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I lifted the skin door—it was an old-fashioned one swinging on thongs from the beam overhead—and entered the lodge. Hanging Stone sat on his couch against the puncheon fire screen. I went to him and put the weasel-skin cap on his head. The young man who was to be my husband was sitting on his couch, a frame of poles covered with a tent skin. Cold Medicine and I went over and shyly sat on the floor near-by.
64 visits
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My young husband and I lived together but a few years. He died of lung sickness; and, after I had mourned a year, I married Son-of-a-Star, a Mandan. My family wished me to marry again; for, while an Indian woman could raise corn for herself and family, she could not hunt to get meat and skins.
Son-of-a-Star was a kind man, and my father liked him. “He is brave, daughter,” Small Ankle said. “He wears two eagle feathers, for he has twice struck an enemy, and he has danced the death dance. Three times he has shot an arrow through a buffalo.” It was not easy to shoot an arrow through a buffalo and few of my tribe had done so.
Spring had come, and in the moon of Breaking Ice we returned to Like-a-Fishhook village. Our hunters had not killed many deer the winter before, and our stores of corn were getting low. As ours was a large family, Son-of-a-Star thought he would join a hunting party that was going up the river for buffaloes. “Even if we do not find much game,” he said, “we shall kill enough for ourselves. We younger men should not be eating the corn and beans that old men and children need.”
97 visits
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We were clad warmly, for the weather was chill. All had robes. I wore a dress of two deer skins sewed edge to edge; the hind legs, thus sewed, made the sleeves for my arms.
I had made my husband a fine skin shirt, embroidered with beads. Over it he drew his robe, fur side in. He spread his feet apart, drew the robe high enough to cover his head, and folded it, tail end first, over his right side; then the head end over his left, and belted the robe in place. He spread his feet apart when belting, to give the robe a loose skirt for walking in.
71 visits
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The hunters returned before evening. Son-of-a-Star was the first to come in. “I shot two fat cows,” he cried. “I have cut up the meat and put it in a pile, covered with the skins.” He had brought back the choice cuts, however, the tongues, kidneys and hams. We ate the kidneys raw.
65 visits
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While the two hunters went back for the rest of the meat, I put on my copper kettle and made blood pudding. It was hot and ready to serve by the time they came back. I had stirred the pudding with a green chokecherry stick, giving it a pleasant, cherry flavor.
65 visits
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“We ran to the bank of the creek and, sure enough, something that looked as big as a man was struggling and floundering in a pool. The water was roiled and thick with mud.
“We could not think what it could be. Some thought it was an enemy trying to hide in the mud.
“A brave young man named Skunk threw off his leggings, drew his knife, and waded out to the thing. Suddenly he stooped, and in a moment started to land with the thing in his arms. It was a great fish, a sturgeon. It had a smooth back, like a catfish. We cut up the flesh and boiled it. It tasted sweet, like catfish flesh. I do not remember if we drank the broth, as we do when we boil catfish.”
67 visits
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“Tell us the story,” said Son-of-a-Star.
“A brave young Dakota led out a war party, of six men,” began Scar. “They came into the Chippewa country and wandered about, seeking to strike an enemy. They found deserted camps, sometimes with ashes in the fire pit still warm; but they found no enemies.
“One day they came to a beautiful lake. On the shore, close to the water, was a grassy knoll, rising upward like the back of a great turtle.
“The leader of the party had now begun to lose heart. ‘We have found no enemy,’ he said. ‘I think the gods are angry with us. We should return home. If we do not, harm may come to us.’
“‘Let us rest by this knoll,’ said one. ‘When we have smoked, we will start back home.’
“They had smoked but one pipe when the leader said, ‘I think we should go now. There is something strange about this knoll. Somehow, I think it is alive.’
“There was a young man in the party, reckless and full of life, whom the others called the Mocker. He sprang up crying, ‘Let us see if it is alive. Come on, we will dance on the knoll.’
“‘No,’ said the leader, ‘an evil spirit may be in the knoll. The hill may be but the spirit’s body. It is not wise to mock the gods.’
“‘Hwee—come on! Who is afraid?’ cried the Mocker. He ran to the top of the knoll, and three of the party followed him laughing. They leaped and danced and called to the others, ‘What do you fear?’
“Suddenly the knoll began to shake. It put out legs. It began to move toward the lake. It was a huge turtle.
55 visits
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“A Dakota Indian had married a Hidatsa woman, and dwelt with our tribe. He was a good man, but he had a sharp tongue. He often got angry and said bitter words to his wife. When his anger had gone, he felt sorry for his words. ‘I do not know why I have such a sharp tongue,’ he would say.
“One day, when hunting with some Hidatsas, he came near the magic lake. ‘I am going to see what I was before I became a babe,’ he told the others. In the morning he went to the lake, leaned over and looked. In his shadow he saw what he had been. It was a thorn bush.
“With heavy heart, he came back to camp. ‘Now I know why I have a sharp tongue,’ he cried. ‘It is because I was a thorn bush. All my life I shall speak sharp words, like thorns.’”
47 visits
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We recrossed the river the next morning and fetched back most of the staged meat and skins, reaching camp again in the early part of the afternoon
55 visits
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The next day we found to our joy that the wind had shifted to the west. Our stages were now hung with slices of drying meat, and we had built slow fires beneath. An east wind would have carried the smoke toward the herd and stampeded it.
58 visits
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We made another crossing the next morning to fetch over the last of the meat we had staged. We returned about noon. The first woman to climb the bank under our camp was Scar’s wife, Blossom. She dropped her pack and came running back, her hands at each side of her head with two fingers crooked, like horns, the sign for buffaloes.
80 visits
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We remained in the camp about ten days. The men would hunt until they made a kill. Then we harnessed our dogs, and all went out to fetch in the meat. To do this took us about half a day. At other times, when not drying meat, we women busied ourselves making bull boats, to freight our meat down the river.
92 visits
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I had hewn this paddle from a cottonwood log, only the day before. My own, lighter and better made, I had brought with me from the village. Each paddle had a large hole cut in the center of the blade. Without this hole, a paddle wobbled in the current.
58 visits
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I had hewn this paddle from a cottonwood log, only the day before. My own, lighter and better made, I had brought with me from the village. Each paddle had a large hole cut in the center of the blade. Without this hole, a paddle wobbled in the current.
On the front of my paddle blade, Son-of-a-Star had painted a part of his war record, hoof prints as of a pony, and moccasin tracks such as a man makes with his right foot. Hoof and footprints had each a wound mark, as of flowing blood. Son-of-a-Star had drawn these marks with his finger, dipped in warm buffalo fat and red ochre.
55 visits
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When the Missouri is running ice, the mid-current will be thronged, well-nigh choked, with ice masses, but near the banks, where are shallows, the water will be free, since here the stream is not deep enough to float the ice chunks. On the side of the river under our camp was a margin of ice-free water of this kind; and I now saw, out near the edge of the floating ice, two bull boats bound together, with a woman in the foremost, paddling with all her might. She was struggling to keep from being caught in the ice and crushed.
I ran down the bank to the bench of sand below, just as the boats came sweeping by. The woman saw me and held out her paddle crying, “Daughter, save me!” I seized the wet blade, and tugging hard, drew the boats to shore. The woman was Amaheetseekuma, or Lies-on Red-Hill, a woman older than I, and my friend.
53 visits
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Image 8991
49 visits
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It took four ponies to pack the dried meat and skins my husband and I had brought. I loaded my boats on the travois of two of my dogs.
128 visits
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My mother’s name was Weahtee. She was one of four sisters, wives of my father; her sisters’ names were Red Blossom, Stalk-of-Corn, and Strikes-Many Woman. I was taught to call all these my mothers. Such was our Indian custom. I do not think my mother’s sisters could have been kinder to me if I had been an own daughter.
Meanwhile Strikes-Many Woman or old Turtle had parched some corn in a clay pot, and toasted some buffalo fats on a stick, over the coals. Red Blossom now pounded the parched corn and toasted fats together in the corn mortar, and stirred the pounded mass into the pot with 50the squash and beans. The mess was soon done. Red Blossom dipped it into our bowls with a horn spoon.
60 visits
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We made our eleventh camp on the north side of the Missouri, a few miles below the mouth of the Yellowstone. Here the Missouri is not very wide, and its sloping banks make a good place for crossing. A low bank of clean, hard sand lay along the water’s edge. We pitched our tents about noon on this sand. There were about a hundred tepees. They stood in rows, like houses, for there was not room on the sand to make a camping circle.
42 visits
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But if the weather was cold, we did not go to the river to bathe. An earthen pot full of water stood by one of the posts near the fire. It rested in a ring of bark, to keep it from falling. My mothers dipped each a big horn spoon full of water, filled her mouth, and, blowing the water over her palms, gave her face a good rubbing.
45 visits
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Having bathed my baby, Red Blossom bound him in his wrapping skins. She had a square piece of tent cover, folded and sewed along the edges of one end into a kind of sack. Into this she slipped my baby, with his feet against the sewed end. About his little body she packed cattail down.
On a piece of rawhide, she put some clean sand, which she heated by rolling over it a red-hot stone. She packed this sand under my baby’s feet; and, lest it prove too hot, she slipped a piece of soft buckskin under them.
Over all she bound a wildcat skin, drawing the upper edge over the baby’s head, like a hood.
The hot sand was to keep my baby warm. This and the cattail down we placed in a baby’s wrappings only in winter, when on a journey.
72 visits
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My mothers began packing soon after breakfast and Son-of-a-Star came in to say that he would take me across in our bull boat; for we had brought one with us from the village. Old Turtle began unpinning the tent cover while I was still inside.
44 visits
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As I have said, many families floated their goods over in these tent-cover rafts; and not a few women, in haste to cross, swam clinging to their rafts. One woman put her little four-year-old son on the top of her raft, while she swam behind, pushing and guiding it. Another old woman, named Owl Ear, mounted her raft and rode astraddle.
40 visits
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My husband had spread a heavy bull-skin robe over the travois basket and set me on it, with another skin folded under me for a cushion. Through holes in the edge of the bull skin Son-of-a-Star passed a lariat; and when I was seated, with my baby in my arms and my robe belted snugly about us, my husband drew the lariat, drawing the bull skin about my knees and ankles. The day was windy and cold, and the bull skin kept the chill air from me and my babe.
86 visits
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My little son was ten days old the second day we were in winter camp; and, though we were hardly well settled, I found time to make ready his naming feast. Having filled a wooden bowl with venison and boiled dried green 170corn—foods I knew well were to his liking—I set it before Small Ankle.
“I want you to name your grandson,” I said to him.
Small Ankle ate, thinking the while what name he should give my son. Then he arose and took my baby tenderly in his arms, saying, “I name him Tsakahka Sukkee, Good Bird.” Small Ankle’s gods were birds, and the name was a kind of prayer that they remember and help my little son.
58 visits
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I have said that Flies Low sat in our second boat, with my little son in his arms. The baby had grown restless, and Flies Low had loosened the babe’s wrappings to give freedom of his limbs. A sudden billow rocked the boat, throwing Flies Low against the side and tumbling my little son out of his arms into the water.
His loosened wrappings, by some good luck, made my baby buoyant, so that he floated. He was crying lustily when my husband drew him out; but he was not strangling, and under his wraps he was not even wet.
“I could not help it,” said Flies Low afterwards. “The boat seemed to turn over, and the baby fell out of my arms.” We knew this was true and said nothing more of it.
62 visits
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Image 8980
37 visits
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Image 8979
45 visits
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Buffalo-Bird Woman has told us of the earth lodges of her people. They were for permanent abode. Hunters, however, camping but a day or two in a place, usually put up a pole hunting lodge.
Four forked poles were stacked.
50 visits
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Around these in a circle, other poles were laid, for a frame
41 visits
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For cover buffalo skins, bound together at the edges, were drawn around the frame in two series, the lower series being laid first. The peak of the pole frame was left uncovered, to let out the smoke.
Instead of buffalo skins, gunny sacks may be used, fastened at the edges with safety pins or with wooden skewers; or strips of canvas or carpet may be used. Three or four heavier poles may be laid against the gunny-sack cover to stay it in place.
The door may be made of a gunny sack, hung on a short pole.
Indians often raised a piece of skin on a forked pole for a shield, to keep the wind from driving the smoke down the smoke hole.
Figure shows the finished lodge with gunny-sack cover, door, and wind shield. The last is made of a piece of oil cloth.
44 visits
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Buffalo-Bird Woman tells of the booth which Turtle made in her cornfield. A booth is easily made of willows or long branches.
A short digging stick will be needed. This was of ash, a foot or two in length, sharpened at one end by burning in a fire. The point was often rubbed with fat and charred over the coals to harden it. (Such a digging stick was not the kind used for cultivating corn.)
If you have no ash stick, a section of a broom handle will do.
With a stone, drive the digging stick four inches in the ground, as in Figure. Withdraw digging stick and repeat until you have six holes set in a circle. The diameter of the circle should be about five feet.
41 visits
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Into the six holes set willows, or branches, five or six feet high
61 visits
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Weave or bind tops together so as to make a leafy roof, or shade, as in Figure. For binding, use strips of elm bark; or slender willows, twisted, so as to break the fibers
40 visits
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Indians broiled fresh meat on a stick thrust in the ground and leaning over the coals. Often a forked stick was cut, the meat was laid on the prongs, and it was held over the coals until broiled.
55 visits
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Indians broiled fresh meat on a stick thrust in the ground and leaning over the coals. Often a forked stick was cut, the meat was laid on the prongs, and it was held over the coals until broiled
53 visits
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Buffalo-Bird Woman often speaks of dried buffalo meat. If you want to know what it was like, cut a steak into thin pieces, and dry on a stage of green sticks, three feet high. This may be done in the sun; or, a small fire may be made beneath, to smoke as well as dry the meat.
40 visits
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Buffalo-Bird Woman often speaks of dried buffalo meat. If you want to know what it was like, cut a steak into thin pieces, and dry on a stage of green sticks, three feet high. This may be done in the sun; or, a small fire may be made beneath, to smoke as well as dry the meat.
52 visits
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A pail or small bucket will do for kettle. It should be swung from a tripod by stick-and-thong, as in figure. Put in dried meat with enough water to cover, and bring to a boil. The broth may be used as the Indians used it, for a drink.
55 visits
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ndian boys, when out herding horses, often carried two or three ears of corn for lunch. An ear was parched by thrusting a stick into the cob, and holding it over the coals
38 visits
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Image 8966
84 visits
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I was born in an earth lodge by the mouth of the Knife river, in what is now North Dakota, three years after the smallpox winter.
The Mandans and my tribe, the Hidatsas, had come years before from the Heart river; and they had built the Five Villages, as we called them, on the banks of the Knife, near the place where it enters the Missouri.
69 visits
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A few instances of the circle and square are found in association with the animal mounds, while in Ohio, on Brush Creek in Adams 34County, the “Great Serpent,” and the “Alligator” in Licking County furnish proof that either the same people built them or at least the same impulses, religious or otherwise, actuated the people of both districts. The former of the above figures is well described by its name, “with its head conforming to the crest of a hill, and its body winding back for 700 feet in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail.” The length of the latter “from the point of the nose following the curves of the tail to the tip, is about 250 feet, the breadth of the body forty feet and the length of the legs or paws each thirty-six feet.”
43 visits
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The most remarkable instance of the kind, however, is that of the big elephant mound found a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin River, so perfect in its proportions and complete in its representations of an elephant that its builders must have been well acquainted with all the physical characteristics of the animal which they delineated
66 visits
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Image 8961
70 visits
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Image 8959
39 visits
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Image 8929
47 visits
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Image 8927
73 visits
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Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman
75 visits
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Image 8926
70 visits
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Image 8925
50 visits
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For four long and bloody months, officers and men alike endured the heat and mud of what must have been one of the wettest seasons in the history of Georgia.
83 visits
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Image 8923
61 visits
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Lt. Col. William H. Martin jumped from the trenches waving a white handkerchief and shouting to the Northerners to come and get the wounded men.
70 visits
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By 1864 most of the men in the armies that struggled for Atlanta had become veterans, inured to the hardships of military life
55 visits
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Soldiers in both armies had no scruples about supplementing their rations with whatever could be taken from surrounding farms and homes.
65 visits
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Image 8919
54 visits
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Image 8918
52 visits
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Image 8917
86 visits
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Image 8916
89 visits
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Image 8915
76 visits
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Image 8914
51 visits
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Image 8913
52 visits
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Image 8912
56 visits
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Image 8879
147 visits
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Image 8695
273 visits
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A - Barrel Assembly
B - Rear Sight Assembly
C - Cover and Feed mechanism Assembly
D - Feed Pawl Assembly
E - Cocking Hand Assembly
F - Butt stock and Shoulder Assembly
G - Piston Assembly
H - Bolt Assembly
I - Slide Assembly
J - Operating Rod Assembly
K - Receiver Assembly
L - Trigger Mechanism Assembly
M - Hand Guard Assembly
N - Bipod Machine Gun
O - Gas Cylinder Assembly
254 visits
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Image 8693
260 visits
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... a sketch of a pair of pulley-weights recently made, designed by Dr. Sargent, which are excellent. Their merits will be seen at a glance. Instead of the weights swaying sideways and banging against the boxes, as they are liable to do in the ordinary old-fashioned pulley-weight boxes, they travel in boxes, A A, between the rods B B. A rubber bed also prevents the weight from making a noise as it strikes the floor, while another capital feature is the arrangement of boxes, in which you may graduate the weight desired by adding little plates of a pound each, instead of the unchanging weight of the old plan.
31 visits
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If one prefers to use apparatus made specially, the cut shows a simple device of Dr. Sargent's, which he made purposely to bring up and strengthen these muscles.
Standing in front of it, with head and neck erect and chest out, and grasping the ends of the bar A A', the operator simply turns it, first well up to the right, then to the left, and then repeats the movements until he has enough. As he turns, the rubber straps B B stretch more and more, of course getting stiffer the farther the bar is turned. It would scarcely be possible to hit upon a [p.218]better appliance for improving these valuable side muscles, and yet without fear of overdoing them.
35 visits
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Image 8562
58 visits
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The latest invention purposely for these muscles is also one of Sargent's, on the following plan: The pupil lies on the plank A A', or, rather, sits on it, when A' is a little back of vertical, so as, for instance, to form with A the angle A B A'. With feet in the toe-straps C C', he sways gently forward and back as long as he can without fatigue. From day to day, as these muscles gain strength, A' is dropped lower and lower, until finally it is on a level with A. Or a strap may be placed over the forehead and fastened to A', and, with the feet in the toe-straps, the person may lift his body up till vertical, drawing the weight E with him as he rises.
70 visits
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Again, to deepen the chest from front to back, he hangs two bars, B and C, and attaches the weight at the other end, A, of the rope, the bar B, when at rest, being about a foot above the height of the head. Standing, not under B, but about a foot to one side of it, and facing it, grasp its ends with both hands, and keeping the arms and legs straight and stiff, and breathing the chest brimful, draw downward until the bar is about level with the waist. Let the weight run slowly back, repeat, and go on.
53 visits
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Dr. Sargent's ingenuity has provided a simple and excellent chest expander. He rigs two ordinary pulleys over blocks some feet above the head, and from five to six feet apart, and attaching weights at the floor ends of the ropes, puts ordinary handles on the other ends, and has the ropes just long enough so that when the weights are on the floor the handles are about a foot above the head. Now stand between and directly under them, erect, with the chest as full as you can make it, and keeping the elbows straight, and grasping the handles draw your hands slowly downward out at arm's-length, say about two feet. Next, let the weights drop gradually back, repeat, and so go on. This is excellent for enlarging the whole chest, but especially for widening it. A better present to a consumptive person than one of these appliances could hardly be devised.
36 visits
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With professional oarsmen, who for years have rowed far more than they have done anything else, and who have no especial care for their looks, or spur to develop harmoniously, the defects rowing leaves stand out most glaringly. The man in the figure is one of the most distinguished student-oarsmen America ever produced.
35 visits
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The figure represents one of the swiftest and most skilful professional scullers of the country to-day.
60 visits
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All that people need for their daily in-door exercises is a few pieces of apparatus which are fortunately so simple and inexpensive as to be within the reach of most persons. Buy two pitchfork handles at the agricultural store. Cut off enough of one of them to leave the main piece a quarter of an inch shorter than the distance between the jambs of your bedroom door, and square the ends. On each of these jambs fasten two stout hard-wood cleats, so slotted that the squared ends of the bar shall fit in snugly enough not to turn. Let the two lower cleats be directly opposite each other, and about as high as your shoulder; the other two also opposite each other, and as high above the head as you can comfortably reach.
27 visits
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April 19th 1775
Birthplace of American Liberty
29 visits
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“Aren’t there a couple of young men in there with Clara?”
“No, only one. There isn’t a sound.”
268 visits
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She: Are you going to volunteer?
He: If yes, no. If no, yes.
206 visits
