LIFE IN AN EARTH LODGE
The small lodges we built for winter did not stand long after we left them in the spring. Built on low ground by the Missouri, they were often swept away in the June rise; for in that month the river is flooded by snows melting in the Rocky Mountains.
The loss of our winter lodges never troubled us, however; for we thought of them as but huts. Then, too, we seldom wintered twice in the same place. We burned much firewood in our winter lodges, and before spring came the women had to go far to find it. The next season we made camp in a new place, where was plenty of dead-and-down wood for fuel.
We looked upon our summer lodges, to which we came every spring, as our real homes. There were about seventy of these, earth lodges well-built and roomy, in Like-a-Fishhook village. Most of them were built the second summer of our stay there.
My mothers’ earth lodge—for the lodge belonged to the women of a household—was a large one, with floor measuring more than forty feet across. In the center was the fireplace. A screen of puncheons, set upright in a trench, stood between the fireplace and the door. This screen shut out draughts and kept out the dogs.
The screen ran quite to the sloping wall, on the right; but, on the left, there was space for a passage from the door to the fire. Right and left in an Indian lodge are reckoned as one stands at the fireplace, looking toward the door. We thought an earth lodge was alive and had a spirit like a human body, and that its front was like a face, with the door for mouth.
Before the fireplace and against the puncheon screen was my father’s bed. Forked posts, eighteen inches high, stood in the earth floor. On poles laid in the forks rested cottonwood planks over which were thrown buffalo robes. A skin pillow, stuffed with antelope hair, lay at one end of the bed.
The beds of the rest of the family stood in the back of the lodge, against the wall. They were less simply made than my father’s, being each covered with an old tent skin drawn over a frame of posts and poles. The bedding was of buffalo skins. As these could not be washed, my mothers used to take them out and hang them on the poles of the corn stage on sunny days, to air.
Most of the earth lodges—at least most of the larger ones—had each a bed like my father’s before the fireplace; for this was the warmest place in the lodge. Usually the eldest in the family, as the father or grandfather, slept in this bed.
My father’s bed, not being enclosed, made a good lounging place by day, and here he sat to smoke or chat with his friends. My mothers, too, used to sit here to peel wild turnips or make ready the daily meals.
Two or three sticks burned in the fireplace, not piled one upon the other as done by white men, but laid with ends meeting. As the ends burned away, the sticks were pushed in, keeping alive a small but hot fire. At night, the last thing my father did was to cover one of these burning sticks with ashes, that it might keep fire until morning.
Unless he had spent the night with some of his cronies, my father was the first to rise in the morning. He would go to the fireplace, draw out a buried coal, lay some dry sticks upon it, and blow with his breath until the fire caught. Sometimes he fanned the coal with a goose wing.
Soon a little column of smoke would rise toward the smoke hole, and my father would call, “Up, little daughter; up, sons! Get up, wives! The sun is up. To the river for your bath! Hasten!” And he would go up on the roof to look if enemies were about and if his horses were safe. My mothers were already up when I crept from my bed still sleepy, but glad that morning had come.
But if the weather was cold, we did not go to the river to bathe. An earthen pot full of water stood by one of the posts near the fire. It rested in a ring of bark, to keep it from falling. My mothers dipped each a big horn spoon full of water, filled her mouth, and, blowing the water over her palms, gave her face a good rubbing. Red Blossom washed my face in the same way. I did not like it very much, and I would shut my eyes and pucker my face when I felt the cold water. Red Blossom would say, “Why do you pucker up your face? You make it look like a piece of old, dried, buffalo skin.”
Her face washed, Red Blossom sat on the edge of her bed and finished her toilet. She had a little fawn-skin bag, worked with red porcupine quills. From this bag she took her hairbrush, a porcupine tail mounted on a stick, with the sharp points of the quills cut off. She brushed her hair smooth, parting it in two braids that fell over each shoulder nearly hiding her ears. Red Blossom was no longer young, but her black tresses had not a grey hair in them.
She now opened her paint bag, put a little buffalo grease on her two fingers, pressed the tips lightly in the dry paint, and rubbed them over her cheeks and face. She also rubbed a little red into the part of her hair.
Meanwhile, the pot had been put on the fire. We Indians did not eat many things at a meal as white men do. Usually, breakfast was of one thing, often buffalo meat dried, and boiled to soften it. When a buffalo was killed, the meat was cut into thin slices, and some parts, into strips. These were dried in the open air over the earth lodge fire or in the smoke of a small fire out-of-doors. For breakfast, a round earthen pot was filled with water, dried meat put in, and the water brought to a boil. Red Blossom used to lift out the hot meat slices on the point of a stick, laying them on a bit of clean rawhide.
A rough bench stood back of the fireplace, a cottonwood plank, with ends resting on two blocks chopped from a tree trunk. My grandmother Turtle sat on this bench to eat her meals. My two mothers sat beside her, or on the floor near the meat they were serving. My father ate sitting on the edge of his couch. A wooden bowl, heaped with steaming meat, was set before each. Our fingers did for forks.
Boiling the meat in water made a thin broth which we used for a hot drink. It was very good, tasting much like white man’s beef tea. We had no cups; but we had big spoons made of buffalo horn, and ladles, of mountain-sheep horn. Either of these did very well for drinking cups. Sometimes we used mussel shells.
A common breakfast dish was mapee[5] naka-pah,[6] or pounded-meal mush. From her cache pit Red Blossom took a string of dried squash slices. She cut off a length and tied the ends together, making a ring four or five inches in width. This ring and a double handful of beans she dropped in a pot of water, and set on the fire. When boiled, she lifted the ring out with a stick, with her horn ladle mashed the softened squash slices in a wooden bowl and put them back in the pot.
[5] mä pēē´
[6] nä kä päh´
Meanwhile Strikes-Many Woman or old Turtle had parched some corn in a clay pot, and toasted some buffalo fats on a stick, over the coals. Red Blossom now pounded the parched corn and toasted fats together in the corn mortar, and stirred the pounded mass into the pot with the squash and beans. The mess was soon done. Red Blossom dipped it into our bowls with a horn spoon.
We ate such messes with horn spoons or with mussel shells; for we Hidatsas had few metal spoons in those days. There was a shelf, or bench, at one side of the room, under the sloping roof, where were stored wooden bowls, uneaten foods, horn spoons, and the mussel shells that we used for teaspoons. When I was a little girl, nearly every family owned such shells, worn smooth and shiny from use.
After breakfast, unless it was in the corn season, when they went to the field, my mothers tidied up the lodge. They had short brooms of buckbrush. With these they swept the floor, stooping over and drawing the broom with a sidewise motion. As my father stabled his hunting ponies in the lodge at night, there was a good deal of litter to be taken out. Red Blossom used to scrape her sweepings into a skin basket, which she bore to the river bank and emptied.
Other tasks were then taken up; and there were plenty of them. Moccasins had to be made or old ones mended. Shirts and other garments had to be made. Often there were skins to be dressed or scraped. Leggings and shirts were embroidered usually in winter, when the women had no corn to hoe.
There was a good deal of visiting in our lodge; for my father was one of the chiefs of the village, and always kept open house. “If a man would be chief,” we said, “he should be ready to feed the poor and strangers.” A pot with buffalo meat or corn and beans cooking was always on the fire in my father’s lodge. His friends and the other chief men of the village often came in to talk over affairs. A visitor came in without knocking, but did not sit down until he was asked.
Friends of my mothers also came in to sit and chat; and they often joined my mothers at whatever task they might be doing. Red Blossom would set a bowl of food before each. What she could not eat the guest took home with her. It was impolite to leave any uneaten food, as that would mean, “I do not like your cooking; it is unfit to eat.”
My mothers were neat housekeepers and kept the ground about the lodge entrance swept as clean as the lodge floor; but many families were careless, and cast ashes, floor sweepings, scraps of broken bones and other litter on the ground about their lodges. In time this rubbish made little piles and became a nuisance, so that people could hardly walk in the paths between the lodges.
The Black Mouths then went through the village and ordered the women to clean up. The Black Mouths were a society of men of about forty years of age. They acted as police and punished any one who broke the camp laws.
These clean-ups were made rather often; in summer, perhaps twice a month. They were always ordered by the Black Mouths.
I remember one morning, just after breakfast, I heard singing, as of a dozen or more men coming toward our lodge. I started to run out to see what it was, but my mothers cried, “Do not go. It is the Black Mouths.” My mothers, I thought, looked rather scared. We were still speaking, when I heard the tramp of feet. The door lifted, and the Black Mouths came in.
They looked very terrible, all painted with the lower half of the face black. Many, but not all, had the upper half of the face red. Some had eagles’ feathers in their hair, and all wore robes or blankets. Some carried guns. Others had sticks about as long as my arm. With these sticks they beat any woman who would not help in the clean-up.
I fled to my father, but I dared not cry out, for I, too, was scared.
“One of you women go out and help clean up the village,” said the Black Mouths. They spoke sternly, and several of them at once.
Like all the other women, my mothers were afraid of the Black Mouths “We will go,” said both, and Red Blossom caught up broom and skin basket and went out.
The Black Mouths went also, and I followed to see what they did. They went into another lodge not far away. I heard voices, then the report of a gun, and a woman screamed. After a time, the Black Mouths came out driving before them a woman, very angry, but much frightened. She had not moved quickly enough to get her basket, and one of the Black Mouths had fired his gun at her feet to frighten her. The gun was loaded only with powder.
After they had made the rounds of the village, the Black Mouths returned to the lodge of their “keeper,” a man named Crow Paunch. Soon we heard singing and drumming, and knew they were singing some of the society’s songs.
When they had sung three or four times, there was silence for a while, as if a pipe were being passed. Then all came out and made the rounds a second time, to see if the work of cleaning was done and to hurry up the laggards. The village was all cleaned before noon; but some of the women got their work done sooner than others.
After the clean-up the village children came out to play in the spaces between the lodges, now swept clean and smooth. It was in these smooth spaces that the boys liked to play at throw sticks, light willow rods which they darted against the ground, whence they bounded to a great distance.
SIXTH CHAPTER