Even to-day, families on this reservation come to me to buy seed corn and seed beans. A handful of beans, enough for one planting, I sell for one calico—enough calico, that is, to make an Indian woman a dress, or about ten yards.
Threshing Corn
The Booth
The threshing season was always a busy one, for all the families of the village would be threshing their corn at the same time.
Corn was threshed in a booth, under the drying stage.
Figure 12
The figure has been redrawn from sketches by Goodbird. The original is a stage now standing on the reservation, but with mat of willows for floor; to this Goodbird added a threshing booth as he saw used by his grandmother when he was a boy. Goodbird’s sketches are closely followed, excepting that the floor of slabs is restored. The figure tallies in every respect with Buffalobird-woman’s description, and the model made by her for the American Museum of Natural History.
To make the booth, I began with the section at one end of the stage. As is shown in [figure 12], on the posts A and D, and B and C, were bound two poles, e and f, at about two feet below the stage floor; upon these were bound two other poles, g and h; the poles e, f, and h were bound outside of the posts that supported them.
A long raw hide thong was used for the corner ties. The first pole was raised in position and bound firmly to the post; and if a second pole was to be laid over the first—as was done at two of the corners—the thong was drawn up and made to bind it also to the post. We always kept a number of these raw hide thongs in the lodge against just such uses as this; they were strong, and served every purpose of ropes; we oiled them to keep them soft.