Upon the puncheons we now laid grass, quite filling the pit’s mouth, and even heaped, it might be, a foot high above the level of the ground; this we trampled down hard, well into the mouth of the pit.
Over this grass we fitted a second cover, cut as was the first from a buffalo bull’s hide; and upon this we heaped earth until the pit was filled level with the ground.
Lastly, we raked ashes and refuse dirt over the spot, to hide it from any enemy that might come prowling around in the winter, when the village was deserted.
I have said that puncheons, resting in a trench, were used to cover the mouth of a cache pit of smaller size. If the pit was of the larger size, I dug about two feet down in the neck or opening, a rectangular place on either side, with my knife. Puncheons were thrust down into one of these rectangular openings and drawn through into the other, covering the mouth of the pit; and as in the smaller pit, there were several main puncheons, with one or two smaller and shorter ones at either side. Grass was stuffed into the two openings, above the ends of the puncheons, to firm the latter. Above the puncheons, the mouth of the pit was filled in, as was that of the smaller pit, with grass, a circular skin cover, and earth.
The two rectangular openings which I dug with my knife in the neck of the larger pit, were, as will be noted, a little farther down than was the floor of the trench of the smaller pit. This was because the neck was longer in a pit of the larger size.
Cache Pits in Small Ankle’s Lodge
First Account
In diagram ([figure 30]), I have marked the positions of the cache pits we had in use in my father’s family, when I was a girl. Cache A was used for hard yellow shelled corn; but the braids piled against the wall of the pit were of white corn; so also of B and C. In cache D were stored dried boiled corn and strings of dried squash.
