Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies

by Melvin R. Gilmore

Through all the extensive range of Falcata comosa, the ground-bean, it was sought by the people of the various Indian tribes to add to their food supply. The people said they did not take away all the beans from the voles as it would be wicked to loot the animals’ food stores and leave the animals to starve after they had worked to gather them. But they would take a part of the store, in a manner making themselves beggars to the little animals. The Omahas have a saying that “The bean mouse is a very industrious fellow, he even helps human beings.”

But in all accounts I have had from the people of the Dakota nation the women have always said that they never took away any beans from the voles without making some payment in kind. They said it would be wicked and unjust to take the beans from the animals and give nothing in return. So they said they always put back some corn, some suet, or some other food material in exchange for the beans they took out. In that way they said both they and the little animals obtained a variety in their food supply. They said they thought it very wrong to deprive the animals of their store without such payment, but that it was fair if they gave a fair exchange.

The people of the Dakota nation speak of the wood-mice or voles by the designation of “Hintunka people.” In the Dakota theory of the universe they personify the maternal power and spirit by the name Hunka. Hunka is the mystic All-Mother in nature, the mother of all living beings, plant or animal, which of course includes mankind. For they do not think of mankind as being apart from nature and the community of life in the world.

The Dakotas have a moral story which is told as follows:

A certain woman went and plundered the store-house of some Hintunka people. She robbed them of their entire food supply without even giving them anything at all in return. The next night this woman who had robbed the Hintunka people of all their food supply heard a woman down in the woods crying and saying “Oh, what will my poor children do?” It was the voice of one of the Hintunka women crying over her hungry children.

The same night the woman who had done the wrong had a dream. In her dreams Hunka appeared to her and said “You should not have taken the food from the Hintunka people. Take back the food to them, or else your own children shall cry for food.”

The next morning the woman told her husband what Hunka had said to her. Her husband said “You would better do as Hunka tells you to do.” But the woman was hard-hearted and perverse and would not restore to the Hintunka people the food of which she had robbed them, neither would she give them anything in exchange.

A short time after this a great prairie fire came, driven by a strong wind, and swept over the place where this unjust woman and her family were camping. The fire burned up her tipi and everything it contained, and they barely escaped with their lives. They had no food nor shelter and they had to wander on the prairie destitute.

The bean-mouse and its works are regarded with respect, admiration and reverence by the people of the various Indian tribes which benefit by its labor. They feel very resentful towards any seeming tendency to meddle unwarrantedly with its winter store-houses. Upon hearing of the desire of a white man to make a photograph of such a store-house an old man of the Teton-Dakota on the Standing Rock Reservation expressed bitter resentment and declared himself ready to fight to prevent such a thing from being done. He said “We have enough misfortune already, counting the war and the epidemic of influenza, without inviting further disaster by such sacrilege.”

In the month of November, after the bean mice have harvested their beans and laid them up in their store-houses for the winter, the people often go out alone and sit near some such store-house in silent meditation on the ways of Providence. At that time of the year the missionaries and priests are often pained and puzzled because of the absence of some of their church members from Sunday service or from mass on Sunday morning. They do not know, and likely would not appreciate or understand the feeling which has caused these people to go out at such a time, not to the church but out to the quiet place under the open heaven where they sit upon the lap of Mother Earth to reverently and thankfully meditate upon the mysteries of nature and the wonderful provisions of God in nature.