Traditions of the Arikara

by George A. Dorsey

One time when the man was away she took the sinews to the old woman and gave them to her. The old woman was glad. She said: “Now go to your home, and remain there. I am to make a string, and when it is complete I shall let you know, so that you then can go to your people.” The girl went home and stayed, but once in a while she visited the old woman’s dwelling place, and she saw the piles of string that the woman was making. As soon as the old woman had completed the string she told the girl, and said that the girl must come to her place when her husband was away. The young girl had also made a long string of sinew, but it was separate from the string that the old woman had made. This she carried herself when she went to the old woman’s place.

They now went to the valley, and there dug a hole, large enough for her with her boy on her back to go through. After this was done she went to her home, put the child upon her back, covered it with her robe, then tied the robe about her breast. She went to the place. The old woman had brought a large-sized stick, which was laid across the hole, and the sinew was tied to the pole. The girl tied the sinew about her body and covered her hands with a part of her robe. She slipped down, down, down the string and after a time she found herself at the end of the string. The earth was still far away. She took her own string and tied it to the string that she was tied to. She fastened herself to the other string after untying herself from the main string, and slid down upon it. She slid down until she had reached the end of the string, and she was at the height of the highest tree from the ground. She saw that she could not get down, so she made a loop and put her foot in it so that she stood upon the string, and there she hung.

When the woman’s husband came home he found her missing. He went out to hunt for her. After a time he came to the place where the hole was, and there he saw the woman hanging on the string. He went and took up a little stone, about the size of his thumb. He took this to the place where the hole was dug. He placed the stone on the string, then said, “Now I want you to slide down on the string and hit the woman upon the head and kill her, but do not harm my boy.” As he let go of the stone a sound was heard like that of thunder. The stone slipped down upon the string and struck the woman on the top of the head and killed her. As the woman fell down towards the earth the boy slipped out from the robe upon the back of the woman and fell on the ground, but was not hurt.

The boy stayed around where the woman was lying, for he was now about five or six years old. He would go off from his mother during the day and in the evening he would come back, crawl under the robe, and nurse at his mother’s breast. He did this for many days. At last the boy had to leave her, so he went on west from where his mother lay. He came to a patch of squash and also to a cornfield. This he went through, taking corn from the stalks and eating it raw. He returned to his mother and sat there.

In the morning, the owner of the field, who was an old woman, went into her field, and there she saw a child’s footprints. She was so glad to see the footprints that she went home and made a small bow and some arrows. She also made a small shinny ball, and a stick. The old woman thought if this child was a girl it would choose the shinny ball and stick, and if it was a boy it would choose the bow and arrows. In this way she thought she could tell whether the child was a boy or a girl. The old woman made these things, and took them into the field and left them there.

The next day, the boy went back into the field. There he saw these things upon the ground. When he saw the bow and arrows he jumped at them and picked them up. When he had picked them up he went through the squash field and began to shoot at the squash. The old woman came upon the boy and caught him. She called him her grandson, and told him that she had been waiting for him for a long time. She took the boy home.

The boy was satisfied to be with his grandmother. His grandmother, before she went into the field, used to roast a lot of corn. Then she scattered this corn in her lodge, then would go out hallooing, and say, “Blackbirds, come and eat of this corn that I have prepared for you.” The blackbirds would come in flocks and enter the lodge, and there they would eat the corn that she had scattered over the ground in the lodge. Then the old woman would go into her field and would leave the boy at home. Sometimes the boy went out to hunt rabbits and little birds. In the evening, when the old woman came home from the field, she used to take a lot of corn and put it in her corn mortar and pound it. She made mush out of the pounded corn. There was a curtain of buffalo hide in the lodge. The old woman, after she had made the mush would place a bowl of it behind the buffalo hide curtain. Why she did this the boy did not know.

One day when the old woman had gone out to feed the blackbirds, the boy began to roast some corn. After he had got a big pile roasted he went out and yelled, and said, “Come, blackbirds, I have prepared for you the corn that my grandmother told me to prepare; come and eat!” The blackbirds came in flocks into the lodge. The boy went out and stopped the smokehole with a piece of buffalo hide, then went into the entrance and stopped up the passageway with a dry buffalo hide, so that the birds could not go out. The boy then picked up a club and said: “Blackbirds, I am going to kill you all, for you have been eating my grandmother’s corn all this time. You shall not eat my grandmother’s corn any more.” So the boy began to run around in the lodge after the birds, hitting them with the club and killing them. He killed all of them, and placed them in a pile.

When the grandmother came home the boy said, “Grandmother, I have killed all these blackbirds that have been eating your corn all this time; they shall not eat your corn any more.” The old woman appeared glad. She told the boy that he had done right in killing the birds. The boy said, “You may cook the blackbirds, a few at a time.” The old woman really was not glad, for these blackbirds guarded her field for her. She owned these blackbirds. She placed them upon her robe and took them out. She brought them to life again, and said: “My blackbirds, fly away.” The old woman returned to the lodge.