Hoe handles were made of cottonwood or some other light wood.
Rakes
We Hidatsas began our tilling season with the rake.
We used two kinds,[21] both of native make; one was made of a black-tailed deer horn ([figure 5, page 14]), the other was of wood ([figure 4, page 14]).
Of the two, we thought the horn rake the better, because it did not grow worms, as we said. Worms often appear in a garden and do much damage. It is a tradition with us that worms are afraid of horn; and we believed if we used black-tailed deer horn rakes, not many worms would be found in our fields that season.
We believed wooden rakes caused worms in the corn. These worms, we thought, came out of the wood in the rakes; just how this was, we did not know.
However, horn rakes were heavy and rather hard to make; and for this reason, the handier and more easily made wooden rakes were more commonly used.
All this that I tell you of our tools and fields is our own lore. White men taught us none of it. All that I have told you, we Indians knew since the world began.
Figure 35