My tribe, as our old men tell us, after they got corn, abandoned their villages at Devils Lake, and joined the Mandans near the mouth of the Heart River. The Mandans helped them build new villages here, near their own. I think this was hundreds of years ago.
Firewood growing scarce, the two tribes removed up the Missouri to the mouth of the Knife River, where they built the Five Villages, as they called them. Smallpox was brought to my people here, by traders. In a single year, more than half my tribe died, and of the Mandans, even more.
Those who survived removed up the Missouri and built a village at Like-a-fishhook bend, where they lived together, Hidatsas and Mandans, as one tribe. This village we Hidatsas called Mu´a-idu´skupe-hi´cec, or Like-a-fishhook village, after the bend on which it stood; but white men called it Fort Berthold, from a trading post that was there.
We lived in Like-a-fishhook village about forty years, or until 1885, when the government began to place families on allotments.
The agriculture of the Hidatsas, as I now describe it, I saw practiced in the gardens of Like-a-fishhook village, in my girlhood, before my tribe owned plows.
Note ladder at right of lodge entrance. Drying stage before entrance lacks the usual railings. (Photograph by courtesy of Rev. George Curtis.)]
[Illustration: Like-a-fishhook village in process of being dismantled (about 1885)
Drying stage in foreground is floored Arikara fashion with a mat of willows. The Arikaras at this time had joined the Hidatsa-Mandans. (Photograph by courtesy of Rev. George Curtis.)]
My great-grandmother, as white men count their kin, was named Atạ´kic, or Soft-white Corn. She adopted a daughter, Mata´tic, or Turtle. Some years after, a daughter was born to Atạ´kic, whom she named Otter.
Turtle and Otter both married. Turtle had a daughter named Ica´wikec, or Corn Sucker;[6] and Otter had three daughters, Want-to-be-a-woman, Red Blossom, and Strikes-many-women, all younger than Corn Sucker.
The smallpox year at Five Villages left Otter’s family with no male members to support them. Turtle and her daughter were then living in Otter’s lodge; and Otter’s daughters, as Indian custom bade, called Corn Sucker their elder sister.
