My grandmother laughed. “You should put only half the ear on the spit,” she said. “That is the way the Mandans did when they first gave us corn.”
I dropped the spit and, forgetting the burning ear, asked eagerly, “How did the Mandans give us corn, grandmother? Tell me the story.”
Turtle picked up the spit and raked the burning ear from the ashes. “I have told you that the gods gave us corn to eat, not to waste,” she said. “Some of the kernels on this cob are well parched.” And she shelled off a handful and put one of the hot kernels in her mouth.
“I will tell you the story,” she continued. “I had it from my mother when I was a little girl like you.
“In the beginning, our Hidatsa people lived under the waters of Devils Lake. They had earth lodges and lived much as we live now. One day some hunters found the root of a grapevine growing down from the lake overhead. They climbed the vine and found themselves on this earth. Others climbed the vine until half the tribe had escaped; but, when a fat woman tried to climb it, the vine broke, leaving the rest of the tribe under the lake.
“Those who had safely climbed the vine, built villages of earth lodges. They lived by hunting; and some very old men say that they also planted small fields in ground beans and wild potatoes. As yet the Hidatsas knew nothing of corn or squashes.
“One day, a war party that had wandered west to the Missouri river saw on the other side a village of earth lodges like their own. It was a village of the Mandans. Neither they nor the Hidatsas would cross over, each party fearing the other might be enemies.
“It was in the fall of the year, and the Missouri was running low, so that an arrow could be shot from shore to shore. The Mandans parched some ears of ripe corn with the grain on the cob. These ears they broke in pieces, stuck the pieces on the points of arrows and shot them across the river. ‘Eat!’ they called. The word for ‘eat’ is the same in both the Hidatsa and the Mandan languages.
“The Hidatsas ate of the parched corn. They returned to their village and said, ‘We have found a people on a great river, to the west. They have a strange kind of grain. We ate of it and found it good.’