Uses of Plants by the Hidatsas of the Northern Plains

12. Plants Used for Rituals orwith Ritual Significance

eleven Plants Used for Utilitarian Purposes plants used for utilitarian purposes 211 Cordgrass (thatching, lining storage pits) hidatsa name: mika hatski (mika, grass; hatski, tall or long) local english name: slough grass (prairie cordgrass) botanical name: Spartina pectinata Bosc ex Link Cordgrass is a coarse grass often found growing in thick stands where soils are wet most of the time. It can easily reach 5 to 6 feet (2 m) in height and has a sandpapery feel on the top of the leaf. Roofing and reroofing earthlodges required great quantities of this grass. Buffalobird-woman later refers to cordgrass as “blue grass.” Buffalobird-woman (vol. 20, 1916: 316) This grass grows in the hills in wet places, thick; or at a steam’s edge, or about ponds or lakes, or springs. We used this kind of grass to put on the roofs of earthlodges and to line the walls of cache pits because it did not rot so quickly as other grasses. It lasted a long time. This was the only use made of it. It was not used to make string for it is not, I think, very strong. Buffalobird-woman (vol. 8, 1909: 59–60) Grass for roofing the earthlodge Over all [the sheathing of willows covering the frame of an earthlodge ] was laid a thick matting of dry grass. A man stood within the lodge and, looking up, could tell if any places were laid thin as then light showed through. The grass was laid about six inches thick and covered all the lodge roof, both roof proper and also the lean-to [the atuti–the sloping sides of the earthlodge]. We cut the grass with a hoe. In old times, in the days of my parents , we used bone hoes. We always went out to find dead, thick grass that was long. This grass was to hold the final covering of dirt. 212 plants used for utilitarian purposes This much grass was used in an earthlodge of the ordinary size. We tied up two bales about two feet thick. These two bales were all that a woman could carry. It took one hundred bales to make enough to cover one lodge roof. We brought the grass bales in on our backs or on the backs of ponies. family Poaceae–grass family genus Spartina Schreb.–cordgrass species Spartina pectinata Bosc ex Link–prairie cordgrass plants used for utilitarian purposes 213 Buckbrush (brooms, medicine) hidatsa name: macukaakca (Goodbird does not know any translatable meaning. Macuka means dog, but he thinks the word is not a compound. glw local english name: buckbrush (western snowberry) botanical name: Symphoricarpos occidentalis Hook Patches of buckbrush are scattered throughout the prairie, sometimes in dense thickets about thigh-high or as single plants but usually in fairly close proximity to other buckbrush plants. They are not a preferred forage plant and so tend to persist even in areas which are being grazed. On archaeological sites in the Great Plains, buckbrush will sometimes grow at the bottom of house depressions where the soil is slightly more moist. At some sites plants create a living map of features with, for example, buckbrush and pasture sage forming circles where houses once were and other plants like cleome growing between the house depressions and forming a pink background with its flowers. Buffalobird-woman (vol. 20, 1916: 243–48) Buckbrush was used to make brooms. Every earthlodge had one or two brooms used for sweeping the lodge floor and the ground outside the door. Brooms could be made at any time of the year, as needed. When I made a broom in summer of green brush, I bound the bushes in a bunch and hung them up, sometimes outside the entrance of the door, till dry. Then I beat off the leaves and bound the bushes. The larger and longer plants were chosen for making brooms. These brooms were used in both the winter and summer earthlodges , but not in the tents when we were camping unless we stayed there long enough to wear away the grass on the floor inside the tent. Then a broom could be made at once from plants in the vicinity. 214 plants used for utilitarian purposes To make a broom I gathered good, long plants and laid them side by side to make sure they were of the same length. I then bound them together with a piece...