We hoed but once, not very many weeds coming up to bother us afterwards. In my girlhood we were not troubled with mustard and thistles; these weeds have come in with white men.
In many families hoeing ended, I think, when the corn was about seven or eight inches high: but I remember when my mothers finished hoeing their big field at Like-a-fishhook village, the corn was about eighteen inches high, and the blossoms at the top of the plants were appearing.
A second hoeing began, it is true, when the corn silk appeared, but was accompanied by hilling, so that we looked upon it rather as a hilling time. Hilling was done to firm the plants against the wind and cover the roots from the sun. We hilled with earth, about four inches up around the roots of the corn.
Not a great many weeds were found in the garden at hilling time, unless the season had been wet; but weeds at this season are apt to have seeds, so that it was my habit to bear such weeds off the field, that the seeds might not fall and sprout the next season.
With the corn, the squashes and beans were also hilled; but this was an easier task. The bean hills, especially, were made small at the first, and hilling them up afterwards was not hard work. If beans were hilled too high the vines got beaten down into the mud by the rains and rotted.
The Watchers’ Stage
Our corn fields had many enemies. Magpies, and especially crows, pulled up much of the young corn, so that we had to replant many hills. Crows were fond of pulling up the green shoots when they were a half inch or an inch high. Spotted gophers would dig up the seed from the roots of young plants. When the corn had eared, and the grains were still soft, blackbirds and crows were destructive.
Any hills of young corn that the birds destroyed, I replanted if the season was not too late. If only a part of the plants in a hill had been destroyed, I did not disturb the living plants, but replanted only the destroyed ones. In the place of each missing plant, I dug a little hole with my hand, and dropped in a seed.
We made scarecrows[8] to frighten the crows. Two sticks were driven into the ground for legs; to these were bound two other sticks, like outstretched arms; on the top was fastened a ball of cast-away skins, or the like, for a head. An old buffalo robe was drawn over the figure and a belt tied around its middle, to make it look like a man. Such a scarecrow would keep the crows away for a few days but when they saw that the figure never moved from its place, they lost their fear and returned.
A platform, or stage, was often built in a garden, where the girls and young women of the household came to sit and sing as they watched that crows and other thieves did not destroy the ripening crop. We cared for our corn in those days as we would care for a child; for we Indian people loved our gardens, just as a mother loves her children; and we thought that our growing corn liked to hear us sing, just as children like to hear their mother sing to them.[9] Also, we did not want the birds to come and steal our corn. Horses, too, might break in and crop the plants, or boys might steal the green ears and go off and roast them.