Buffalo Bird Woman's garden : agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians
1987
Book
Buffalo Bird Woman, a Hidatsa Indian born about 1839, was an expert gardener. Following centuries-old methods, she and the women of her family raised huge crops of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers in the rich bottomlands of the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. Here she shares her horticultural secrets, describing a year of activities in the garden, from preparing and planting the fields through cultivating, harvesting, and storing foods. She gives recipes for cooking typical Hidatsa dishes and she tells of the stories, songs and ceremonies that were essential to a bountiful harvest.
Item Details
ISBN: 9780873512190
Description: xxiii, 129 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm.
Other Title: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians
Notes:
- Reprint. Originally published: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. Minneapolis, 1917.
- Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
- Hidatsa alphabet xxviii
- Description of varieties [corn] 58-59
- Varieties [bean] 84.
- Maps: The site of Like-a-Fishhook Village (old Fort Berthold) / Frederick Wilson
- The three historically documented Hidatsa village sites: Big Hidatsa; Sakakawea; Amahami
- Map of gardens S.E. [southeast] of village
- East-side gardens.
- Illustrations: Buffalo Bird Woman, 1910 / Gilbert Wilson
- Buffalo Bird Woman making a model corn stage as Frederick Wilson looks on, 1912 / G. Wilson
- Like-a-Fishhook Village being dismantled, July, 1887 / George Curtis
- Owl Woman with an antler rake, 1914 / G. Wilson
- Owl Woman showing how to use a digging stick / G. Wilson
- Sioux Woman, Goodbird's wife, hoeing squash to demonstrate the use of a bone hoe, 1912 / G. Wilson
- Owl Woman gathering flowers in a skin basket, 1914 / G. Wilson
- Scarecrow in a corn field, 1918 / G. Wilson
- Husking corn, 1909; the woman braids the best ears / G. Wilson
- Drying loose and braided ears of corn on a corn stage, 1909 / G. Wilson
- Owl Woman pounding corn into meal in a corn mortar, 1914 / G. Wilson
- Owl Woman slicing squash with a bone squash knife, 1916 / G. Wilson
- Goodbird sitting under slices of drying squash, strung on spits and laid on a structure to resemble a corn stage / G. Wilson
- Woman winnowing beans, 1909 / G. Wilson
- Model of a cache pit, 1912; made by Buffalo Bird Woman in the bank of the Missouri River to show cross section / G. Wilson.
- Introduction to the reprint edition
- Preface
- Foreword
- Tradition
- Beginning a garden
- Sunflowers
- Corn
- Squashes
- Beans
- Storing for winter
- The making of a drying stage
- Tools: hoes; rakes; squash knives
- Fields at Like-a-Fishhook Village
- Miscellanea
- Since white men came
- Tobacco.
LCCN: 87020355
Control Number: 3413746
Publisher: St. Paul : Minnesota Historical Society Press, [1987]