There was a watchers’ stage in my mothers’ field, where my sister, Cold Medicine, and I sat and sang; and in the two weeks of the ripening season we were singing most of the time. We looked upon watching our field as a kind of lark. We liked to sing, and now and then between songs we stood up to see if horses had broken into the field or if any boys were about. Boys of nine or ten years of age were quite troublesome. They liked to steal the green ears to roast by a fire in the woods.
I think Cold Medicine and I were rather glad to catch a boy stealing our corn, especially if he was a clan cousin, for then we could call him all the bad names we wished. “You bad, bad boy,” we would cry. “You thief,—stealing from your own relatives! Nah, nah,—go away.” This was enough; no boy stayed after such a scolding.
Most of the songs we sang were love-boy songs, as we called them; but not all were. One that we younger girls were fond of singing—girls, that is, of about twelve years of age—was like this:
You bad boys, you are all alike!
Your bow is like a bent basket hoop;
Your arrows are fit only to shoot into the air;
You poor boys, you must run on the prairie barefoot, because you have no moccasins!
This song we sang to tease the boys who came to hunt birds in the near-by woods. Small boys went bird hunting nearly every day. The birds that a boy snared or shot he gave to his grandparents to roast in the lodge fire; for, with their well-worn teeth, old people could no longer chew our hard, dried buffalo meat.
Here is another song; but, that you may understand it, I will explain to you what eekupa[20] means. A girl loved by another girl as her own sister was called her eekupa. I think your word “chum,” as you explain it, has nearly the same meaning. This is the song: