Ground plan of earth lodge here accompanies that of stage to show relative positions of the two structures. The stage always stood, as here, directly before the lodge entrance. The figures are drawn to scale.
The corn pushed down for one threshing, made a pile running the width of the booth, and about forty inches wide and twenty inches high. When the pile was threshed one of the women went up and shoved down another pile. The corn in one section was threshed in about three such piles.
Sometimes, if we worked hard and had plenty of help, we threshed one whole section in one day; but the beating, beating, beating of the corn was hard work, and we more often stopped when wearied and rested until the next day. I have already said that we often spent the next day at the lighter work of drying and winnowing.
When the corn in section A was all threshed, the booth was moved over under the floor of section B, enclosing fgno; and again a plank was taken up to let down the corn. Now this plank was always taken up above the side of the booth opposite the door; and the door was always placed down wind. Thus, if the wind was from the north, the door would be placed on the south side of the booth, and the plank was taken up on the north side, just within the booth. Corn was always threshed in the booth on the side opposite the door.
Sections A and B of my mothers’ stage, as shown in diagram ([figure 17]) contained only yellow corn. Section C, or a part of it, contained white corn. Braided strings of corn were also hung all around the railing above, but these were not to be threshed.
Section B having been threshed, the booth was removed to section C, enclosing hiqp. I have said that this section had white corn. Now this white corn was piled toward the south end of the stage; and between it and the yellow corn was left a narrow vacant place on the floor. Above this vacant place, meat was often dried; but this meat was removed when we were ready to thresh.
Placing the booth to enclose hiqp, directly under the vacant place, made it easy for us to raise a plank here to push down the white corn. If we had placed the booth on the south end of this section, we should have had to dig into the corn piled here, in order to raise a plank.
Our family’s threshing lasted about five days in a year of good yield; if the year was a poor one, threshing lasted only two or three days.
Threshing Braided Corn
The strings of braided corn were stored in the cache pit (which I will describe later) in the whole ear. If, during the winter, or the following spring, I wanted to thresh a string of braided corn, I put the whole string into a skin sack; and this sack I beat and shook, turning it over and around until all the grain had fallen off the cobs. The sack was then emptied.