Selling to the Sioux
We used to sell a good deal of tobacco to the Sioux. They called it Pana´nitachani, or Ree’s tobacco.
A bunch six or seven inches in diameter, bound together, we sold for one tanned hide.
Size of Tobacco Garden
My father’s tobacco garden, when I was a little girl, was somewhat larger than this room; and that, as you measure it, is twenty-one by eighteen feet. I have seen other tobacco gardens planted by old men that measured somewhat larger; but this was about the average size.
Customs
If any one went into a tobacco garden and took tobacco without notifying the owner, we said that his hair would fall out; and if any one in the village began to lose his hair, and it kept coming out when he brushed it, we would laugh and say, “Hey, hey, you man! You have been stealing tobacco!”
What? You say you got this tobacco out of Wolf Chief’s garden without asking? (laughing heartily.) Then be sure your hair will fall out when you comb it. Just watch, and see if it doesn’t!
I have said that my father softened the soil of his tobacco garden with a hoe. After the plants began to grow, the hoe was not used, either for cutting the weeds or for hilling up the plants. I have said that the weak plants were culled out by hand, and that the strong plants were hilled up with a buffalo rib.