- The beds of the rest of the family stood in the back of the lodge, against the wall
The beds of the rest of the family stood in the back of the lodge, against the wall. They46 were less simply made than my father’s, being each covered with an old tent skin drawn over a frame of posts and poles. The bedding was of buffalo skins. As these could not be washed, my mothers used to take them out and hang them on the poles of the corn stage on sunny days, to air. Most of the earth lodges—at least most of the larger ones—had each a bed like my father’s before the fireplace; for this was the warmest place in the lodge. Usually the eldest in the family, as the father or grandfather, slept in this bed. - It had a long curved beak
One morning, having come to the field quite early, I grew tired of my play before my grandmother had ended her work. “I want to go home,” I begged, and I began to cry. Just then a strange bird flew into the field. It had a long curved beak, and made a queer cry, cur-lew, cur-lew. I stopped weeping. My grandmother laughed. “That is a curlew,” she said. - Life in an Earth Lodge
The small lodges we built for winter did not stand long after we left them in the spring. Built on low ground by the Missouri, they were often swept away in the June rise; for in that month the river is flooded by snows melting in the Rocky Mountains. The loss of our winter lodges never troubled us, however; for we thought of them as but huts. Then, too, we seldom wintered twice in the same place. We burned much firewood in our winter lodges, and before spring came the women had to go far to find it. The next season we made camp in a new place, where was plenty of dead-and-down wood for fuel. We looked upon our summer lodges, to which we came every spring, as our real homes. There were about seventy of these, earth lodges45 well-built and roomy, in Like-a-Fishhook village. Most of them were built the second summer of our stay there. - Two braves
- Turtle and her old-fashioned digging stick
I was too little to note very much of what was done. I remember that my father set up boundary marks—little piles of earth or stones, I think they were—to mark the corners of the field we claimed. My mothers and Turtle began at one end of the field and worked forward. My mothers had their heavy iron hoes; and Turtle, her old-fashioned digging stick. - Baby-like, I ran my fingers through the shiny grain, spilling a few kernels on the floor
One evening in the corn planting moon, she was making ready her seed for the morrow’s planting. She had a string of braided ears lying beside her. Of these ears she chose the best, broke off the tip and butt of each, and shelled the perfect grain of the mid-cob into a wooden bowl. Baby-like, I ran my fingers through the shiny grain, spilling a few kernels on the floor. “Do not do that,” cried my grandmother. “Corn is sacred; if you waste it, the gods will be angry.” - Harvesting
- The wild geese had come north, but this fact alone was not proof that winter had gone
- Gardening
- A heavy wind blew the snow in our faces, nearly blinding us
“We had a hard time,” he said. “Perhaps the gods, for some cause, were angry with us. We had gone five days; evening came and it began to rain. We were on the prairie, and our young men sat all night with their saddles and saddle skins over their heads to keep off the rain. “In the morning, the rain turned to snow. A heavy wind blew the snow in our faces, nearly blinding us. - I saw that the black-bear skin was bound to one of the posts at the entrance
The next morning when I went out of the lodge, I saw that the black-bear skin was bound to one of the posts at the entrance. This was a sign that my father was going to lead out a war party. I was almost afraid to pass the bear skin, for I knew it was very holy. - Winter clothing
- Old Turtle made me a dolly of deer skin stuffed with antelope hair
Old Turtle made me a dolly of deer skin stuffed with antelope hair. She sewed on two white bone beads for eyes. I bit off one of these bone beads, to see if it was good to eat, I suppose. For some days my dolly was one-eyed, until my grandmother sewed on a beautiful new eye, a blue glass bead she had gotten of a trader. I thought this much better, for now my dolly had one blue eye and one white one. - Inside the lodge
Indians, when journeying, made the campfire outside the lodge in summer; inside the lodge, in winter. Usually a slight pit was dug for the fireplace, thus lessening danger of sparks, setting fire to prairie or forest. The fire was smothered with earth when camp was forsaken. - Turtle, I think, was the last woman in the tribe to use an old-fashioned, bone-bladed hoe
Turtle was old-fashioned in her ways and did not take kindly to iron tools. “I am an Indian,” she would say, “I use the ways my fathers used.” Instead of grubbing out weeds and bushes, she pried them from the ground with a wooden digging stick. I think she was as skillful with this as were my mothers with their hoes of iron. - Turtle’s hoe was made of the shoulder bone of a buffalo set in a light-wood handle, the blade firmly bound in place with thong
Turtle’s hoe was made of the shoulder bone of a buffalo set in a light-wood handle, the blade firmly bound in place with thongs. The handle was rather short, and so my grandmother stooped as she worked among her corn hills. She used to keep the hoe under her bed. As I grew a bit older my playmates and I thought it a curious old tool, and sometimes we tried to take it out and look at it, when Turtle would cry, “Nah, nah! Go away! Let that hoe alone; you will break it!” - My father stabled his horses at night in our lodge, in a little corral fenced off against the wall
My father stabled his horses at night in our lodge, in a little corral fenced off against the wall. “I do not want the Sioux to steal them,” he used to say. In the morning, after breakfast, he drove them out upon the prairie, to pasture, but brought them in again before sunset. In very cold weather my mothers cut down young cottonwoods and let our horses browse on the tender branches. - To eke out our store of corn and keep the pot boiling, my father hunted much of the time
To eke out our store of corn and keep the pot boiling, my father hunted much of the time. To hunt deer he left the lodge before daybreak, on snowshoes, if the snow was deep. He had a flintlock gun, a smoothbore with a short barrel. The wooden stock was studded with brass nails. For shot he used slugs, bits of lead which he cut from a bar, and chewed to make round like bullets. Powder and shot were hard to get in those days - Winter Camp
Autumn came; my mothers harvested their rather scanty crops; and, with the moon of Yellow Leaves, we struck tents and went into winter camp. My tribe usually built their winter village down in the thick woods along the Missouri, out of reach of the cold prairie winds. It was of earth lodges, like those of our summer village, but smaller and more rudely put together. We made camp this winter not very far from Like-a-Fishhook Point. - At this hour, fires burned before most of the tepees
“At this hour fires burned before most of the tepees.” In fall or winter the fire was within the tepee, under the smoke hole. - Drums on a summer's evening
Our camp on a summer’s evening was a cheerful scene. At this hour, fires burned before most of the tepees; and, as the women had ended their day’s labors, there was much visiting from tent to tent. Here a family sat eating their evening meal. Yonder, a circle of old men, cross-legged or squat-on-heels in the firelight, joked and told stories. From a big tent on one side of the camp came the tum-tum tum-tum of a drum. We had dancing almost every evening in those good days. - Grandfather sacred medicines
“Do the spirits eat the food?” I asked. I had seen my grandfather set food before the two skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony. “No,” said my grandfather, “They eat the food’s spirit; for the food has a spirit as have all things. When the gods have eaten of its spirit, we often take back the food to eat ourselves.” - Hidatsas burial scaffolds
- Buffalo grazing
- Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull - The Mound builders
It is now well known that the Indian was quite capable of building excellent fortifications; that the most complicated forms of mounds were not beyond his capacity; and that, in general, he was in a more advanced stage of mental development than was generally believed by old writers. - Indians of Wisconsin
In primitive times, the summer dress of the men was generally a short apron made of the well-tanned skin of a wild animal, the women being clothed in skins from neck to knees; in winter, both sexes wrapped themselves in large fur robes. - Weapons
Their arrowheads and spearheads, axes, knives, and other tools and weapons were of copper obtained from Lake Superior mines, or of stone suitable for the purpose. - Ornaments
When first discovered by white men, Wisconsin Indians were using rude pottery of their own make. Their arrowheads and spearheads, axes, knives, and other tools and weapons were of copper obtained from Lake Superior mines, or of stone suitable for the purpose. They smoked tobacco in pipes wrought in curious shapes from a soft kind of stone found in Minnesota, and ornaments and charms were also frequently made from this so-called "pipestone." - Samuel de Champlain
In the year 1608, the daring French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, founded a settlement on the steep cliff of Quebec, and thus laid the foundations for the great colony of New France. This colony, in the course of a century and a half, grew to embrace all of what we now call Canada and the entire basin of the Mississippi River. - Tools and Pottery
When first discovered by white men, Wisconsin Indians were using rude pottery of their own make. Their arrowheads and spearheads, axes, knives, and other tools and weapons were of copper obtained from Lake Superior mines, or of stone suitable for the purpose. They smoked tobacco in pipes wrought in curious shapes from a soft kind of stone found in Minnesota, and ornaments and charms were also frequently made from this so-called "pipestone." - Worship the Manitou
By this time, Nicolet had his doubts about meeting Chinese at Green Bay. As, however, he had brought with him "a grand robe of China damask, all strewn with flowers, and birds of many colors," such as Chinese mandarins are supposed to wear, he put it on; and when he landed on the shore of Fox River, where is now the city of Green Bay, strode forward into the group of waiting, skin-clad savages, discharging the pistols which he held in either hand. Women and children fled in terror to the wigwams; and the warriors fell down and worshiped this Manitou (or spirit) who carried with him thunder and lightning. - Travel by canoe
Upon the first day of July, 1634, Nicolet left Quebec, a passenger in the second of two fleets of canoes containing Indians from the Ottawa valley, who had come down to the white settlements to trade. - Travel by canoe
Like Nicolet, our two adventurous explorers traveled by canoes, with Indians to do the paddling. Passing between the Manitoulin Islands, in the northern waters of Lake Huron, they visited and traded with the Huron Indians there, thence proceeded through the Straits of Mackinac, and across to the peninsula of Door county, which separates Green Bay from Lake Michigan. - Screen of the Alósaka
The symbolism of Alósaka is shown in a rude drawing made by one of the Hopi to illustrate a legend, and it represents this being on a rainbow, on which he is said to have traveled from his home in the San Francisco mountains to meet an Awatobi maid. Above the figure of Alósaka is represented the sun, which is drawn also on the screen above described, for Alósaka is intimately associated with the sun, as are all the other horned gods, Ahole, Calako, Tuñwup, and the Natackas. - Ahole
The mask of Ahole, who flogs the children during the Powamû celebration, has the same two lateral horns and representation of radiating feathers over the crown of the head, but instead of sagittaform marks on the forehead there is a colored band from ear to ear across the face. - Common Hopi sun symbol
- Kwátaka, bird with sun symbolism
- “Big-head,” a solar god
- Dancers dressed as wolves
Transformation Ceremony and Dancers Dressed as Wolves. In some of these dances, the attitudes of the animals whose totems were worn by the clans were imitated, and the spirits of the animals were supposed to have taken possession of the dancers. .