"Chapter XI" by Maxi'diwiac (Buffalo Bird Woman) of the Hidatsa Indian Tribe (ca.1839-1932)
From: Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden
Recounted by Maxi'diwiac (Buffalo Bird Woman) of the Hidatsa Indian Tribe (ca.1839-1932)
Originally published as Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation by Gilbert Livingstone Wilson (1868-1930). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1917. (Ph. D. Thesis).
Divisions Between Gardens
When two fields adjoined the dividing space, or ground that ran between them, we called maạdupatska'; it was always about four feet wide
The word really means, I think, a raised ridge of earth. We still use the word in this sense. Down by the government school house at Independence, our agent has run a road; and the earth dug out of the roadway has been piled along the side in a low ridge to get rid of it. This ridge, running along the side of the road, we call maạdupatska'.
But the maạdupatska' dividing two gardens in old times was never raised in a ridge. It was nothing but a four-foot-wide dividing line. Nothing grew on it. Each gardener hoed her half of the maạdupatska' to keep it clean of grass and weeds. We were particular about this; we did not want to have any weeds in our gardens.
I do not mean that I, for example, was accustomed to hoe exactly one half of the maạdupatska' that bordered my garden, leaving exactly the other half to my neighbor. I merely hoed as needed, and my neighbor did likewise; but the work was pretty equally divided, each woman recognizing that she should do her share.
Sometimes, however, the owner of a garden would come to her next neighbor and say, "I do not want you to have any hard feelings, nor speak against me; but I want to plant the maạdupatska' that divides our gardens, in squash;" or instead of squash, she might want to plant it in sunflowers or beans.
Permission being given, she would plant as she had requested; and thereafter, of course, she would hoe all the maạdupatska', because she had a crop standing on it. But even then the ground would not be hers, and her neighbor might refuse the permission asked.
I have said that it might be asked to plant squash, or beans, or sunflowers. A gardener never asked to plant corn on the maạdupatska' that bordered her field. Rows of corn hills should be about four feet apart; and as this was the width of the maạdupatska', even a single row of hills would have crowded the corn; but beans or squashes or sunflowers planted on the maạdupatska' did not do so.
Fallowing, Ownership of Gardens
The first crop on new ground was always the best, though the second was nearly as good. The third year's crop was not so good; and after that, each year, the crop grew less, until in some seasons, especially in a dry summer, hardly anything was produced.
The owners then stopped cultivating the garden and let it lie for two years; the third year they again planted the garden and found it would yield a good crop as before. During the two years their garden lay fallow, the family owning it would plant their season's crop elsewhere.
In my father's family we owned garden lands both on the east and on the west side of the village, as I have told you in explaining the two maps made for you. This made it easy, if need arose, to work one garden while we let the other rest. There were families in the village who owned more fields even, than did my father's household.
Sometimes when a woman died, her relatives did not trouble themselves to work her garden for a couple of years, but just let it rest; then they would begin planting it again, and the ground was sure to bring forth a good crop. I think our custom of fallowing ground may have arisen in this way. When a woman died leaving a garden, and her relatives did not at once take possession, it was found that a two years' rest increased the yield; and so the custom of fallowing, perhaps, arose. Every one in the village knew the value of a two years' fallowing.
Ground that was newly broken produced good crops for a long time. Our family's west side garden once got to producing very poor crops; and we let it lie untilled for two years. I do not recollect how long it was before we let it rest again.
There was no rule how long we should use land before we fallowed it; nor was there any rule that we should let it rest for just two years. We merely knew that two years' rest brought a poorly producing field back into good condition.
Sometimes a woman died and her garden was abandoned by her relatives, who perhaps had more land than they could use. For this and other causes, there were always some of the cultivated lands of the village lying vacant. We never had all our fields in use every year; there were always some lying untilled, either for fallowing, or for some other reason.
If a woman died and her relatives did not care to till her garden, it was free to any one who cared to make use of it. However, if a woman desired to take possession of such an abandoned field, it was thought right that she should ask permission of the dead owner's relatives. Permission might be asked of the dead woman's son, or daughter, her mother, her husband's sister, or of the husband himself.
The woman did not wait two years before asking; if she wanted the dead woman's field, she just went to the relatives and asked for it.
When the owner of a field died, I never heard that her relatives ever sold it; if they did not care to use it themselves, they gave it to some one who did, or let it lie abandoned.
Frost in the Gardens
The fields that lay on the west side of our village got frosted more easily than those on the east side. Indeed, our west-side gardens suffered a good deal from frost.
The reason was that the ground along the Missouri was lower on the west side of the village; and fields that lay on lower ground, we knew, were more likely to get frosted than those on higher ground. Gardens on the higher grounds east of the village were seldom touched by frost.
Maxi'diwiac's Philosophy of Frost
Fields lying on lower ground catch frost more easily than those that lie higher. On a warm day, the ground becomes warmed; but at night cool air comes up out of the ground, and we can see that where it meets the warm air above, it creates a kind of snow [hoar frost].
Also, some days the wind is high; and toward evening it dies down. The hot airs are then sucked down into the ground and cause moisture to rise up out of the ground in steam. Afterwards, if the cool air comes up out of the ground and meets that hot air, it makes a kind of snow on the weeds and corn, killing them. But you can not see this steam until the old air arises; then it becomes visible.
Men Helping in the Field
Did young men work in the fields? (laughing heartily.) Certainly not! The young men should be off hunting, or on a war party; and youths not yet young men should be out guarding the horses. Their duties were elsewhere, also they spent a great deal of time dressing up to be seen of the village maidens; they should not be working in the fields!
But old men, too old to go to war, went out into the fields and helped their wives. It was theirs to plant the corn while the women made the hills; and they also helped pull up weeds. 1
When their sweethearts were working in the fields, young men often came out and talked to them, and maybe worked a little. However, it was not much real work that they did; they were but seeking a chance to talk, each with his sweetheart.
Sucking the sweet Juice
When the first green corn was plucked, we Indian women often broke off a piece of the stalk and sucked it for the sweet juice it contained. We did this merely for a little taste of sweets in the field; we never took the green stalks home to use as food at our meals.
Did old men do this, you ask? (laughing.) How could they, with their teeth all worn down? Old men could not chew such hard stuff!
No, just women and children did this–sucked the green corn stalks for the juice.
Corn as Fodder for Horses
In the early part of the harvest season, when we plucked green corn to boil, we gathered the ears first; afterwards we gathered the green stalks from which the ears had been stripped. These stalks with the leaves on them we fed to our horses, either without the lodge, or inside, in the corral.
We commonly husked our corn, as I have said, out in the fields, piling up the husks in a heap. After the corn was all in, we drove our horses to the field to eat both the standing fodder and the husks that lay heaped near the husking place. Horses readily ate corn fodder, and by the time spring came again, there was little left in the field; not only were the husks devoured, but most of the standing stalks were eaten off nearly or quite to the ground.
Disposition of Weeds
Weeds that we cut down in hoeing a field, we let lie on the ground if they were young weeds and bore no seeds nor blossoms, but if the weeds had seeded, we bore them off the garden about fifteen or twenty yards from the cultivated ground and left them to rot.
In olden times we Indian women let no weeds grow in our gardens. I was very particular about keeping my own garden clean all the time.
The Spring Clean-up
We never bothered to burn weeds; but in the spring we always cleaned up our fields before planting. We pulled up the stubs of corn stalks and roots, and piled them with the previous year's bean vines and sunflower stalks, in the middle of the garden and burned them; this was commonly done at the husking place, where the husks had been piled. There was not a great deal of refuse left from the corn crop, however, as the horses had eaten most of it for fodder in the previous fall; but bean vines they would not eat.
I never saw any one fire their corn stalks in the fall. Our yearly cleanup was always in the spring, when every field must be raked and cleaned before planting.
Manure
We Hidatsas did not like to have the dung of animals in our fields. The horses we turned into our gardens in the fall dropped dung; and where they did so, we found little worms and insects. We also noted that where dung fell, many kinds of weeds grew up the next year.
We did not like this, and we therefore carefully cleaned off the dried dung, picking it up by hand and throwing it ten feet or more beyond the edge of the garden plot. We did likewise with the droppings of white men's cattle, after they were brought to us.
The dung of horses and cattle raised sharp thistles, the kind that grows up in a big bush; and mustard, and another plant that has black seeds. These three kinds of weeds came to us with the white man; other weeds we had before, but they were native to our land.
Our corn and other vegetables can not grow on land that has many weeds. Now that white men have come and put manure on their fields, these strange weeds brought by them have become common. In old times we Hidatsas kept our gardens clean of weeds. I think this is harder to do now that we have so many more kinds of weeds.
I do not know that the worms in the manure did any harm to our gardens; but because we thought it bred worms and weeds, we did not like to have any dung on our garden lands, and we therefore removed it.
Worms
Our corn, we knew, raised a good many worms. They came out in the ears; it was the corn kernels that became the worms. Wood also became worms. Leaves became worms. All these bred worms of themselves.
I knew also, when I was a young woman, that flies lay eggs, that after a time the eggs move about alive; and that later these put on wings and fly away. Whether all flies do this, I did not know, but I knew that some do.
Many worms appeared in our gardens in some years; in other years they were fewer.
Wild Animals
Did buffaloes or deer ever raid our gardens? (laughing.) No. Buffaloes have keen scent, and they could wind an Indian a long way off. While they could smell us Indian people, or the smoke from our village, there was no danger that they would come near to eat our crops.
Antelopes lived out on the plains, in the open country; they never came near our fields.
Rocky Mountain sheep lived in the clay hills, in the very roughest country, where cedar trees and sage brush grow.
Black-tailed deer lived far away in the Bad Lands, in the little round patches of timber that are found there, where the country is very rough. They were not found near our village, nor in such places as those in which we planted our gardens.
White-tailed deer, however, lived in the heavy timber that lines the banks of the Missouri river. A few are still found on this reservation. However, though haunting the woods near our gardens, these deer never molested our crops; they never ate our corn ears nor nibbled the stalks.
About Old Tent Covers
I have said that we made the threshing booth under the drying stage, of an old tent cover.
Buffalo hides that we wanted to use for making tent covers, were taken in the spring when the buffaloes shed their hair and their skins are thin. The skin tent cover which we then made would be used all that summer; and the next winter, perhaps, we would begin to cut it up for moccasins. The following spring, again, we could take more buffalo hides and make another tent cover.
Not all families renewed a tent so often. Some families used a tent two years, and some even a much longer time; but many families used a tent cover but a single season. It was a very usual thing for the women of a family to make a new tent cover, in the spring.
Old tent covers, as I have said, were cut up for moccasins, or they were put to other uses. There was always a good deal of need about the lodge for skins that had been scraped bare of hair; and the skins in a tent cover were, of course, of this kind. Every bed in the earth lodge, in old times, was covered with an old tent cover.
Skins needed in threshing time were partly of these bed covers, taken down from the beds. Often the piece of an old tent cover from which we had been cutting moccasins would be brought out and used. Then we commonly had other buffalo hides, scraped bare of hair, stored in the lodge, ready for any use.
Buffaloes were plentiful in those days, and skins were easy to get. We had always abundance for use in threshing time.
1 "In my tribe in old times, some men helped their wives in their gardens. Others didn't. Those who did not help their wives talked against those who did, saying, 'That man's wife makes him a servant.'
"And the others retorted, 'Look, that man puts all the hard work on his wife!'
"Men were not alike: some did not like to work in the garden at all, and cared for nothing but to go around visiting or to be off on a hunt.
"My father, Small Ankle, liked to garden and often helped his wives. He told me that that was the best way to do. 'Whatever you do,' he said, 'help your wife in all things!' He taught me to clean the garden, to help gather the corn to hoe, and to rake.
"My father said that that man lived best and had plenty to eat who helped his wife; he who did not help his wife was likely to have scanty stores of food."–WOLF CHIEF (told in 1910).
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