TENTH CHAPTERLEARNING TO WORK
TENTH CHAPTER
My mothers began to teach me household tasks when I was about twelve years old. “You are getting to be a big girl,” they said. “Soon you will be a woman, and marry. Unless you learn to work, how will you feed your family?”
One of the things given me to do was fetching water from the river. No spring was near our village; and, anyhow, our prairie springs are often bitter with alkali. But the Missouri river, fed by melting snows of the Montana mountains, gave us plenty of fresh water. Missouri river water is muddy; but it soon settles, and is cool and sweet to drink. We Indians love our big river, and we are glad to drink of its waters, as drank our fathers.
A steep path led down the bank to the watering place. Down this path, the village girlsmade their way every morning to get water for drinking and cooking. They went in little groups or in pairs. Two girls, cousins or chums, sometimes swung a freshly filled pail from a pole on their shoulders.
But there were few pails of metal in my tribe, when I was a little girl. I used to fetch water in a clay pot, sometimes in a buffalo-paunch lining skewered on a stick; but my commonest bucket was of a buffalo heart skin. When my father killed a buffalo, he took out the heart skin, and filled it with grass until it dried. This he gave to Red Blossom, who sewed a little stick on each side of the mouth; and bound a short stick and sinews between them for handle. Such a bucket held about three pints. It was a frail looking vessel, but lasted a long time.
We girls liked to go to the watering place; for, while we were filling our buckets, we could gossip with our friends. For older girls and young men it was a place for courtship. A youth, with painted face and trailing hair switch, would loiter near the path, and smile slyly at his sweetheart as she passed. She did not always smile back. Sometimes for long weeks, she held her eyes away, not even glancing at his moccasins. It was a shy smile that she gave him, at last. Nor did she talk with her love-boy—as we calledhim—when others were about. We should have thought that silly. But he might wait for her at sunset, by her father’s lodge, and talk with her in the twilight.
But I had other tasks besides fetching water. I learned to cook, sweep, and sew with awl and sinew. Red Blossom taught me to embroider with quills of gull and porcupine, dyed in colors. Sometimes I helped at harder work; gathered drift wood at the river, dressed or scraped hides, and even helped in our cornfield.
I liked to go with my mothers to the cornfields in planting time, when the spring sun was shining and the birds singing in the tree tops. How good it seemed to be out under the open sky, after the long months in our winter camp! A cottonwood tree stood at a turn of the road to our field. Every season a pair of magpies built their nest in it. They were saucy birds and scolded us roundly when we passed. How I used to laugh at their wicked scoldings!
I am afraid I did not help my mothers much. Like any young girl, I liked better to watch the birds than to work. Sometimes I chased away the crows. Our corn indeed had many enemies, and we had to watch that they did not get our crop. Magpies and crows destroyed much of the young corn. Crows were fond of pulling up the plants when they were a half inch or an inch high. Spotted gophers dug up the roots of the young corn, to nibble the soft seed.
When our field was all planted, Red Blossom used to go back and replant any hills that thebirds had destroyed. Where she found a plant missing, she dug a little hole with her hand and dropped in a seed, or I dropped it in for her.
It was hard work, stooping to plant in the hot sun, and Red Blossom never liked having to go over the field a second time. “Those bad crows,” she would groan, “they make us much trouble.”
My grandmother Turtle made scarecrows to frighten away the birds. In the middle of the field she drove two sticks for legs, and bound two other sticks to them for arms; on the top, she fastened a ball of cast-away skins for a head. She belted an old robe about the figure to make it look like a man. Such a scarecrow looked wicked! Indeed I was almost afraid of it myself. But the bad crows, seeing the scarecrow never moved from its place, soon lost their fear, and came back.
In the months of midsummer, the crows did not give us much trouble; but, as the moon of Cherries drew near, they became worse than ever. The corn had now begun to ear, and crows and blackbirds came in flocks to peck open the green ears for the soft kernels. Many families now built stages in their fields, where the girls and young women of the household came to sit andsing as they watched that crows and other thieves did not steal the ripening grain.
We cared for our corn in those days, as we would care for a child; for we Indian people loved our fields as mothers love their children. We thought that the corn plants had souls, as children have souls, and that the growing corn liked to hear us sing, as children like to hear their mothers sing to them. Nor did we want the birds to come and steal our corn, after the hard work of planting and hoeing. Horses, too, might break into the field, or boys might steal the green ears and go off and roast them.
A watchers’ stage was not hard to build. Four posts, forked at the tops, upheld beams, on which was laid a floor of puncheons, or split small logs, at the height of the full grown corn. The floor was about four feet long by three wide, roomy enough for two girls to sit together comfortably. Often a soft robe was spread on the floor. A ladder made of the trunk of a tree rested against the stage. The ladder had three steps.
A tree was often left standing in the field, to shade the watchers’ stage. If the tree was small and more shade was wanted, a robe was stretched over three poles leaned against the stage. These poles could be shifted with the sun.
Girls began to go on the watchers’ stage when about ten or twelve years of age, and many kept up the custom after they were grown up and married. Older women, working in the field and stopping to rest, often went on the stage and sang.
There was a watchers’ stage in my mothers’ field, where my sister, Cold Medicine, and I sat and sang; and in the two weeks of the ripening season we were singing most of the time. We looked upon watching our field as a kind of lark. We liked to sing, and now and then between songs we stood up to see if horses had broken into the field or if any boys were about. Boys of nine or ten years of age were quite troublesome. They liked to steal the green ears to roast by a fire in the woods.
I think Cold Medicine and I were rather glad to catch a boy stealing our corn, especially if he was a clan cousin, for then we could call him all the bad names we wished. “You bad, bad boy,” we would cry. “You thief,—stealing from your own relatives!Nah, nah,—go away.” This was enough; no boy stayed after such a scolding.
Most of the songs we sang were love-boy songs, as we called them; but not all were. One that we younger girls were fond of singing—girls,that is, of about twelve years of age—was like this:
You bad boys, you are all alike!Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you have no moccasins!
You bad boys, you are all alike!Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you have no moccasins!
You bad boys, you are all alike!Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you have no moccasins!
You bad boys, you are all alike!
Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;
Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;
You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you have no moccasins!
This song we sang to tease the boys who came to hunt birds in the near-by woods. Small boys went bird hunting nearly every day. The birds that a boy snared or shot he gave to his grandparents to roast in the lodge fire; for, with their well-worn teeth, old people could no longer chew our hard, dried buffalo meat.
Here is another song; but, that you may understand it, I will explain to you whateekupa[20]means. A girl loved by another girl as her own sister was called hereekupa. I think your word “chum,” as you explain it, has nearly the same meaning. This is the song:
“Myeekupa, what do you wish to see?” you said to me.What I wish to see is the corn silk peeping out of the growing ear;But whatyouwish to see is that naughty young man coming!
“Myeekupa, what do you wish to see?” you said to me.What I wish to see is the corn silk peeping out of the growing ear;But whatyouwish to see is that naughty young man coming!
“Myeekupa, what do you wish to see?” you said to me.What I wish to see is the corn silk peeping out of the growing ear;But whatyouwish to see is that naughty young man coming!
“Myeekupa, what do you wish to see?” you said to me.
What I wish to see is the corn silk peeping out of the growing ear;
But whatyouwish to see is that naughty young man coming!
[20]ēē´ kṳ pä
Here is a song that older girls sang to tease young men of the Dog Society who happened to be going by:
You young man of the Dog Society, you said to me,“When I go east with a war party, you will hear news of me how brave I am!”I have heard news of you;When the fight was on, you ran and hid;And you still think you are a brave young man!Behold, you have joined the Dog Society;But I call you just plaindog!
You young man of the Dog Society, you said to me,“When I go east with a war party, you will hear news of me how brave I am!”I have heard news of you;When the fight was on, you ran and hid;And you still think you are a brave young man!Behold, you have joined the Dog Society;But I call you just plaindog!
You young man of the Dog Society, you said to me,“When I go east with a war party, you will hear news of me how brave I am!”I have heard news of you;When the fight was on, you ran and hid;And you still think you are a brave young man!Behold, you have joined the Dog Society;But I call you just plaindog!
You young man of the Dog Society, you said to me,
“When I go east with a war party, you will hear news of me how brave I am!”
I have heard news of you;
When the fight was on, you ran and hid;
And you still think you are a brave young man!
Behold, you have joined the Dog Society;
But I call you just plaindog!
Songs that we sang on the watchers’ stage we calledmeedaheeka,[21]or gardeners’ songs. I have said that many of them were love-boysongs, and were intended to tease. We called a girl’s sweetheart her love-boy. All girls, we know, like to tease their sweethearts.
[21]mēē dä´ hēē kä
At one side of our field Turtle had made a booth, diamond willows thrust in the ground in a circle, with leafy tops bent over and tied together. In this booth, my sister and I, with our mothers and old Turtle, cooked our meals. We started a fire in the booth as soon as we got to the field, and ate our breakfast often at sunrise. Our food we had brought with us, usually buffalo meat, fresh or dried. Fresh meat we laid on the coals to broil. Dried meat we thrust on a stick and held over the fire to toast.
Sometimes we brought a clay cooking pot, and boiled squashes. We were fond of squashes and ate many of them. We sometimes boiled green corn and beans. My sister and I shelled the corn from the cob. We shelled the beans or boiled them in the pod. My grandmother poured the mess in a wooden bowl, and we ate with spoons which she made from squash stems. She would split a stem with her knife and put in a little stick to hold the split open.
I do not think anything can taste sweeter than a mess of fresh corn and beans, in the cool morning air, when the birds are twittering and the sun is just peeping over the tree tops.