Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story

Waheenee and Her Husband, Son-of-a-Star
TOLD BY HERSELF ———TO——— GILBERT L. WILSON, Ph.D.
Field collector for the American Museum of Natural History of New York City. Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College.
Author of “Myths of the Red Children,” “Goodbird, the Indian,” “The Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians,” “Indian Hero Tales.”
ILLUSTRATED BY FREDERICK N. WILSON
Webb Publishing Company St. Paul, Minnesota 1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921 BY WEBB PUBLISHING CO. W 1
The Hidatsas, called Minitaris by the Mandans, are a Siouan tribe and speak a language closely akin to that of the Crows. Wars with the Dakota Sioux forced them to ally themselves with the Mandans, whose culture they adopted. Lewis and Clark found the two tribes living in five villages at the mouth of the Knife river, in 1804.
In 1832 the artist Catlin visited the Five Villages, as they were called. A year later Maximilian of Wiet visited them with the artist Bodmer. Several score canvasses, the work of the two artists, are preserved to us.
Smallpox nearly exterminated the two tribes in 1837-8. The survivors, a mere remnant, removed to Fort Berthold reservation where they still dwell.
In 1908, with my brother, an artist, I was sent by Dr. Clark Wissler, Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, to begin cultural studies among the Hidatsas. This work, continued through successive summers for ten years, is but now drawing to a close.
During these years my faithful interpreter and helper has been Edward Goodbird, grandson of Small Ankle, a chief of the Hidatsas in the trying years following the terrible smallpox winter; and my principal informants have been Goodbird’s mother, Waheenee-wea , or Buffalo-Bird Woman, and her brother, Wolf Chief.