Cache pit _F_ in the diagram, we made afterwards. Pit _E_ was also of later make; we dug it after we got potatoes; it was inside the lodge and near the corral for horses.
Cache pit _C_ we had to abandon because mice got into it and we could not get rid of them. So we filled it up with earth and dug pit _D_. We stored gummy corn in cache pit _D_ and used it for two years. The third year the Sioux came against our village in the winter time and stole our corn and burned down my father’s lodge.
I have been telling you how the cache pit was used for storing things for winter; but I do not mean that it was of no use in summer time. In early spring we put into a cache pit two big packages of dried meat and a bladder full of bone grease. We did not take them out until about August or a little earlier. The meat would still be good, and the bone grease would be hard and sweet, just as if it were frozen.
A cache pit lasted for a long time, used year after year.
We had four cache pits to store grain for my father’s family; one held squash, vegetables, corn, etc.
A second held shelled yellow corn. In this cache the usual strings of corn laid around to protect the shelled grain from the wall, were of white corn. We did not braid hard yellow corn. It was corn that we did not often use for parching.
A third cache held white shelled corn, protected by the usual braided strings of white corn.
A fourth cache pit was a small one inside the lodge; here we stored dried wild turnips, dried choke-cherries, and dried June berries; and any valuables that we could not take with us to our winter village.
Our cache pits were for the most part located outside the lodge, because mice were found inside the lodge, and they were apt to be troublesome.
In the cache pit where we stored our yellow corn, we stored the grain loose, not in sacks.
I knew of course where each cache pit was located.
The Sioux sometimes came up against us in winter and raided our cached corn. One winter (about 1877) they came up and burned our lodges and stole all that was in our cache pits.
We returned from our winter quarters to our permanent village a little before ice breaks on the Missouri, or in the latter part of March.
A. Bed of Small Ankle and Strikes-many-women.