Accessories to the Tobacco Garden
Fence
When I was a little girl every tobacco garden had a willow fence around it.
I remember very well seeing such fences built. Post holes were made by driving a sharp stake into the ground with an ax; the stake was withdrawn, and into the hole left by it, a diamond willow was thrust for a post; on this willow were left all the upper branches with the leaves. A rail was run from the post to its next neighbor, at the height of a woman’s shoulder, and stayed in place by bending over the leafy top of the willow post, and drawing it around the rail, then twisting it down and around the body at the post in a spiral manner. If the leafy top of the post was long enough, and slender enough, it might, after being wrapped spirally about the post, be even drawn out and woven into the fence.
Below the top rail at a convenient distance, there ran a second rail, bound to the post with bark. Besides these rails, branches and twigs, and as I have said, the tops of the posts themselves, were interwoven into the fence to make it as dense as possible.
The posts of the fence stood about two and a half feet apart, making, with the rails and the interwoven twigs, a barrier so dense that even a dog could not push through it.
There was an opening left to enter the garden, closed by a kind of stile—bars of small poles thrust right and left between the posts; against these bars were leaned one or two bull berry bushes, which were removed when the owner wanted to enter.
If a weak place was found in the fence, it was strengthened with a bull berry bush thrust into the ground and leaned against the fence or woven into it.
The Scrotum Basket
I have said that we used a basket made of the scrotum of a buffalo bull, for picking tobacco blossoms.
A fresh scrotum was taken, and a rim or hoop of choke-cherry wood was bound around its mouth; choke-cherry limbs are flexible and easily bent. The hoop was sewed in place with sinew passing through the skin and around the hoop spirally.
Figure 39
Reproduced from sketch by Goodbird.
A thong was bound at either end to opposite sides of the hoop, and the whole was hung upon the drying stage, or at the entrance to the earth lodge in the sun. The skin was then filled with sand until dry, when it was emptied, the thong removed, and a band, or leather handle, was bound on one side of the hoop, at places a few inches apart, and the basket was ready for use.
The scrotum is the toughest part of the buffalo’s hide. When dried it is as hard and rigid as wood.
[Figure 39] is a sketch by Goodbird showing what the basket was like.
Figure 40
Down in the bottoms along the Missouri near Independence school house are the gardens—now abandoned—used by the neighboring families when they first came to this part of the reservation, about 1886.
The fields are plainly marked in the underbrush and trees from the fact that they are relatively open. Goodbird accompanied me to the several locations and I made maps of the fields, which I include in [figure 40]. While not accurately surveyed—I had to pace off the distances—the fields are fairly accurately represented by the maps.
[Figure 40], I, is a diagram in vertical section of the land surface in which the gardens lie. Toward the right is seen the basin of the Missouri river.
At the extreme left is a bit of the prairie that abuts the foothills. Between are two level terraces, one eighty yards, the other and lower, one hundred and seventy-five yards in width. Four of the gardens lie in the eighty-yard terrace; field A, of Small Ankle; B of Big Foot Bull; E of Crow’s Breast, and H, a small bit of ground used by the Small Ankle family for a squash garden. Gardens C of Small Horn; D of Leggings; F of Crow’s Breast; and G of Cedar Woman, lie in the lower and wider terrace.
With one exception the fields are called by the names of the male heads of the families, a custom that probably began at the time allotments were first made.
The relative positions of the fields are not as shown in the figure, except of A and B, the gardens of Small Ankle and Big Foot Bull. These are separated by a wagon road that descends to the lower terrace, as indicated on the map.
Doubtless the two terraces have been made by over-flow waters. It is likely that both are still subject to overflow at long intervals, especially the lower. The soil is light and sandy, but black and rich. The overflow of the river would seem to suggest that the land would be fertilized by silt deposited upon it; but my Indian informants seem to attach no significance to this. Fields were located near the Missouri “because the soil there is soft and easily worked, and does not become dry and burn up the crops.”
Gilbert L. Wilson.