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CHAPTER II BEGINNING A GARDEN Turtle My great-grandmother, as white men count their kin, was named Atq.'kic, or Soft-white Corn. She adopted a daughter, Mata'tic, or Turtle. Some years after, a daughter was born to Atq.'kic, whom she named Otter. Turtle and Otter both married. Turtle had a daughter named Ica'wikec, or Corn Sucker;l and Otter had three daughters, Want-to-be-a-woman, Red Blossom, and Strikes-many-women, all younger than Corn Sucker. The smallpox year at Five Villages left Otter's family with no male members to support them. Turtle and her daughter were then living in Otter's lodge; and Otter's daughters, as Indian custom bade, called Corn Sucker their elder sister. It was a custom of the Hidatsas, that if the eldest sister of a household married, her younger sisters were also given to her husband, as they came of marriageable age. Left without male kin by the smallpox, my grandmother 's family was hard put to it to get meat; and Turtle gladly gave her daughter to my father, Small Ankle, whom she knew to be a good hunter. Otter's daughters, reckoned as Corn Sucker's sisters, were given to Small Ankle as they grew up; the eldest, Want-to-be-a-woman, was my mother. When I was four years old, my tribe and the Mandans came to Like-afishhook bend. They came in the spring and camped in tepees, or skin tents. By Butterfly's winter count, I know they began building earth lodges the next winter. I was too young to remember much of tllis. Two years after we came to Like-a-fishhook bend, smallpox again visited my tribe; and my mother, Want-to-be-a-woman, and Corn Sucker, died of it. Red Blossom. and Strikes-many-women survived, whom I now called my mothers. Otter and old Turtle lived with us; I was taught to call them my grandmothers. Clearing Fields Soon after they came to Like-a-fishhook bend, the families of my tribe began to clear fields, for gardens, like those they had at Five Villages. Rich black soil was to be found in the timbered bottom lands' of the Missouri . Most of the work of clearing was done by the women. In old times we Hidatsas never made our gardens on the untimbered, prairie land, because the soil there is too hard and dry. In the bottom lands by the Missouri, the soil is soft and easy to work. 1 Corn sucker. i. e., the extra shoot or stem that often springs up from the base of the maize plant. 9 10 BUFFALO BIRD WOMAN'S GARDEN Figure 1 Map of newly broken field drawn under Bufl'alobird· woman's direction. The heavy dots represent cor; hills; the dashes, the clearing and breaking of ground between, done after hills were planted. In the lower left hand corner is the ground that was in dispute. J t I I ~ ~ Goes-to-n~JLt-Tinlber4s field My mothers and my two grandmothers worked at clearing our family's garden . It lay east of the village at a place where many other families were clearing fields. I was too small to note 'very much at first. But I rem~mber that my father set boundary markswhether wooden stakes or little mounds of earth or stones, I do not now remember -at the corners of the field we claimed. My mothers and my two grandmothers began at one end of this field and worked forward. All had heavy iron hoes, except Turtle, who used an old fashioned wooden digging stick. With their hoes, my mothers eut the long grass that covered much of the field, and bore it off the line, to be burned. With the same implements, they next dug and softened the soil in places for the corn hills, which were laid off in rows. These hills they planted. Then all summer they worked with their hoes, clearing and breaking the ground between the hills. Trees and bushes I know must have been cut off with iron axes; but I remember little of this, because I was only four years old when the clearing was begun. I have heard that in very old times, when clearing a new field, my people first dug the corn hills with digging sticks; and afterwards, like my mothers, worked between the hills, with bone hoes. My father told me this. Whether stone...

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