My father sat with his cronies at the right of the fireplace, at our feast. We women ate apart, for men and women do not sit together at an Indian feast. I heard my father talking with his friend, Lean Wolf: “Every spring, when I was young, we fired the prairie grass around the Five Villages. Green grass then sprang up; buffaloes came to graze on it, and we killed many.”
“Those were good days,” said Lean Wolf. “There were many buffaloes then.”
“It is so,” said my father. “It is now seven years since a herd was seen near our village. White men’s guns have driven them away. And each year we kill fewer deer.”
“I have heard that some Sioux families starved last winter,” said Lean Wolf.
“They starved, because they are hunters and raise no corn,” said my father. “We Hidatsas must plant more corn, or we shall starve; and we must learn to raise white men’s wheat and potatoes.” Small Ankle was a progressive old man.
One morning, not long after our feast, Red Blossom came in from the woods with news that the wild gooseberry vines were in leaf. This was a sign that corn planting time was come, and we women began to make ready our corn seed and sharpen our hoes.
I had been thinking of my father’s words to Lean Wolf. “They are wise words,” I told my mothers. “We should widen our fields, and plant more corn.” While they busied themselves with planting, I worked with my hoe around the edges of our two fields, breaking new ground.
Having thus more ground to work over, my mothers planted for more than a month, or well into June. The last week of our planting, Red Blossom soaked her corn seed in tepid water. “It will make the seed sprout earlier,” she said, “so that the ears will ripen before frost comes.”
Our fall harvest was good. My two mothers and I were more than a week threshing and winnowing our corn; but some families, less wise than ours, had not increased their planting, and had none too much grain to lay by for winter. This troubled our chief men. “The summer’s hunt has been poor,” they said. “If our winter’s hunting is not better, we shall be hungry before harvest comes again.”
They had twice called a council to talk of the matter, when scouts brought word that buffaloes had been seen. “Big herds have come down into the Yellowstone country,” they said. The Black Mouths thought we should make our winter camp there, in tepees; and they went about choosing a winter chief.