Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation

by Waheenee; Gilbert Livingstone Wilson

We filled the pit about up to the point marked B in the diagram ([figure 25]), the last two feet being filled with shelled corn only; thus the last string of squash put in the cache pit should be covered with at least two feet of loose corn.

Over this shelled corn, at B in the diagram, we snugly fitted a circular cover, cut from the thick skin of the flank of a buffalo bull. A bull’s hide is thicker than a buffalo cow’s, and for this reason was seldom made into a robe; but there were purposes for which a bull’s hide was preferred. Thus the heavy thick-haired parts of a bull’s hide were much used for making saddle skins, because the heavy wool protected the horse’s back; and the short haired parts were much used for making cache pit covers. Using these parts of the hide for covers, we did not have to bother to scrape off the hair, which in summer is very short on a buffalo’s flanks. The skin cover was laid hair side up, so that the flesh side would come next to the loose corn.

On this hide cover my mother and I laid grass,[19] of the same kind as used for lining the cache pit wall.

Figure 29

Redrawn from sketch by Goodbird.

The Puncheon Cover

Upon this grass, if the pit was one of the smaller ones, we laid puncheons; and these puncheons, as I have said, rested in a trench.

The puncheons, split from small logs, were laid in the trench flat side down, so that they would not rock. There were about five main planks, or puncheons, the middle one being the heaviest, the better to sustain the weight of any horse that might happen to walk over the cache pit’s mouth. On either side of these main puncheons were two shorter ones, laid to cover the small area of the pit’s mouth not covered by the main puncheons.

[Figure 29] by Goodbird, drawn from the small model I made for you in Wolf Chief’s yard, will explain this. The puncheons shown in the figure exactly fit the trench; and their circumscribed outline represents also the shape of the trench. The dotted circle represents the pit’s mouth, now hidden by the over-lying puncheons.