Buffalo Bird Womans Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians

Synopsis

From the book: Buffalo Bird Woman, known in Hidatsa as Maxidiwiac, was born about 1839 in an earth lodge along the Knife River in present-day North Dakota. In 1845 her people moved upstream and built Like-a-fishhook village, which they shared with the Mandan and Arikara. There Buffalo Bird Woman grew up to become an expert gardener of the Hidatsa tribe. Using agricultural practices centuries old, she and the women of her family grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in the fertile bottomlands of the Missouri River. In the mid-1880s, U.S. government policies forced the break up of Like-a-fishhook village and the dispersal of Indian families onto individual allotments on the Fort Berthold Reservation, but Hidatsa women continued to grow the vegetables that have provided Midwestern farmers some of their most important crops. In Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, first published in 1917 as Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation, anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson transcribed in meticulous detail the knowledge given by this consummate gardener. Following an annual round, Buffalo Bird Woman describes field care and preparation, planting, harvesting, processing, and storing of vegetables. In addition, she provides recipes for cooking traditional Hidatsa dishes and recounts songs and ceremonies that were essential to a good harvest. Her first-person narrative provides today's gardener with a guide to an agricultural method free from fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. ... Squash Dolls There is one other thing I will tell before we forsake the subject of squashes. Little girls of ten or eleven years of age used to make dolls of squashes. When the squashes were brought in from the field, the little girls would go to the pile and pick out squashes that were proper for dolls. I have done so, myself. We used to pick out the long ones that were parti-colored; squashes whose tops were white or yellow and the bottoms of some other color. We put no decorations on these squashes that we had for dolls. Each little girl carried her squash about in her arms and sang for it as for a babe. Often she carried it on her back, in her calf skin robe. ... This is a most fascinating read whether or not one likes to garden.

Copyright:

1987

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

139 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780873512190

Publisher:

N/A

Date of Addition:

03/19/07

Copyrighted By:

Minnesota Society Historical Society

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Science, Cooking, Food and Wine, Home and Garden, Outdoors and Nature, Social Studies

Submitted By:

3

Proofread By:

Lena

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.