THE CORN HUSKING
After the June berry season came choke-cherries. We did not gather so big a store of these, but they were harder to prepare for drying. I can yet see old Turtle, with her gnarled, wrinkled fingers, plying the crushing stones. She dropped three or four cherries on a round stone and crushed them with a smaller stone held in her palm. The pulp she squeezed through her palms into lumps, which she dried in the sun.
And then came the corn harvest, busiest and happiest time of all the year. It was hard work gathering and husking the corn, but what fun we had! For days we girls thought of nothing but the fine dresses we should wear at the husking.
While the ears were ripening my sister and I went every morning to sit on our watch stage and sing to the corn. One evening we brought home with us a basketful of the green ears and were husking them by the fire. My father gathered up the husks and took them out of the lodge. I wondered why he did so.
“I fed the husks, daughter, to my pack horses,” he said, when he came back. “To-morrow I go hunting to get meat for the husking.” He had brought his hunting pony into the lodge, but he had penned his pack horses for the night under the corn stage.
My two mothers, I knew, were planning a big feast. “We have much corn to husk,” they said, “and we must have plenty of food, for we do not want our huskers to go away hungry.”
Small Ankle left us before daybreak. He returned the fourth day after, about noon, with two deer loaded on his pack horses. “One is a black-tail,” he told us when he came in the lodge, “a buck that I killed yesterday in some bad lands by the Little Missouri. He was hiding in a clump of trees. As I rode near, he winded me and ran out into the open. I checked my pony, and the buck stopped to look around. I fired, and he fell; but, when I got off my horse, the buck rose and tried to push me with his horns. I killed him with my knife.” A wounded black-tail often tried to fight off the hunters: a white-tail hardly ever did so.
The next morning we women rose early, and with our baskets hastened to the cornfield. All day we plucked the ripe ears, bearing them in our baskets to the center of the field, where we laid them in a long pile. That night my father and Red Blossom slept on the watchers’ stage, to see that no horse broke in and trampled our corn pile. There was not much danger of this. Around the field ran a kind of fence, of willows, enough to keep out the ponies.
The rest of us returned to the lodge to make ready for the feast the next day. Turtle fetched out three great bundles of dried buffalo meat and piled them on the puncheon bench with the freshly killed deer meat. Our three kettles were scoured and set by, ready to be taken to the field.
At nightfall Bear’s Tail went around the village to lodges of our relatives and friends, and invited the young men to come to our husking.
I was too excited that night to sleep much. Early in the morning my sister and I rose and went to the river for a dip in its cold waters. After a hasty breakfast I put on my best dress, of deer skin, with hoofs hanging like bangles at the edge of the skirt and three rows of costly elk teeth across the front. Cold Medicine helped me paint my face, and was careful to rub a little red ochre in the part of my hair.
The sun was just coming over the prairie when we started for the field. We had loaded our kettles and meat on two pack horses, and old Turtle led the way. My father and Red Blossom had risen early and eaten breakfast, and now had a brisk fire going. We put our kettles on, after filling them with water. In one we put dried, in another fresh, meat; the third kettle we filled with green corn, late planted for this purpose. The meat and corn were for our feast.
The sun was three hours high when the huskers came. They were about thirty in all, young men, except three or four crippled old warriors who wanted to feast. These were too old to work much, but my father made them welcome.
The huskers came into the field yelling and singing. We had, indeed, heard their yells long before we saw them. I think young men all sing and yell, just because they are young.
My sister and I were already seated at one side of the corn pile, and the other women joined us. The young men sat down on the opposite side, and the husking began.
I saw that Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing sat just opposite me. Next to him was a young man named Red Hand, with grass plumes in his hair. These meant that he had been in a war party and had been sent out to spy on the enemy. I saw Red Hand looking at me, and I was glad that I was wearing my elk teeth dress. “He is a young man,” I thought, “not a boy, like Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing.”
The huskers worked rapidly, stripping off the dry husks with their hands. The big fine ears they braided in strings, to save for seed. Smaller ears they tossed into a pile. Big as our corn pile was, it was husked in about four hours.
My mothers then served the feast. The huskers were hearty eaters; for, like all young men, they had good appetites; but we had a big feast of meat, and even they could not eat all. It was not polite to leave any of the food, and some had brought sharp sticks on which they skewered the meat they could not eat, to take home with them.
The feast over, the huskers went to another field, singing and yelling as they went.
We women had now to busy ourselves carrying in our corn.
We loaded our two pack horses with strings of braided ears, ten strings to a pony. The smaller ears we bore to the village in our baskets, to dry on our corn stage before threshing.
In midafternoon there were a few strings of corn still left, and I was laying them by for the next trip when I heard steps. I looked up and saw Red Hand coming, leading his pony.
Red Hand did not speak, but he laid my strings of corn on his pony and started for the village. “He wants to help me take home my corn,” I thought. A young man did thus for the girl he admired. “Red Hand is brave, and he owns a pony,” I said to myself; and I forgot all about Sacred-Red-Eagle-Wing.
My father returned with the pack horses just as Red Hand was starting off; and I was stooping to fill my basket, when suddenly there came a sound, poh-poh-poh, as of guns; then yells, and a woman screamed. Small Ankle sprang for his war pony, which he had left hobbled near the husking pile.
Our corn fields lay in a strip of flat land skirted by low foot hills; and now I saw, coming over the hills, a party of Sioux, thirty or more, mounted, and painted for war. At the edge of the hills they checked their ponies, and those who had guns began firing down into our gardens. Many of the Sioux were armed with bows and arrows.
On all sides arose outcries. My brave father dashed by with his ringing war whoop, ui, ui, ui;[22] and after him Red Hand, lashing his pony and yelling like mad. Red Hand had thrown away my strings of corn, but I was not thinking of my corn just then.
[22] ṳ ï (pronounced like ōō ēē, but quickly and sharply)
Women and children began streaming past our field to the village. Brave young men rode between them and our enemies, lest the Sioux dash down and cut off some straggler. Two lads, on swift ponies, galloped ahead to rouse the villagers.
Meanwhile my father and others were fighting off the Sioux from the shelter of some clumps of small trees that dotted the flat: Our enemies did not fight standing, but galloped and pranced their horses about on the hillside to spoil our aim.
Suddenly a Sioux warrior, in trailing eagle-feather bonnet, and mounted on a beautiful spotted pony, dashed down the hillside toward us, waving his bow over his head; and from our side I saw Red Hand, gun in hand, riding to meet him.
As they drew near one another the Sioux swerved, and an arrow, like a little snake, came curving through the air. Red Hand’s pony stumbled and fell, the shaft in its throat; but Red Hand, leaping to the ground, raised his gun and fired. I saw the Sioux drop his bow and ride back clinging desperately to his pony’s mane. Red Hand put his hand to his mouth and I heard his yi-yi-yi-yi-yah,[23] the yell that a warrior made when he had wounded an enemy.
[23] yĭ yĭ yĭ yĭ yäh´
On the side toward our village other cries now arose, for the warriors were coming to our help. The Sioux fled. Our men pursued them, and at nightfall came back with one scalp.
All that night we danced the scalp dance. A big fire was built. Men and women painted their faces black and sang glad songs. Old women cried a-la-la-la-la![24] Young men danced, yelled and boasted of their deeds. All said that Red Hand was a brave young man and would become a great warrior.
[24] ä lä lä lä lä´
The next day I was coming from the watering place with my kettle. Just ahead of me walked Waving Corn, a handsome girl two years older than I. Red Hand passed by; shyly I looked up, thinking to see him smile at me.
He was smiling at Waving Corn.
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER