Iron hoes had come into general use when I was a girl, but there were two or three old women who used old fashioned bone hoes. I think my grandmother, Turtle, was the very last to use one of these bone hoes. I will describe the hoe she used, as I remember it.

The blade was made of the shoulder bone of a buffalo, with the edge trimmed and sharpened; and the ridge of bone, that is found on the shoulder blade of every animal, was cut off and the place smoothed.

The handle of the hoe was split, and grooves were cut in the split to receive the bone blade; this was slightly cut to fit and was so set that the edge pointed a little backwards.

Raw-hide thongs bound the split firmly about the blade and a stout thong, running from a groove a little way up the handle, braced the blade in place. (See figure 3, page 12).

Under my directions, Goodbird has made a hoe such as I saw my grandmother use, using the shoulder bone of a steer for a blade. You can make necessary measurements from it.

Hoe handles were made of cottonwood or some other light wood.

Rakes

We Hidatsas began our tilling season with the rake.

We used two kinds,[21] both of native make; one was made of a black-tailed deer horn (figure 5, page 14), the other was of wood (figure 4, page 14).

Of the two, we thought the horn rake the better, because it did not grow worms, as we said. Worms often appear in a garden and do much damage. It is a tradition with us that worms are afraid of horn; and we believed if we used black-tailed deer horn rakes, not many worms would be found in our fields that season.

We believed wooden rakes caused worms in the corn. These worms, we thought, came out of the wood in the rakes; just how this was, we did not know.

However, horn rakes were heavy and rather hard to make; and for this reason, the handier and more easily made wooden rakes were more commonly used.

All this that I tell you of our tools and fields is our own lore. White men taught us none of it. All that I have told you, we Indians knew since the world began.

Squash Knives

Squash knives of bone were still in use when I was young. I have often seen old women using them but, as I recollect, I never saw one being made.

The knife was made from the thin part of a buffalo’s shoulder bone; never, I think, from the shoulder bone of a deer, elk, or bear.

The bone of a buffalo cow was best, because it was thinner. If the squash knife was too thick, the slices of squash were apt to break as they were being severed from the fruit. Bone squash knives, as I remember, were used for slicing squashes and for nothing else.

A squash knife should be cut from green bone; it would then keep an edge, for green bone is firm and hard. I do not think I ever saw anyone sharpening a bone knife so far as I can now recollect.

There was no handle to a bone squash knife, beyond the natural bone.

A bone squash knife lasted a long time. Old women in our village who used these bone knives, brought them out each summer in the squash harvest. It was their habit, I think, to keep the knives in the back part of the lodge, by the owner’s bed. Whether it was customary to keep the knives in bags, or in some other receptacle, I do not know.

My mothers used a white man’s steel knife for slicing squashes; but as I have said, there were old women in the village who still used the older bone knives.

Yellow Squash, I remember, was one; an old Hidatsa woman named Blossom was another; so also was Goes-around-the-end.

This model of a squash knife (figure 35) that I have had my son Goodbird make for you, is of rather dry bone; I have had him grease it, that it may be more like green bone.