Closed Captions Audio Described

A member of the Three Affiliated Tribes discusses traditional plant knowledge of the Northern Plains, covering food sources (corn, beans, squash, prairie turnips, berries), medicinal plants (purple coneflower, gumweed, yellow coneflower), and materials for tools, shelter, and clothing. Moss explains agricultural practices, food storage in cache pits, hide tanning, and the central role of women's labor in tribal economies and survival.

Transcript

0:24 good afternoon everyone welcome to the tent of many voices and the core of Discovery 2 we are a traveling exhibit that's following the same time frame and path that L and Clark did 200 years ago and our goal is to visit communities and reservations across the Lucen Clark Trail educating people about all different aspects of the Expedition we have our exhibit tent over here where you can take an audio tour we have
0:48 replicas of the keelboat the perogue and the dogout we are also joined by our federal partners with the BLM Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service as well as the Montana air National Guard so please join all of their booths as well the tent of many voices was a place designed for people of many different professional backgrounds and cultures to come and
1:11 share with us their knowledge and wisdom as it relates to the Lewis and Clark expedition so I'm very happy to introduce Amy Moss is a member of the three affiliated tribes in North Dakota and she is going to be talking to us about Prairie plant use so let's all welcome Amy mosset thank you thank you thanks it's so it's so nice to be
1:35 out here it's so nice and warm um I'm um I'm going to spend about the next 35 minutes maybe talking about uh plant use that um is specific to our tribes in North Dakota um she mentioned that that I am from the three affiliated tribes and the three affiliated tribes in North Dakota are the Mandan kazza and arikara and of course for all of you who
2:00 who know this Lewis and Clark history um from beginning to end uh Lewis and Clark encountered the arikara in Northern South Dakota on the Missouri River about just over about 200 years ago um they encountered the Mandan in October of of 1804 on the um Missouri River still but it was right in the center of North
2:23 Dakota about 1 hour north of uh present day bismar North Dakota and then 7 miles up the river on The Knife River uh Lewis and Clark encountered the hiza I am not a Rara I am Mandan and hiza and I am specifically n Mandan which are the Mandan who live on the west side of the Missouri River and I am specifically a
2:46 hiza the tribe that the really actually the the Aza are the first people who lived in North Dakota uh we preceded the mandans we preceded everybody and the AA of course it was a village named for us um and we moved around but our last real permanent Village in North Dakota was on The Knife River on the South Bank of The
3:09 Knife River and that um interestingly enough is the village that sagaia lived in with her French uh fur trading husband to S sharbono and that was the village she left from to join the Lewis and Clark expedition and that was the village that um she returned to in August of 1806 when Lewis and Clark came back through what is now North Dakota and then proceeded on their on the
3:32 journey back down to South Dakota I mean South Dakota St Louis yeah they did go back through South Dakota um how could they forget South Dakota especially on the journey up um today I want to talk about plants and how we use plants and really how and and this is really um specific to all tribes that we lived
3:56 with the Earth's abundance because the Earth provided abundance to all of us and we shared in that and um in in the short time that I have I want to talk about how we use plants for everyday use how we Ed plants for um to supplement our gardening how we use plants for food and then how we used plants just for our um Dwelling Places probably the most
4:20 important plant well like I can't say the most important plants because all of the plants were important am I hitting the right button here oh okay this is a village that was painted by uh George Catlin in the 1830s and this Village is aad this is the village on the South Bank of The Knife River and if you went into an earth Lodge Village you
4:45 would see these massive structures these are our Earth lodges we did not live in tepes we were not a nomadic tribe the Mandan and the hiza and the arikara were agricultural people and we actually farmed the land on the Northern Plains about as far north as you could farm and we farmed successfully and tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 I'm going to do a program on traditional Mandan and hiza
5:07 gardening and um but these Earth lodges they're they're not very impressive from a distance I don't think they are they're not really impressive until you get inside of them and then you see the structures and you see these massive gigantic Cottonwood logs that were used to build these Earth lodges and the the interior of the earth Lodge um the the
5:30 Earth the logs were so gigantic there were the men would bring the logs in and they would help set up the four uh Corner posts in the in in the interior of the lodge and then the women brought in the rest of the logs and basically built the built the villages with the Earth with Cottonwood logs and the reason I wanted to mention this is because Cottonwood was really important to us it provided uh fuel for the fires
5:54 there was a huge fire pit in the center of the earth Lodge it provided um feed for the horses and these Earth Lodge structures were large enough that in the winter time very often or in the summertime we would bring the horses or the best horse that we owned that we did not want taken from our by our enemies and we would actually bring them inside the lodge and there was in some of the
6:17 larger lodges um right in the interior of the lodge there would be a little Corral place where the where the horse might may have been kept overnight because um we were enemies with the Sue and we always took each other's horses I mean that's what the men did and uh horses were a very valuable animal to um to all of our tribes so anyway the the cottonwoods were really important
6:40 because they provided our home they provided the fuel to keep the fires uh burning so we could cook our food um warm up The Lodges it does get rather chilly over there in North Dakota on the Northern Plains um I know that William Clark recorded on January 10th in 1805 I think the temperature dropped to 40 below but I think it only registered 40
7:03 below in his journals because that's as far um as the temperature would drop I mean it only went to 40 below and uh I know that this January 10th in 2005 it was 49 Below in New Town North Dakota and that was the regular air temperature so it could very well have been much colder than 40 below when Lewis and
7:26 Clark spent the winter with us but um at one time there were many Cottonwood logs that line the trees but after the steamboats came up the river we lost a lot of the cottonwoods because they were all chopped down they needed many many Cottonwood logs to keep their um fires burning in those boats okay Cottonwood Cottonwood is a very important tree there were other trees and and we used
7:49 trees shrubs grasses Roots um all these things and I'll very quickly talk about some of the other trees I was just visiting with this gentleman here about this basket and because we were agricultural we had you know burden baskets and and these are called burden baskets for a reason they were there was a lot of work done with these baskets and they were used to carry into the garden to bring in the crops they were
8:13 used when we went out onto the Prairie and um picked berries or uh dug turnips and so on but with this burden basket this is a hia burden basket and the this is made from a couple of trees the this one isn't this is a commercial bird basket we do have we do have the original baskets but they're pretty fragile and you can't haul them around but the original burden baskets were
8:37 taken um the peach Leaf Willow is usually what we use to um for the frame and um the willow was also used for frames for bull boats and that of course was our our our water vessel out there on the river if we needed to cross the Missouri River or cross The Knife River or travel back and forth any short distance um I don't think you'd really
9:02 want to travel too far in a bull booat I mean they generally didn't leak but you know eventually that hide would get soggy if you leave it in in the water long enough the um the woven part of this basket is made from the inside of the bark of of Green Ash the Green Ash tree and Green Ash of course you know is a really hard wood and so Green Ash was also used with the branches of a green
9:26 ash tree we also used those uh branches or the sticks for the handles on our hose and this is of course my garden ho um for my traditional Garden program my garden hole um that I use in my real traditional Garden I think I got from Menards or Kmart or Walmart or someplace like that but um but uh the the Green
9:51 Ash is what we used for a lot of our garden implements we also used a Green Ash for the scapula the Buffalo shoulder blade hole and ALS Al for the digging stick because Green Ash is a very hard wood all of the other trees are are they they're kind of in between the tree and the shrub category are like the uh choke cherry trees Choke Cherry is a very important plant because in August this
10:15 plant provided us with food and we would dry choke cherries and make uh Choke Cherry patties we would eat the choke cherries and they were I mean they're very healthy berries they the choke cherries are also used for medicine choke cherries are um the the berries themselves the juice from The Choke Cherry is a medicine that you would use to keep your blood healthy the the
10:39 branch of a choke cherry tree a green choke cherry tree is a plant that you would use if you had a stomach ailment there are a lot of different uh ways you would use a lot of uh different sections of plants but all of these plants out here did many things provided us with many different kinds of things juneberries were another tree because they provide a real succulent kind of um Berry and
11:03 June berries people also call them service berries or Saskatoon and the only problem we ever we had with juneberries is that the frost would usually get them in the spring but um whenever we had juneberries it was great because what we would do with juneberries is take the June berries very often dry them make them into Patties or else the other thing we would do with juneberries is we would grind
11:25 them up with corn yellow flour corn and then we would take the Buffalo Tallow or the Tallow from the fat on a buffalo kidney and then melt it just a little bit just enough not a whole lot but just enough to hold this thing together and then we would press and I didn't bring one with me this is a turnup of course but we would make these
11:47 little balls about this big they were we call them now we call them corn balls but the men would take them out hunting and if you had this little ball of ground corn and ground juneberries and a little bit of Buffalo Tallow you could go out onto the Prairie and you could hunt all day and if you ate that it would keep you um kind of energized sort of like these power bars that we eat
12:11 nowadays when we do the marathon runs and the six mile road races but it's real similar to that so we had our power bars or power balls or whatever you want to call them back then too so the so we have so food food was was one of the things that the Prairie provided us with um through the trees and the and the different shrubs and we had many different kinds of berries besides choke cherries
12:35 juneberries um plums we had grapes wild raspberries all along the river we had many different kinds of tea that grew along the river and people always asked all what did you drink and generally we drank tea but then of course we always drank soup too because that was one of the things we cooked more than anything was soup from our vegetable gardens um
12:59 with um let's see in the springtime you know after we planted our Gardens we would go out onto the Prairie and then start uh reaping the different Roots uh one of one of the roots that we still dig up today is the turnup and I'm not sure when these ripen out here I know I saw some of these yesterday up north of Great Falls and um last week I went out
13:20 onto the Prairie and I dug some tups and and they were still ripe and maybe it was because we had so much rain but Maryweather Lewis mentioned on the journey up the river that um sagaia had dug some roots and they called it a white Apple um and this is also called tipson and bread root and a lot of different kinds of things like that but
13:44 we we just call it a turnup now um in hiza we call it aish AI is how you would say this in hiza if your name was turnup your name of course then would be aish but um this is like a potato it's like a a combination between a potato and a turnup and um a rudaba maybe the taste of it but it does have a taste and it
14:07 has it doesn't taste that bad you have to you have to dig it at the right time of the year and so by the time I think Lewis mentioned he didn't care for the taste of it it probably had already started to get a little Woody and The Taste was sort of going out of it this this plant was really important because we would dig uh a lot of these turnips and then we would peel them and braid them and this is a turnup and this is actually only part of my turnup braid
14:31 which finally broke because I drug it around with me for so long and this really was quite a long braid and it's um if you know how to French braid hair you can French braid corn and you can French braid turnips and you can I shouldn't say French braid they might think tant sharbono taught us this but he really didn't um it's just a braid it's just a long braid and this this is
14:54 what we did to all of our food we dried everything that's all you could do with it you dry it it and then you reconstitute it when you put it in your clay pot and cook it inside the earth Lodge and so um of course we had um that was food let's move on to another Village here this is um this is just another
15:19 example of of um this is actually on a slant Mandan Village South of Mandan North Dakota and the only reason I put this slide up here is because I had a hiza village on there and I wanted to have a Mandan Village too and this is a replicated Mandan Village you can visit this Village today there are only five Earth lodges here but outside the Earth Lodge you see those scaffolds there th
15:43 those that's all Cottonwood and the scaffolds are up high and on the scaffolds is usually where we dried everything and this is part of my garden program too but all of the Corn and everything that we dried was would be hanging on those scaffolds this this is B balm and you see this growing all over the place but you can make a glue from this plant and you'll have to pardon my slides I I can
16:06 take pictures and I can do PowerPoint but when I had to put them together I'm really H I'm still working on making my pictures the right sizes so um this is this is used as a glue and I think somebody told me that we actually use some of this glue inside of our um our pots the clay pots that we made this is not a very good photograph but this is an antihistamine this is is gumweed and
16:30 this is that real sticky really strong smelling flower that that uh grows a lot on the sides of the ditches you can smell it when you walk through it but if you had poison ivy if you had Poison Ivy and you steeped gumweed in water and poured on your poison ivy that would work better than anything and I'm not recommending that you do any of this but I have used a lot of these plants and I still I mean there's a reason that you
16:55 know we knew about these plants and they actually do work and so if you are way out in the wilderness and you have no antihistamines with you whatsoever and you forgot your cadil clear and all of that stuff and you could steep this in water never never boil any plants because um when you boil a plant it can become toxic but you could Steep gumweed and you would actually have something
17:18 that would sort of help you um with your um poison ivy but the best you know the best medicine is always prevention and you should always know what poison ivy looks like and don't walk through it unless you take singular every day then you can walk through poison ivy um my slides turned out I'm not sure what happened with my camera but this is yl
17:42 and people grow yo in their yards but yl grows abundantly out there on the Prairie this medicine is for ears this is for earaches it's a earache medicine um this is um my chop this off too this is the the whole picture is just very nice if I could get it on here this is uh yellow or Prairie cone flour and a lot of times people confuse cone flour because there's purple Prairie cone
18:05 flour yellow Prairie cone flour and purple cone flour and the only reason I showed this is because this is this medicine was used for rattlesnake bites and we we have you know a lot of rattlesnakes out in the prairie and uh rattlesnake bites can be deadly but this was all this was used to treat um rattlesnake bites this is Golden Rod and I and I decided it's okay if I chop
18:30 the tops of this flower off because they haven't bloomed anyway and um the top of this flower is yellow and usually in August Golden Rod will Bloom but you know you recognize Golden Rod it grows abundantly all over the place and Golden Rod is used for your complexion and you know when people had any kind of skin ailment this again was a plant that we would Steep and then people would make
18:54 puses or different kinds of things treatments um usually puses were the treatments we used and then you would put the um gum weed not gumweed but golden rod on your skin and this would really keep your skin clear this is uh yaka this is a yaka plant and the root of this plant is uh
19:17 soapy some of these plants are actually called soapweed or in some some instances you see this is called soapweed if you took the root of this plant and you sort of peeled off that really Barky or the fuzzy stuff on the outside of it and swish this around in water this you'll you'll Suds up the water I have not tried this but I've been meaning to because as I get older I notice when I comb my hair you know that
19:41 pile of hairl on the floor just kept keeps getting thicker and somebody told me that soapweed in addition to being a soap and really a shampoo will actually thicken your hair now I'm not guaranteeing this but um you know it's worth a try I know I'm going to try it but it's um it's good for your hair and if you shampoo your hair with yaka and I know that people have actually made
20:03 shampoos with yaka in it but this is supposedly um a plant that you might want to try if you want to thicken your hair this of course is one of the most powerful plants on the Prairie and this grows in abundance this Grows All Over the prairie in North Dakota and it's called purple cone flower and it is illegal to pick this plant on any
20:26 reservation lands on any public land or or any state land in the state of North Dakota and the first um organization or the first entity in North Dakota that outlawed the the picking of this plant was the three affiliated tribes in North Dakota because about 10 years ago there were pharmaceutical companies that were paying young kids $28 a pound um to go out and pick this flower and they didn't
20:51 know whose land was whose and they were just going out there digging this stuff up but this is a powerful plant purple cone flower is is an antibiotic it is uh it's an antihistamine it's an analgesic this plant was used for everything if you have a toothache or if you have any pain anywhere in your mouth if you take the root of this plant and you put it in
21:14 your mouth your mouth will be instantly numb it's h it's a it's a it's an anesthetic purple cone flow is used today people buy purple cornflour to um as a preventative medicine to to to boost your immune system and we used this plant always um we and people still use this plant today they still make it into a tea but you can buy purple
21:38 cornflour um over the counter of course and and with with all of the Herbal Remedies and all these different kinds of medicines though it's always important to remember um to consult with the doctor before you use any of these medicines because we're all our our our systems are all different and so you have to be real careful about using uh plants purple cone flower is also used for snake
22:03 bite and there's just another picture of a of of the purple cone flower this is um you know I I just had this most beautiful picture of this beautiful yellow flower but it got chopped off and it's it's there in my computer but I couldn't get it into that little screen I tried everything um but uh I W I was thinking
22:27 yesterday I took this picture just yesterday and and I have some other pictures of uh of um these beautiful flowering cactus plants and you know one of the things I think that Maryweather Lewis liked the least or one of the things he complained about the most was prickly pear cactus and I guess I don't blame Mary weather
22:52 Lewis for not really seeing the beauty in that yellow flower so it's okay if I chopped it off because he had so much so much trouble with that prickly pear cactus and I was out there taking pictures yesterday and I had one little one little Thorn um that I nail in you know and I was wearing really thick denim jeans but um just a little not even a quarter of an inch thorn in my
23:15 leg but you can imagine stepping in this Cactus and it it can penetrate your moccasins um it it's just it's it's really ter it's a terrible plant it breaks off these those um you know those little spines on there are real dry and they break off inside your skin and before you know it then you're having all kinds of skin ailments but um this was this and the gats um we had it all
23:38 yesterday on that walk out to the Sulfur Springs but we also had um 45 SPF sunblock and we had um off the real powerful kind that was kind of nice scented and um so the and we also had an umbrella and uh we took all of that out onto the trail so it made it a little um more comfortable on the walk out there
24:02 but I really did feel for Maryweather Lewis you know he's not my favorite hero of the Lewis and Clark expedition but I couldn't help but feel sorry for him yesterday as I was walking back from the Sulfur Springs and of course the Sulfur Springs um that's the place where sagaia nearly died and I often wonder you know how this how this uh history related to her would be interpreted
24:26 today if she had died here in Montana you know that I think that would have been a real interesting story because she almost died at those Sulfur Springs or near that Sulfur Spring north of Great Falls um let's see I think this might be my last slide yeah we'll just leave that last slide up there in memory of Mary with
24:46 Lewis um um you know when people travel out into the PLS in North Dakota you know a lot of times people will look around and they'll talk about the Prairie and the plains up there in North Dakota is being so empty and they'll look around and they they
25:10 they talk about how treeless It is Well we did have we did have trees along the river at one time uh cottonwood trees in great abundance but the Prairie is really quite a treeless place and I think a lot of people today even today would walk out onto the Prairie and they'd look around and they'd say there's nothing out here but for all of us who've lived there
25:33 forever on the plains not just in recent years but for thousands and thousands of years I know I know that my ancestors who were living at all of those Villages all along the Missouri River all the way throughout um the central part of North Dakota and further south of there I know that when they walked out onto the Prairie or if they needed something whether if it was for food or for the
25:56 home or to care for the children or to uh for ceremonial uses if they needed anything they would walk out onto the Prairie and they would look about the Prairie and they would never think gosh there's nothing out here I know that when my ancestors walked out onto the plains they would look out there and they would say everything everything we need to survive
26:21 it's all out there and one of the things that that our ancestors did much a I think a much better job job of than we do today is they learned how to share those resources and they they learned how to use it with respect and the reason I'm showing all of these plants here on on photo by a photograph is because you don't need to pick these
26:44 plants you don't need to go out and take these plants from the Prairie and you never take anything living off the Earth unless you need it unless you are going to use it and I do have I do have some plants with me me we do have I do have these plants we do use turnips we do use white sage for ceremonial use but every time you go out and you take something
27:07 from the earth you need to leave something there something of yours something of your yours you leave it out there and if it's only a prayer then that's good enough but you never take anything living off the Earth unless you can give something back in return I want to thank you so much for um being here this afternoon and if you have any questions about um how we use plants or
27:32 the Mandan and the hiza in North Dakota I have just a couple minutes here to answer any questions you might have anybody have any questions we got plenty of time to field some questions you first sir you said your Society was agricultural base did you actually Farm or did you harvest I mean did you go out just to pick or did you grow fields of
27:56 plants we we grew um grew uh Fields very large fields and actually that's one that's our agricultural lifestyle is really what caused people to come to our part of North Dakota or it is North Dakota now to trade with us and we we engaged in international trade because of women's work and the women were the farmers and the women of the Mandan tribe and we really the hiza were became
28:21 agricultural too but the hiza really adopted a lot of the farming techniques and that whole um um the whole whole society the whole Agricultural Society from the mandans but the mandans planted 13 different varieties of corn and I'll have a lot of those varieties here tomorrow today we still plant all of these um varieties of corn not because we need to but because it's important
28:44 for us to teach our grandchildren and our daughters how to plant these but we had blue yellow red white flower corn we had Flint we had sweet corn we planted several different uh varieties of beans different varieties of squashes and different um and we had sunflowers and then later from the um like from the arikara and some of the tribes that lived lower on the Missouri River we uh
29:09 planted or we we uh traded for some of their watermelon uh seeds but it was it's real difficult to grow melons up on the Northern Plains but yes we farmed and it was it was the abundance or the surplus of our crop that we used as one of the most important items of trade in in the Mandan Society and then in the hiza the most important item of trade there was probably the Knife River Flint
29:34 you know the Flint that was used for the knives and weapons and and all of that so yes we did we did Harvest and then just like every other tribe we went out onto the Plains and along the river and harvested the roots and the berries and the tea and all of the other edible plants and all of the plants that we used for ceremonial purposes and we also I mean there was there was also there were also plants out there that you
29:57 could use for fresh fragrance you know perfume like wild bergamont it's also called Horse Mint and I I for the life of me cannot figure out why anybody would use that for perfume because if you have any of you ever walked into uh a field or like a patch of wild bergamont it smells I mean this is why I'm sure they call it
30:20 Horsemen it smells like horses sweaty horses when you take that saddle off a horse and you go to brush it you know and the horses have this sweaty smell that's what wild bergamont smells like when you walk into the patch now not and and I would think and somebody would want to wear that or no and uh but not nearby you will also find lavender hiss
30:43 up now that's perfume and that it smells beautiful it's so fragrant I think we have another question here you uh on the uh yellow cone flour you said it was a rattlesnake uh uh remedy did they take take it internally or as a pus most of some of the things were taken internally but with a lot of the things we would use a pus for the the
31:07 rattlesnake bite medicine that was usually an external application and the other thing too that that helped with medicine and doctors are going back more and more and in using um this kind along with therapy is prayer and I mean I think a lot of your doctors today they recommend that because your state of mind is probably
31:32 one of the most important elements of healing and so prayer and and you know the way you're feeling your your whole state of mind is just so very critical in the whole healing process and so I think that's the reason why prayer in all cultures has been just such an important part of doctoring somebody or healing another question back here is the purple cone flower related
31:55 to what we call eonia today yes yes it is the um uh eonia and gustola is the wild plant and I think uh eonia peria is the domesticated eonia that you can plant which um doesn't the the domesticated the peria doesn't have such a deep Brit and it's easier to harvest but the angustifolia that grows out in
32:20 the wild has a really really deep Brit okay I'll show you could you tell us how you stored your uh corn and your your food like for year round can where did we store it or how how did we store it we would we would store the corn we
32:43 would have corn braids hanging in the earth Lodge and different places within the Earth Lodge and it's real dry on the Prairie especially in Western North Dakota it's real dry uh you'll you'll you'll see I think archaeologically that our none of our ancestors ever really lived in the West in eastern North Dakota because it's a flood plane um but of course today our highest population
33:06 is in eastern North Dakota but it's it's very dry and so it's easy to to dry corn in real dry weather real Aid I mean Aid climates and then we had cash pits we had these gigantic really tall um underground we they'd be like root cellers and they were bell-shaped and they were so deep um for me I would need a real tall ladder to get down into that
33:29 cash pit but the cash pit was hollowed out and and the core tried to you know sort of replicate this as they were up here but they didn't seal their cash pit and their stuff got all wet or they discovered that on the way coming back through Montana but we had these huge bell-shaped cash pits which would be similar to The Root Cellar except they were lined they were lined with prairie grass and they were they were lined with
33:53 Clay of course and then they were lined with prairie grass and then we put the corn in certain sections and then the beans and squash all of the stuff once it's dried completely you can store in the cash pits and will it'll just last there forever and the reason we put the cash pits out onto the Prairie is because everybody knew where we lived we were permanent and so the all of our
34:16 enemies knew that we had a huge food supply and we had to put the cash pits out onto the Prairie and then and then Mark them in a certain way so that we all kept track of our own cash pit and then when we needed food then we would go out and and get it out there but the the key there was to keep everything completely dry or to get it as dry as you could before you put it in the cash pit and even in recent years there have
34:40 been cash pits that were Unearthed or that fell through you know when the movement of the river and the the the banks would cave in and the cash pit would be exposed and there have been seeds that were taken out of that cash pit that we're regrown so it's um it's amazing how how long that food uh would would stay would would keep any other questions for Amy oh one
35:05 over here couple there's some really good questions you mentioned that the women did the farming what did the men do the women did all the work the women the women tilled the soil I'll talk about gardening tomorrow I'm going to talk about women's work
35:28 tomorrow so you women you got to come back and hear this you men you probably won't want to hear this um but the women the women uh they they built the homes they maintained the homes they owned the homes they built all the tools or they constructed all the tools that went into the garden the women har or they they they planted the crops they harvested them all summer long they took care of a
35:53 garden a huge these were massive Gardens the women took care of the children children they taught the children uh when you were born you were born into your mother's society and you live the way of your mother your entire life that's where you got your identity the women engaged in trade the women owned horses the women um really helped to sustain the culture the women in the
36:15 Mandan tribe grew corn to the extent that there was such a surplus that people came from many many tribes first even enemy tribes and then later explorers the British the French and the Americans came in and traded with the Indians that was all a result of women's work and people always say well what did the men do and I always say the men did
36:40 Sports just like today nothing has changed the men went out riding horses and they went hunting and I'm just kidding the men worked the men helped the women the men protected the women the men were the Warriors and our tribes were living in a war society and we had enemy tribes we had Allied tribes and I
37:03 we're talking about you know really some magnificent Warriors that would descend Upon Our Villages and they could wipe out and burn an entire Village and and so the men protected the village they protected the Homeland they hunted for the uh Buffalo and those Buffalo can you imagine trying to trying to bring down a buffalo a bison they're gigantic animals trying to bring one of those things down
37:27 with a bow and an Arrow but you know we use like The Crow and the surrounds and buffalo jumps that's a lot easier to get a buffalo that way but of course once they kill the animal then the women of course again did all the work and you know took the hide made a bull booat took the meat dried it took the hides tanned it made their husbands real fancy ceremonial robes like you see these men
37:50 wearing on all these Mandan pictures out there you think those guys made those outfits no the women did the women and and when you think about the how much work the women did and how long it takes to do the garden and yet to have time to do that kind of quill work because most of the work on these robes is not really bead work it's all
38:12 quill work parkpine quill bird quill and beautiful designs and even the baskets the the baskets had beautiful designs in them the the pottery had had really nice designs on them and so the women the women worked really hard thanks for that question good question the women tan the hides how tan I've heard they chewed them but they
38:37 couldn't chew a whole Buffalo hide oh no wouldn't have any teeth left no that would that would be no with with Buffalo um with hide tanning you would take the brain from the animal and from whatever animal that you um brought back whether if it was a deer or an antelope or a buffalo you would take the brain from that animal and the Brain from that animal is the is all you the only brain
39:01 you would need to tan the whole TI hide you you need your own brain too but you you need that you'd mix there's a mixture of um the the brain and then some oil and then you scrape you scrape all the hair off the hide unless you wanted a hairon hide and then I think that would be even more difficult I'm not sure just handling a buffalo hide because they're heavy I fleshed a
39:25 buffalo hide with my um my 12-year-old daughter and it took us all afternoon to do that and we had I I had an electric drill so I made my own frame and I had a deck out in the back and I have running water with a hose and um this was a huge a gigantic Buffalo hide and it it was only a 2-year-old Buffalo and um we had
39:48 Chicago Cutlery and we didn't use we didn't use a flint knife scraper but when you but when the women you know they would flesh they would flesh the hide with Flint knife scraper and then they would scrape the hair off the hide with the elkh horn that had a um a flint knife blade attached to it scrape all the hair off and then you rub that brain and uh oil mixture into the hide after
40:12 it's all washed and stretched out and then you that that's what softens the hide it's a real long process you also have to do a lot of stretching and pulling a hide back and uh forth usually you have like your favorite tree with real rough bark to stretch it out you have to break down the fiber in that hide and then you uh when it's all done and you have this beautiful white hide and I I have I have hide that I'm
40:36 bringing with me for my program tomorrow because you can see the white hide once it's done it's so soft you can sew through it it's so soft but when you take that white hide and then you smoke it on a fire then it it it turns brown but it doesn't just turn brown when you when you take that white hide and you you you smoke it over a fire you're waterproofing the hide and you're also
40:59 completing the chemical process of tanning a hide and it takes you know it takes a long time it takes about three days to do um a a burden basket it takes about a couple days three days to do a um some pottery couple of days to do pottery and it takes a few days to do a buffalo hide so you can do a deer hide in one day I mean today you could you
41:22 could brain tan a deer hide in a day but um that's working non-stop and the women you know they generally had a lot of other things that they had to do while they were doing this work so yes women women worked really hard but um that's the way life was in all the tribal cultures any other questions I thought I saw another hand yep yeah I got a couple questions uh
41:47 first the what kind of tools do they have cut down those big uh cottonwood trees and the other is uh where did all these vegetable seeds originally or originate from the corn seed originated I think in South America and corn originated as a grass and some of the the bean seeds originated on the Prairie and they continued to grow the bean seeds and
42:11 with the sunflowers a lot of the the seeds originated as wild plants and then over the years they contined to be planted or once they're domesticated once you domesticate a seed I think you're able to um to grow it and it just becomes more hearty and it gets bigger the more you plant it and the um the better technology that you have each time you plant whatever it is you're growing is going to just get bigger and
42:35 better um i' I've experienced that because our corn that we grow it's the same seed that used to grow in 6in cobs now gets to be 12 Ines long so there it you know over time the but this corn came as far as I know corn came from South America from South American tribes and a lot of people you know there's a big argument the araras say they gave
42:58 the Mandan corn and the Mandan say they gave the iara corn and the hoder know that we got the corn from the Mandan but um it's uh it's it's it's it's very old it's hundreds and hundreds of years old and I do know that you know this is way before my time because the Mandan have been planting corn along the Missouri River for the last 1,000 years and a
43:22 thousand years ago we were at the border of Nebraska and South Dakota and we were far the m Dan were farming there question up front here just so everyone can hear are there any Legends in the Mand hadat about about Nordic U inclusion uh you hear these stories about the
43:46 blue-eyed mandans and and that there were possibly Scandinavian people that got over into that area you know that's your people are there in your people about that we you know there's this legend about the um the Welch that came over from you know around 1100 or something like that but
44:09 that didn't come from our that's not a legend from our culture that's a legend from Welch culture and there there actually are Welch people um or people in Wales who have contacted our tribe and asked how they could get enrolled with the Mandan tribe and there are um people from yeah there are people from Wales who have come to North Dakota just
44:33 to visit the mandans because they really believe that story but it is a myth and the blueeyed mandans is also a myth by 1738 although in 1738 when vendry v um lendry came down from France not France but from Canada and he came down uh I think on foot he didn't have horses in
44:55 that first trip when he came in but he mentioned fair skinned mandans and I think that I think that in the Mandan tribe I think that there was some um deficiency in our color um the hormones or the pigment in our skin I think there was some I think there was something there some
45:19 genetic um deficiency perhaps that affected the pigment in our skin and our hair because the mands didn't have blue eyes and they didn't have blonde hair there were mandans who had sort of grayish colored hair and grayish colored eyes and and kind of lighter lighter complected skin but usually by August that would all be taken care of and
45:42 they'd be really dark again but it didn't come from the Welch it it I think it was a genetic trait all right we have time for one more question SC right here I'm interested in it in your basket process uh is there a certain time of year that you have to
46:02 harvest the wood that you use or is it part of some bigger part of your maintenance of your culture the um with the burden baskets there was a certain time there's there was really a certain time of the year that that we did everything when for example is soon as the water broke up on the Missouri River it was time to go out and garden and as
46:26 soon as the geese flew back that was another sign that it was time to garden and but as soon as the water broke up on the river you would assume that the ground is starting to thaw and so then it would be time to to go out on and and do the gardening but um with the usually it's around April or Mar March or April that you're supposed to go out and get the trees and what you want to do is you
46:51 want to get the the BART from the inside of the tree before the sap runs through the tree that was that was the time of the year um well well yeah we would use the tree for firewood probably to um
47:16 any well with a basket you wouldn't cut a big tree down for a basket you would cut a small tree and the the trees that the willow if you if you if you see how Willow grows Willow Willow grows kind of like weeds and um along the rivers we would get you see a lot of Sandbar Willow now but this Peach leap or this the willow that we used originally in the baskets is really difficult to find
47:38 after the dam was built and a lot of the um the land was inundated we just we don't really find that tree anymore even but yeah you would use everything you wouldn't waste anything with um with a sweat you know when you had a sweat in the earth Lodge and after you burn the Rocks so many times you take the Rock and you use that rock over for something else because it crumbles and it becomes
48:02 real um crumbly and you could use it in the pottery because that rock has been burned so many times and and for some reason it helped pots when you put them together and it would help to keep them from cracking when you fired the pot and I'll bring some pots over here tomorrow so yeah we we used a lot of things over and over again or sort of recycled in every way that we could so as not to be wasteful and again you know when you go
48:27 out and and take a treat to make yourself a basket you would you know offer a prayer and and uh you know you wouldn't be wasteful or take a great big tree if you only needed a small one to make your basket all right let's thank Amy mosset
48:42 for joining us today thank you uh as she said a couple times Amy will be back tomorrow at 5:00 to talk about traditional Mandan and hza gardening so please join us back uh
49:04 tomorrow at 5: and what oh and granddaughter gets to help her with the gardening program so uh we're going to continue with our programming for the DayDay for the day uh at the top of the hour we're going to have a program entitled grizzly bears and the human spirit with Denise pingaro and the US Forest Service so please join us back here in about 10 minutes for our
49:27 next program thank you and have a good day

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Amy Moss on Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Plant Use

Amy Moss

Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara

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Amy Moss on Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Plant Use

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