FOURTH CHAPTERSTORY TELLING
FOURTH CHAPTER
My good old grandmother could be stern when I was naughty; nevertheless, I loved her dearly, and I know she was fond of me. After the death of my mother, it fell to Turtle to care for me much of the time. There were other children in the household, and, with so many mouths to feed, my two other mothers, as I called them, had plenty of work to do.
Indians are great story tellers; especially are they fond of telling tales around the lodge fire in the long evenings of autumn and winter. My father and his cronies used sometimes to sit up all night, drumming and singing and telling stories. Young men often came with gift of robe or knife, to ask him to tell them tales of our tribe.
I was too young yet to understand many of these tales. My father was hours telling someof them, and they had many strange words. But my grandmother used to tell me stories as she sat or worked by the lodge fire.
One evening in the corn planting moon, she was making ready her seed for the morrow’s planting. She had a string of braided ears lying beside her. Of these ears she chose the best, broke off the tip and butt of each, and shelled the perfect grain of the mid-cob into a wooden bowl. Baby-like, I ran my fingers through the shiny grain, spilling a few kernels on the floor.
“Do not do that,” cried my grandmother. “Corn is sacred; if you waste it, the gods will be angry.”
I still drew my fingers through the smooth grain, and my grandmother continued: “Once a Ree woman went out to gather her corn. She tied her robe about her with a big fold in the front, like a pocket. Into this she dropped the ears that she plucked, and bore them off to the husking pile. All over the field she went, row by row, leaving not an ear.
“She was starting off with her last load when she heard a weak voice, like a babe’s, calling, ‘Please, please do not go. Do not leave me.’
“The woman stopped, astonished. She put down her load. ‘Can there be a babe hiddenin the corn?’ she thought. She then carefully searched the field, hill by hill, but found nothing.
“She was taking up her load, when again she heard the voice: ‘Oh, please do not go. Do not leave me!’ Again she searched, but found nothing.
“She was lifting her load when the voice came the third time: ‘Please, please, do not go! Please, do not leave me!’
“This time the woman searched every corn hill, lifting every leaf. And lo, in one corner of the field, hidden under a leaf, she found a tiny nubbin of yellow corn. It was the nubbin that had been calling to her. For so the gods would teach us not to be wasteful of their gifts.”
Another evening I was trying to parch an ear of corn over the coals of our lodge fire. I had stuck the ear on the end of a squash spit, as I had seen my mothers do; but my baby fingers were not strong enough to fix the ear firmly, and it fell off into the coals and began to burn. My mouth puckered, and I was ready to cry.
My grandmother laughed. “You should put only half the ear on the spit,” she said. “That is the way the Mandans did when they first gave us corn.”
I dropped the spit and, forgetting the burning ear, asked eagerly, “How did the Mandans give us corn, grandmother? Tell me the story.”
Turtle picked up the spit and raked the burning ear from the ashes. “I have told youthat the gods gave us corn to eat, not to waste,” she said. “Some of the kernels on this cob are well parched.” And she shelled off a handful and put one of the hot kernels in her mouth.
“I will tell you the story,” she continued. “I had it from my mother when I was a little girl like you.
“In the beginning, our Hidatsa people lived under the waters of Devils Lake. They had earth lodges and lived much as we live now. One day some hunters found the root of a grapevine growing down from the lake overhead. They climbed the vine and found themselves on this earth. Others climbed the vine until half the tribe had escaped; but, when a fat woman tried to climb it, the vine broke, leaving the rest of the tribe under the lake.
“Those who had safely climbed the vine, built villages of earth lodges. They lived by hunting; and some very old men say that they also planted small fields in ground beans and wild potatoes. As yet the Hidatsas knew nothing of corn or squashes.
“One day, a war party that had wandered west to the Missouri river saw on the other side a village of earth lodges like their own. It was a village of the Mandans. Neither they nor the Hidatsas would cross over, each party fearing the other might be enemies.
“It was in the fall of the year, and the Missouri was running low, so that an arrow could be shot from shore to shore. The Mandans parched some ears of ripe corn with the grainon the cob. These ears they broke in pieces, stuck the pieces on the points of arrows and shot them across the river. ‘Eat!’ they called. The word for ‘eat’ is the same in both the Hidatsa and the Mandan languages.
“The Hidatsas ate of the parched corn. They returned to their village and said, ‘We have found a people on a great river, to the west. They have a strange kind of grain. We ate of it and found it good.’
“After this, a party of Hidatsas went to visit the Mandans. The Mandan chief took an ear of corn, broke it in two, and gave half to the Hidatsas for seed. This half ear the Hidatsas took home, and soon every family in the village was planting corn.”
My father had been listening, as he sat smoking on the other side of the fire. “I know that story,” he said. “The name of the Mandan chief was Good-Fur Robe.”
My grandmother then put me to bed. I was so sleepy that I did not notice she had eaten up all the corn I had parched.
Winter came again, and spring. As soon as the soil could be worked, my mothers and oldTurtle began cleaning up our field, and breaking new ground to add to it. Our first year’s field had been small; but my mothers added to it each season, until the field was as large as our family needed.
I was too little to note very much of what was done. I remember that my father set up boundary marks—little piles of earth or stones, I think they were—to mark the corners of the field we claimed. My mothers and Turtle began at one end of the field and worked forward. My mothers had their heavy iron hoes; and Turtle, her old-fashioned digging stick.
On the new ground, my mothers first cut the long grass with their hoes, bearing it off the field to be burned. They next dug and loosened the soil in places for the corn hills, which they laid off in rows. These hills they planted. Then all summer in this and other parts of the field they worked with their hoes, breaking and loosening the soil between the corn hills and cutting weeds.
Small trees and bushes, I know, were cut off with axes; but I remember little of this labor, most of it having been done the year before, when I was yet quite small. My father once told me that in very old times, when the women cleared a field, they first dug the corn hills with digging sticks, and afterwards worked between them with their bone hoes.
I remember this season’s work the better for a dispute that my mothers had with two neighbors, Lone Woman and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber.These two women were clearing lands that bordered our own. My father, I have said, to set up claim to our land, had placed boundary marks, one of them in the corner that touched the fields of Lone Woman and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber. While my mothers were busy clearing and digging up the other end of their field, their two neighbors invaded this marked-off corner. Lone Woman had even dug up a small part before she was discovered.
My mothers showed Lone Woman the mark my father had placed. “This land belongs to us,” they said; “but we will pay you and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber for any rights you may think are yours. We do not want our neighbors to bear us any hard feelings.”
We Indians thought our fields sacred, and we did not like to quarrel about them. A family’s right to a field once having been set up, no one thought of disputing it. If any one tried to seize land belonging to another, we thought some evil would come upon him; as that one of his family would die or have some bad sickness.
There is a story of a hunter who had before been a black bear, and had been given great magic power. He dared try to catch eagles from another man’s pit, and had his mind taken from him for doing so. Thus the gods punished him for entering ground that was not his own.
Lone Woman and Goes-Back-to-Next-Timber having withdrawn, my grandmother Turtle undertook to clear and break the ground that had been in dispute. She was a little woman but active,and she loved to work out-of-doors. Often, when my mothers were busy in the earth lodge, Turtle would go out to work in the field, and she would take me along for company. I was too little to help her any, but I liked to watch her work.
With her digging stick Turtle dug up a little round place in the center of the corner, and around this she circled from day to day, enlarging the dug-up space. She had folded her robe over her middle, like a pad. Resting the handle of her digging stick against her folded robe, she would drive the point into the soft earth to a depth equal to the length of my hand and pry up the soil.
She broke clods by striking them smartly with her digging stick. Roots of coarse grass, weeds, small brush and the like, she took in her hand and shook or struck them against the ground, to knock off the loose earth clinging to them. She then cast them into little piles to dry. In a few days she gathered these piles into a heap about four feet high and burned them.
My grandmother worked in this way all summer, but not always in the corner that had been in dispute. Some days, I remember, she dug along the edges of the field, to add to it and make the edges even. Of course, not all the labor ofenlarging the field was done by Turtle; but she liked to have me with her when she worked, and I remember best what I saw her do.
It was my grandmother’s habit to rise early in the summer months. She often arrived at the field before sunrise; about ten o’clock she returned to the lodge to eat and rest.
One morning, having come to the field quite early, I grew tired of my play before my grandmother had ended her work. “I want to go home,” I begged, and I began to cry. Just then a strange bird flew into the field. It had a long curved beak, and made a queer cry,cur-lew, cur-lew.
I stopped weeping. My grandmother laughed.
“That is a curlew,” she said. “Once at the mouth of the Knife river, a woman went out with her digging stick to dig wild turnips. The woman had a babe. Growing tired of carrying her babe on her back, she laid it on the ground.
“The babe began to cry. The mother was busy digging turnips, and did not go to her babe as she should have done. By and by she looked up. Her babe was flying away as a bird!
“The bird was a curlew, that cries like a babe. Now, if you cry, perhaps you, too, will turn into a curlew.”