In these years, my life outside the school room was wholly Indian. We Hidatsa children knew nothing of base ball, or one hole cat, or other white children’s games, but we had many Indian games that we played. Some of these games I think better than those now played on our reservation.
In March and early April, we boys played the hoop game. A level place, bare of snow, was found, and the boys divided into two sides, about thirty yards apart. Small hoops, covered with a lacing of thongs, were rolled forward, and were caught by those of the opposite side on sticks, thrust or darted through the lacings. A hoop so caught, was sent hurtling through the air, the object being to hit some one of the opposing players.
Hoop and Stick of the Hoop Game.
The game was played but a few weeks, for as soon as the ice broke on the Missouri, we boys went to the high bank of the river, and hurled our hoops into the current. We were told, and really believed, that they became dead buffaloes as soon as they had passed out of sight, beyond the next point of land. Such buffaloes, drowned in the thin ice of autumn and frozen in, came floating down the river in large numbers at the spring break-up. The carcasses were always fat, and the frozen flesh was sweet and tender.
After the first thunder in spring, we played u-a-ki-he-ke, or throw stick. Willow rods were cut, peeled, and dried, and then stained red, with ochre, or a bright green, with grass. These rods, darted against the ground, rebounded to a great distance. The player won whose rod went farthest. U-a-ki-he-ke is still played on the reservation.
In June, when the rising waters have softened the river’s clay banks, we fought sham battles. Each boy cut a willow withe, as long as a buggy whip, and on the smaller end squeezed a lump of wet clay. With the withe as a sling, he could throw the clay ball to an astonishing distance. Hidatsa and Mandan boys often fought against one another, using these clay balls as missiles.
War Bonnet (On Lodge Post).
It was exciting play, for we fought like armies, each side trying to force the other’s position; when an attack was made, a storm of mud balls would come whizzing through the air like bullets. A hit on the bare flesh stung like a real wound. Once one of my playmates was hit in the eye, and badly hurt. I was just over fourteen, when my parents let me join in the grass dance, or war dance, as the whites call it. The other dancers made me an officer, and my father was so pleased, that he hung up a fine eagle’s feather war bonnet in our lodge. “If enemies come against us,” he said, “my son shall go out to fight wearing this war bonnet!”