larger ones I cut in two. I did not remove the seeds; left in the squash they made it taste sweeter.

Back to Index Next