[2] Wē´ äh tēē
I remember nothing of our life at the Five Villages; but my great-grandmother, White Corn, told me something of it. I used to creep into her bed when the nights were cold and beg for stories.
“The Mandans lived in two of the villages, the Hidatsas in three,” she said. “Around each village, excepting on the side that fronted the river, ran a fence of posts, with spaces between for shooting arrows. In front of the row of posts was a deep ditch.
“We had corn aplenty and buffalo meat to eat in the Five Villages, and there were old people and little children in every lodge. Then smallpox came. More than half of my tribe died in the smallpox winter. Of the Mandans only a few families were left alive. All the old people and little children died.”
I was sad when I heard this story. “Did any of your family die, grandmother?” I asked.
“Yes, my husband, Yellow Elk, died. So many were the dead that there was no time to put up burial scaffolds; so his clan fathers bore Yellow Elk to the burying ground and laid him on the grass with logs over him to keep off the wolves.
“That night the villagers heard a voice calling to them from the burying ground. ‘A-ha-hey![3] I have waked up. Come for me.’
[3] Ä hä he̱y´
“‘It is a ghost,’ the villagers cried; and they feared to go.