Every farmer’s lad should put away some ears of ripened sweet corn in the fall, to parch of a winter’s evening. Sweet corn was raised by the Hidatsas and Mandans for parching only.
Page 38, l. 21: “Ground beans,” or hog peanut; amphicarpa falcata. These beans, like peanuts, are borne under ground.
Page 38, l. 22: “Wild potatoes,” or Jerusalem artichoke. Roots of helianthus tuberosus, a plant of the sunflower family.
Page 41, l. 25: “Who had been a black bear.” Tradition has it that the art and mysteries of trapping eagles were taught the Hidatsas by the black bears. An eagle hunters’ camp was conducted as a kind of symbolic play, the hunters acting the ceremonies of the delivery to the Indians of the eagle-hunt mysteries.
Page 44, l. 17: “Earth lodges well-built and roomy.” The earth lodge of the Mandans and Hidatsas was the highest example of the building art among our plains tribes. Some of these lodges were quite large, having a height of eighteen feet or more, and a floor diameter exceeding sixty feet. Usually two or more families of relatives inhabited the same lodge.
An earth lodge had four large central posts and beams, supporting the roof; twelve surrounding posts and beams, supporting the eaves; and a hundred rafters. The roof was covered with a matting of willows over which was laid dry grass and a heavy coating of earth.
An earth lodge lasted but about ten years, when it was abandoned or rebuilt. The labor of building and repairing these imposing structures, especially in days when iron tools were unknown and posts and beams had to be burned to proper lengths, must have been severe.
When the author first visited Fort Berthold reservation in 1906, there were eight earth lodges still standing; in 1918 there were two.
Page 47, l. 18: “An earthen pot.” The potter’s craft was practiced professionally by certain women who had purchased the secrets of the art. The craft was an important one, as much of Hidatsa cooking was by boiling. Some of the earthen boiling pots held as much as two gallons. A collection of earthen pots, fired in 1910 by Hides-and-Eats, a Mandan woman nearly ninety years old, is in the American Museum of Natural History.
Page 49, l. 18: “From her cache pit.” The cache pit was a jug-shaped pit within or without the lodge, six or eight feet deep. It was floored with willow sticks and its walls were lined with dry grass. It was used to store the fall harvest.