The Mandans and Hidatsas have much intermarried. By custom children speak usually the language of their mother, but understand perfectly the dialect of either tribe.
In 1877 Washington Matthews, for several years government physician to the Fort Berthold Reservation Indians, published a short description of Hidatsa-Mandan culture and a grammar and vocabulary of the Hidatsa language.[1] More extensive notes intended by him for publication were destroyed by fire.
In 1902 the writer was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian church of Mandan, North Dakota. In ill health, he was advised by his physician to purchase pony and gun and seek the open; but spade and pick plied among the old Indian sites in the vicinity proved more interesting. A considerable collection of archaeological objects was accumulated, a part of which now rests in the shelves of the Minnesota Historical Society; the rest will shortly be placed in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History.
In 1906 the writer and his brother, Frederick N. Wilson, an artist, and E. R. Steinbrueck drove by wagon from Mandan to Independence, Fort Berthold reservation. The trip was made to obtain sketches for illustrating a volume of stories, since published.[2] At Independence the party made the acquaintance of Edward Goodbird, his mother Maxi´diwiac, and the latter’s brother Wolf Chief. A friendship was thus begun which has been of the greatest value to the writer of this paper.
A year later Mr. George G. Heye sent the writer to Fort Berthold reservation to collect objects of Mandan-Hidatsa culture. Among those that were obtained was a rare old medicine shrine. Description of this shrine and Wolf Chief’s story of its origin have been published.[3]
In 1908 the writer and his brother, both now resident in Minneapolis, were sent by Dr. Clark Wissler, curator of anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, to begin cultural studies among the Hidatsas. This work, generously supported by the Museum, has been continued by the writer each succeeding summer. His reports, preparations to edit which are now being made, will appear in the Museum’s publications.
In February, 1910, the writer was admitted as a student in the Graduate School, University of Minnesota, majoring in Anthropology. At suggestion of his adviser, Dr. Albert E. Jenks, and with permission of Dr. Wissler, he chose for his thesis subject, Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation. It was the adviser’s opinion that such a study held promise of more than usual interest. Most of the tribes in the eastern area of what is now the United States practiced agriculture. It is well known that maize, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes, beans, sweet potatoes, cotton, tobacco, and other familiar plants were cultivated by Indians centuries before Columbus. Early white settlers learned the value of the new food plants, but have left us meager accounts of the native methods of tillage; and the Indians, driven from the fields of their fathers, became roving hunters; or adopting iron tools, forgot their primitive implements and methods. The Hidatsas and Mandans, shut in their stockaded villages on the Missouri by the hostile Sioux, were not able to abandon their fields if they would. Living quite out of the main lines of railroad traffic, they remained isolated and with culture almost unchanged until about 1885, when their village at Fort Berthold was broken up. It seemed probable that a carefully prepared account of Hidatsa agriculture might very nearly describe the agriculture practiced by our northern tribes in pre-Columbian days. It was hoped that this thesis might be such an account.
But the writer is a student of anthropology; and his interest in the preparation of his thesis could not be that of an agriculturist. The question arose at the beginning of his labors, Shall the materials of this thesis be presented as a study merely in primitive agriculture, or as a phase of material culture interpreting something of the inner life, of the soul, of an Indian? It is the latter aim that the writer endeavors to accomplish.
But again came up a question, By what plan may this best be done? The more usual way would be to collect exhaustively facts from available informants; sift from them those facts that are typical and representative; and present these, properly grouped, with the collector’s interpretation of them. But for his purpose and aim, it has seemed to the writer that the type choice should be human; that is, instead of seeking typical facts from multiple sources, he should rather seek a typical informant, a representative agriculturist—presumably a woman—of the Indian group to be studied, and let the informant interpret her agricultural experiences in her own way. We might thus expect to learn how much one Indian woman knew of agriculture; what she did as an agriculturist and what were her motives for doing; and what proportion of her thought and labor were given to her fields.
After consulting both Indians and whites resident on the reservation, the writer chose for typical or representative informant, his interpreter’s mother, Maxi´diwiac.