We carried no squash seeds with us to our winter village. For our spring planting we depended on the seed we had left stored in the cache in our summer lodge, in my father’s family.
The seeds of a ripe squash are swelled and plump in the center; those of a four-days-old squash are flat. We could tell in this way if squash seeds were ripe.
Squashes, Present Seed
I grew our native squashes in my son Goodbird’s garden until four years ago. I stopped cultivating them because my son’s family did not seem to care to eat them. Last year a squash vine came up wild in my son’s garden. The squashes that grew on it were of two colors. I saved some of the seed and planted them this year. It is from their yield that I have given you seed.
As I have said, squashes were of different colors and varied a good deal in shape; yet we recognized but one strain of seed. “We plant but one kind of seed,” we said, “and all colors and shapes grow from it, dark, white, purple, round, elongated.”
Squash Dolls
There is one other thing I will tell before we forsake the subject of squashes. Little girls of ten or eleven years of age used to make dolls of squashes.
When the squashes were brought in from the field, the little girls would go to the pile and pick out squashes that were proper for dolls. I have done so, myself. We used to pick out the long ones that were parti-colored; squashes whose tops were white or yellow and the bottoms of some other color. We put no decorations on these squashes that we had for dolls. Each little girl carried her squash about in her arms and sang for it as for a babe. Often she carried it on her back, in her calf skin robe.