THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
MARRIAGE
And so I grew up, a happy, contented Indian girl, obedient to my mothers, but loving them dearly. I learned to cook, dress skins, embroider, sew with awl and sinew, and cut and make moccasins, clothing and tent covers. There was always plenty of work to do, but I had time to rest, and to go to see my friends; and I was not given tasks beyond my strength. My father did the heavy lifting, if posts or beams were to be raised. “You are young, daughter,” he would say. “Take care you do not overstrain!” He was a kind man, and helped my mothers and me whenever we had hard work to do.
For my industry in dressing skins, my clan aunt, Sage, gave me a woman’s belt. It was as broad as my three fingers, and covered with blue beads. One end was made long, to hang down before me. Only a very industrious girl was given such a belt. She could not buy or make one. No relative could give her the belt; for a clan aunt, remember, was not a blood relative. To wear a woman’s belt was an honor. I was as proud of mine as a war leader of his first scalp.
I won other honors by my industry. For embroidering a robe for my father with porcupine quills I was given a brass ring, bought of the traders; and for embroidering a tent cover with gull quills dyed yellow and blue I was given a bracelet. There were few girls in the village who owned belt, ring and bracelet.
In these years of my girlhood my mothers were watchful of all that I did. We had big dances in the village, when men and women sang, drums beat loud, and young men, painted and feathered, danced and yelled to show their brave deeds. I did not go to these dances often, and, when I did, my mothers went with me. Ours was one of the better families of the tribe, and my mothers were very careful of me.
I was eighteen years old the Bent-Enemy-Killed winter; for we Hidatsas reckoned by winters, naming each for something that happened in it. An old man named Hanging Stone then lived in the village. He had a stepson named Magpie, a handsome young man and a good hunter.
One morning Hanging Stone came into our lodge. It was a little while after our morning meal, and I was putting away the wooden bowls that we used for dishes. The hollow buffalo hoofs hung on the door for bells, I remember, rattled clitter, clitter, clitter, as he raised and let fall the door. My father was sitting by the fire.
Hanging Stone walked up to my father, and laid his right hand on my father’s head. “I want you to believe what I say,” he cried. “I want my boy to live in your good family. I am poor, you are rich; but I want you to favor us and do as I ask.”