Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation

Turtle 9 Clearing fields 9 Dispute and its settlement 10 Turtle breaking soil 11 Turtle’s primitive tools 12 Beginning a field in later times 13 Trees in the garden 15 Our west...

Remark by Maxi´diwiac 16 Planting sunflowers 16 Varieties 16 Harvesting the seed 17 Threshing 18 Harvesting the mapi´-na´ka 18 Effect of frost 18 Parching the seed 19 Four-veget...

Planting 22 A morning’s planting 23 Soaking the seed 23 Planting for a sick woman 24 Size of our biggest field 24 Na´xu and nu´cami 25 Hoeing 26 The watchers’ stage 26 Explanati...

Planting squashes 68 Sprouting the seed 68 Planting the sprouted seed 69 Harvesting the squashes 69 Slicing the squashes 70 Squash spits 71 Spitting the slices 72 In case of rai...

Planting beans 82 Putting in the seeds 82 Hoeing and cultivating 83 Threshing 83 Varieties 84 Selecting seed beans 85 Cooking and uses 85 Ama´ca di´hĕ, or beans-boiled 86 Green...

The cache pit 87 Grass for lining 88 Grass bundles 89 The grass binding rope 89 Drying the grass bundles 89 The willow floor 89 The grass lining 90 Skin bottom covering 90 Stori...

Stages in Like-a-fishhook village 98 Cutting the timbers 98 Digging the post holes 99 Raising the frame 100 The floor 100 Staying thongs 101 Ladder 101 Enlarging the stage 102 P...

Divisions between gardens 113 Fallowing, ownership of gardens 113 Frost in the gardens 115 Maxi´diwiac’s philosophy of frost 115 Men helping in the field 115 Sucking the sweet j...

Observations by Maxi´diwiac 121 The tobacco garden 121 Planting 122 Arrow-head-earring’s tobacco garden 122 Small Ankle’s cultivation 122 Harvesting the blossoms 123 Harvesting...

We Hidatsas believe that our tribe once lived under the waters of Devils Lake. Some hunters discovered the root of a vine growing downward; and climbing it, they found themselve...

My great-grandmother, as white men count their kin, was named Atạ´kic, or Soft-white Corn. She adopted a daughter, Mata´tic, or Turtle. Some years after, a daughter was born to...

This that I am going to tell you of the planting and harvesting of our crops is out of my own experience, seen with my own eyes. In olden times, I know, my tribe used digging st...

Corn planting began the second month after sunflower-seed was planted, that is in May; and it lasted about a month. It sometimes continued pretty well into June, but not later t...

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.

Beans were planted in hills the size and shape of squash hills, or about seven by fourteen inches; but if made in open ground the hills were not placed so far apart in the row....

A cache pit was shaped somewhat like a jug, with a narrow neck at the top. The width of the mouth, or entrance, was commonly about two feet; on the very largest cache pits the m...

That before Small Ankle’s lodge was a three-section stage, of eight posts. White Feather, or his wives, owned two of these big eight-post stages, one before each of their two lo...

Iron hoes had come into general use when I was a girl, but there were two or three old women who used old fashioned bone hoes. I think my grandmother, Turtle, was the very last...

Figure 36 is a map I have made of the gardens east, or better, southeast, of Like-a-fishhook village. The fields lay, as indicated on the map, upon a point of land that went out...

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 government has changed our old way of cultivating corn and our other vegetables, and has brought us seeds of many new vegetables and grains, and taught us their use. We Hida...

Tobacco was cultivated in my tribe only by old men. Our young men did not smoke much; a few did, but most of them used little tobacco, or almost none. They were taught that smok...