SEVENTEENTH CHAPTERAN INDIAN PAPOOSE
SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
My father was overjoyed to see me and my husband again, and he was glad for the store of meat that we brought. We had a real feast the next day. I boiled green corn, shelled from the cob and dried the summer before, and packed away in skin bags. We were fond of this corn, and had little of it left. Strikes-Many Woman parched ripe sweet corn, pounded it in a mortar with roast buffalo fats, and kneaded the meal into little balls.
With these corn messes and boiled dried buffalo meat we made a big feast and called in all our relatives. To each woman guest, as she went away again, I gave a bundle of dried buffalo meat; and I thus gave away one of the four pony-loads of meat I had brought home. It was an Indian custom that, when a hunter brought in meat of a deer or buffalo, it belonged to his wife;and we should have thought her a bad woman, if she did not feast her relatives and give to them.
My father sat with his cronies at the right of the fireplace, at our feast. We women ate apart, for men and women do not sit together at an Indian feast. I heard my father talking with his friend, Lean Wolf: “Every spring, when I was young, we fired the prairie grass around the Five Villages. Green grass then sprang up; buffaloes came to graze on it, and we killed many.”
“Those were good days,” said Lean Wolf. “There were many buffaloes then.”
“It is so,” said my father. “It is now seven years since a herd was seen near our village. White men’s guns have driven them away. And each year we kill fewer deer.”
“I have heard that some Sioux families starved last winter,” said Lean Wolf.
“They starved, because they are hunters and raise no corn,” said my father. “We Hidatsas must plant more corn, or we shall starve; and we must learn to raise white men’s wheat and potatoes.” Small Ankle was a progressive old man.
One morning, not long after our feast, Red Blossom came in from the woods with news that the wild gooseberry vines were in leaf. This was a sign that corn planting time was come, and we women began to make ready our corn seed and sharpen our hoes.
I had been thinking of my father’s words to Lean Wolf. “They are wise words,” I told my mothers. “We should widen our fields, and plant more corn.” While they busied themselves withplanting, I worked with my hoe around the edges of our two fields, breaking new ground.
Having thus more ground to work over, my mothers planted for more than a month, or well into June. The last week of our planting, Red Blossom soaked her corn seed in tepid water. “It will make the seed sprout earlier,” she said, “so that the ears will ripen before frost comes.”
Our fall harvest was good. My two mothers and I were more than a week threshing and winnowing our corn; but some families, less wise than ours, had not increased their planting, and had none too much grain to lay by for winter. This troubled our chief men. “The summer’s hunt has been poor,” they said. “If our winter’s hunting is not better, we shall be hungry before harvest comes again.”
They had twice called a council to talk of the matter, when scouts brought word that buffaloes had been seen. “Big herds have come down into the Yellowstone country,” they said. The Black Mouths thought we should make our winter camp there, in tepees; and they went about choosing a winter chief.
But no one wanted to be winter chief. Camping in the Yellowstone country in skin tents, was not like our wintering in earth lodges in the woods near our village. The people expected their chief’s prayers to keep enemies away and bring them good hunting. If ill luck came to any in the camp, they blamed the winter chief.
The Black Mouths offered gifts to one or another of our chief men, whose prayers we knew were strong; but none would take them. At last, they gave half the gifts toEydeeahkata,[28]and half to Short Horn. “You shall take turns at being chief,” they said. “Eydeeahkatashall lead one day and Short Horn the next.”
[28]E̱y dēē äh´ kä tä
The two leaders chose Red Kettle to be their crier. The evening before we started he went through the village crying, “We move to-morrow at sunrise. Get ready.”
Our way led up the Missouri, above the bluffs; and most of the time we were within sight of the river. Now and then, if the current made a wide bend, we took a shorter course over the prairie.Eydeeahkataand Short Horn went ahead, each with a sacred medicine bundle bound to his saddle bow. The camp followed in a long line. Some rode ponies, but most went afoot. We camped at night in our tepees.
We made our eleventh camp on the north side of the Missouri, a few miles below themouth of the Yellowstone. Here the Missouri is not very wide, and its sloping banks make a good place for crossing. A low bank of clean, hard sand lay along the water’s edge. We pitched our tents about noon on this sand. There were about a hundred tepees. They stood in rows, like houses, for there was not room on the sand to make a camping circle.
Small Ankle pitched his tent near the place chosen for the crossing. The day was windy and chill. With flint-and-steel my father struck a fire, and we soon had meat boiling. After our dinner he drove his horses to pasture.
Strikes-Many Woman fetched dry grass for our beds, spreading it thickly on the floor against the tent wall. On the edges of the beds next the fireplace she laid small logs, to keep in the grass bedding and to catch any flying sparks from the fire.
The wind died at evening. Twilight fell, and the coals in the fireplace cast a soft, red glow on the tent walls. I sat near the tent door. With robe drawn over my shoulders to keep off the chill, I raised the skin door and looked out. The new moon, narrow and bent like an Indian bow, shone white over the river, and the waves of the swift mid-current sparkled silvery in the moonlight. I could hear the swish of eddies, the lap-lapping of the waves rolling shoreward. Over all rose the roar, roar, roar of the great river, sweeping onward we Indians knew not where.
Plate III.—“With horn spoon she filled her mouth with water.”
My dogs were sleeping without, snugged against the tent for warmth. At midnight one of them stirred, pointed his nose at the moon and broke into a howl. The howl soon grew to a chorus, for every dog in the camp joined in. Far out on the prairie rose the wailingyip-yip-yip-yip-ya-a-ah![29]of a coyote. The dogs grew silent again, and curled up, nose-in-tail, to sleep.
[29]yĭp yĭp yĭp yĭp yä´ ä äh
And my little son came into the world.
The morning sky was growing light when Son-of-a-Star came into the tent. His eyes were smiling as he stepped to the fireplace, for they saw a pretty sight. Red Blossom was giving my baby a bath.
She had laid him on a piece of soft skin, before the fire. With horn spoon she filled her mouth with water, held it in her cheeks until it was warm, and blew it over my baby’s body. I do not think he liked his bath, for he squalled loudly.
My husband laughed. “It is a lusty cry,” he said. “I am sure my son will be a warrior.”
Having bathed my baby, Red Blossom bound him in his wrapping skins. She had a square piece of tent cover, folded and sewed along the edges of one end into a kind of sack. Into this she slipped my baby, with his feet against the sewed end. About his little body she packed cattail down.
On a piece of rawhide, she put some clean sand, which she heated by rolling over it a red-hot stone. She packed this sand under mybaby’s feet; and, lest it prove too hot, she slipped a piece of soft buckskin under them.
Over all she bound a wildcat skin, drawing the upper edge over the baby’s head, like a hood.
The hot sand was to keep my baby warm. This and the cattail down we placed in a baby’s wrappings only in winter, when on a journey.