Figure 40
Down in the bottoms along the Missouri near Independence school house are the gardens—now abandoned—used by the neighboring families when they first came to this part of the reservation, about 1886.
The fields are plainly marked in the underbrush and trees from the fact that they are relatively open. Goodbird accompanied me to the several locations and I made maps of the fields, which I include in [figure 40]. While not accurately surveyed—I had to pace off the distances—the fields are fairly accurately represented by the maps.
[Figure 40], I, is a diagram in vertical section of the land surface in which the gardens lie. Toward the right is seen the basin of the Missouri river.
At the extreme left is a bit of the prairie that abuts the foothills. Between are two level terraces, one eighty yards, the other and lower, one hundred and seventy-five yards in width. Four of the gardens lie in the eighty-yard terrace; field A, of Small Ankle; B of Big Foot Bull; E of Crow’s Breast, and H, a small bit of ground used by the Small Ankle family for a squash garden. Gardens C of Small Horn; D of Leggings; F of Crow’s Breast; and G of Cedar Woman, lie in the lower and wider terrace.
With one exception the fields are called by the names of the male heads of the families, a custom that probably began at the time allotments were first made.
The relative positions of the fields are not as shown in the figure, except of A and B, the gardens of Small Ankle and Big Foot Bull. These are separated by a wagon road that descends to the lower terrace, as indicated on the map.
Doubtless the two terraces have been made by over-flow waters. It is likely that both are still subject to overflow at long intervals, especially the lower. The soil is light and sandy, but black and rich. The overflow of the river would seem to suggest that the land would be fertilized by silt deposited upon it; but my Indian informants seem to attach no significance to this. Fields were located near the Missouri “because the soil there is soft and easily worked, and does not become dry and burn up the crops.”
Gilbert L. Wilson.