Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation

by Waheenee; Gilbert Livingstone Wilson

Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.

I made several such drying places, as the need required; and on them I put all the bean vines to dry.

At the end of about three days, when the vines were dry I took out into the field half of an old tent cover and laid it on the ground in an open space made by clearing away the corn stalks. This tent cover, so laid, was to be my threshing floor.

We never laid this tent cover at the edge of the field on the grass, because in threshing the vines, some of the beans would fly up and fall outside the tent cover, on the ground. We always picked these stray beans up carefully, after threshing. This could not be done if we threshed on the grass.

My threshing floor ready, I took up some of the dry vines and laid them on the tent cover in a heap, about three feet high. I got upon this heap with my moccasined feet and smartly trampled it, now and then standing on one foot, while I shuffled and scraped the other over the dry vines; this was done to shake the beans loose from their pods.

When the vines were pretty well trampled I pushed them over two or three feet to one side of the tent cover; and having fetched fresh vines, I made another heap about three feet high, which also I trampled and pushed aside. When I had trampled three or four heaps in this manner I was ready to beat them.

We preferred to tread out our beans thus, because beating them with a stick made the seeds fly out in all directions upon the ground; when the vines were trampled, this would not happen. However, after the treading was over, there were always a few unopened pods still clinging to the vines; and to free the beans from these pods, we beat the vines at the end of every three or four treadings.

This beating I did with a stick, about the size of the stick used as a flail in threshing corn.

I always threshed my beans on a windy day if possible, so that I might winnow them immediately after the threshing. If the wind died down, I covered over the threshed beans and waited until the wind came up again. A small carrying basket or a wooden bowl, was used to winnow with.

After the beans were winnowed, they were dried one more day, either on a tent cover in the garden, or at home on a skin placed on the ground near the drying stage. At the end of this day’s drying, they were ready to be packed in sacks.