Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation

by Waheenee; Gilbert Livingstone Wilson

When enough corn was husked to fill one of these kettles, I gathered up the ears and dropped them in the boiling water. I watched the corn carefully, and when it was about half cooked, I lifted the ears out with a mountain sheep horn spoon and laid them on a pile of husks.

Figure 11

When all the corn was cooked, I loaded the ears in my basket and bore them out upon the drying stage, where I laid them in rows, side by side, upon the stage floor. There I left them to dry over night.

The work of bringing in the five basketfuls of corn from the field and boiling the ears took all day, until evening.

In the morning the corn was brought into the lodge again. A skin tent cover had been spread on the floor and the half boiled ears were laid on it, in a pile. I now sat on the floor, as an Indian woman sits, with ankles to the right, and with the edge of the tent cover drawn over my knees, I took an ear of the half boiled corn in my left hand, holding it with the greater end toward me. I had a small, pointed stick; and this I ran, point forward, down between two rows of kernels, thus loosening the grains. The right hand row of the two rows of loosened kernels I now shelled off with my right thumb. I then shelled off all the other rows of kernels, one row at a time, working toward the left, and rolling the cob over toward the right as I did so.

There was another way of shelling half boiled corn. As before, I would run a sharpened stick down two rows of kernels, loosening the grains; and I would then shell them off with smart, quick strokes of a mussel shell held in my right hand. We still shell half boiled corn in this way, using large spoons instead of shells. There were very few metal spoons in use in my tribe when I was a girl; mussel shells were used instead for most purposes.

If while I was shelling the corn, a girl or woman came into the lodge to visit, she would sit down and lend a hand while we chatted; thus the shelling was soon done.

The shelling finished, I took an old tent cover and spread it on the floor of the drying stage outside. On this cover I spread the shelled corn to dry, carrying it up on the stage in my basket.