Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation

by Waheenee; Gilbert Livingstone Wilson

The strings filled with dried squash slices, were now taken into the lodge. Between the right front main post of the lodge and the circle of outer posts and near the puncheon fire screen at the place it bent in toward the wall, a stage had been built. Two forked posts, about as high as my head, supported a pole ten or twelve feet long; and over this pole the strings of squash were looped, care being taken that they hung at a height to let the dogs run under without touching and contaminating the squash. I speak of the right front main post; I use right and left in the Indian sense, which assumes that an earth lodge faces the doorway; the door indeed is the lodge’s mouth.

On sunny days these strings were taken outside. Several of the long poles, or drying rods, already described, were brought down from the top of the stage and lashed to the outside of the stage posts on either side. If the harvest was a good one, a row of these rods might extend the whole length of either side of the stage, and even around the ends. On the railing thus made the squash strings were taken out and hung on a fair day; in the morning, on the east side; in the afternoon, on the west side of the stage.

On wet days, the squash strings were left inside the lodge; and if the rain was falling heavily, a tent skin, or scraped rawhides, dried and ready to tan, were thrown over them to protect from dampness. The air in the lodge was damp on a rainy day; and sometimes the roof leaked.

When the strings of squash were thought to be thoroughly dried, they were ready for storing. A portion was packed in parfleche bags, to be taken to the winter lodge, or to be used for food on journeys. The rest was stored away in a cache pit, covered with loose corn.

Several seasons, as I recollect, the women of my father’s family were a month harvesting and drying their squashes.

Squash Blossoms

Besides our squashes, we also gathered squash blossoms, three to five basketfuls at a picking; and they were a recognized part of our squash harvest.

On every squash vine are blossoms of two kinds; one kind bears a squash, but the other never bears any fruit, for it grows, as we Indians say, at the wrong place among the leaves. We Indians knew this, and gathered only these barren blossoms; if we did not they dried up anyway and became a dead loss, so we always gathered them.

These blossoms we picked in early morning while they were fresh, but not if rain had fallen in the night, as the rain splashed dirt and sand into the blossoms, making them unfit for food.

The blossoms we took home in baskets. On the prairie there is a kind of grass which we Indians call “antelope hair.” We chose a place where this grass grew thick and was two or three inches high, to dry the blossoms on. They were taken out of the basket one by one; the green calyx leaves were stripped off and the blossom was pinched flat, opened, and spread on the grass, with the inside of the blossom upward, thus exposing it to the sun and air. A second blossom was split on one side, opened, and laid upon the first, upon the petal end, so that the thicker, bulbous part of the first—the part indeed that had been pinched flat—remained exposed to dry. This was continued until quite a space on the grass was covered with the blossoms.