Goodbird the Indian: His Story — Background and Themes

red the mouth of the Little Missouri, thirty miles from the village. Then a storm arose, and as we rounded a bend, the current carried us into the very teeth of the wind. Our flimsy boats, sea-sawing up and down on the heavy waves, threatened to overturn.

My parents turned hastily to shore and plied their paddles. Suddenly my father leaned over his side of the boat, almost tipping it over and tumbling my mother in upon him; she caught at the edge of the boat to save herself, but had the presence of mind not to drop her paddle. Then she saw what had happened; I had fallen into the water, and my father was drawing me, wet but unhurt, into the boat.

I have said that my uncle, Flies Low, and I rode in the second boat. I had grown restless, and he had loosened my cradle clothes to give me room to move my limbs. When we ran into the storm, our boat rocked so violently that I slipped from his arms, but my loosened clothes made me float.

“I did not mean to drop the baby,” my uncle said afterwards. “I thought the boat had upset and I was frightened.” He was only a lad, and my mother could not blame him.

We reached shore in a terrible storm of snow and wind. The boats were dragged up on the beach; the two tents were hastily pitched to shelter the women and children; and fires were lighted.

My father stopped only long enough to see us safe, and then pushed on through the storm with the horses, which my grandfather had been driving along the shore in sight of the boats. He reached the village safely and drove the horses into the shelter of some woods along the river.

Boys know that in summer, when they go swimming, it is warmer to stay in the water, than upon the bank, in a wind. There was a pond in the woods; and our horses waded into the water to escape the cold wind. When they came out the wind chilled their coats, so that three of them died.

The storm lasted four days. When it was over, my mother and the rest of the party re-embarked in their bull boats and floated safely down to Like-a-fish-hook village.

Of course I remember nothing of these things; but I have told the story as I heard it from the lips of my mother.

[1] General George A. Custer.

Like-a-fish-hook village stood on a bluff overlooking the Missouri, and contained about seventy dwellings. Most of these were earth lodges, but a few were log cabins which traders had taught us to build.

My grandfather’s was a large, well-built earth lodge, with a floor measuring about forty feet across. Small Ankle, his two wives and their younger children; his sons, Bear’s Tail and Wolf Chief, and his daughter, my mother, with their families, dwelt together. It was usual for several families of relatives to dwell together in one lodge.

An earth lodge was built with a good deal of labor. The posts were cut in summer, and let lie in the woods until snow fell; men then dragged them to the village with ropes. Holes were dug the next spring, and the posts raised. Stringers, laid along the tops of the posts, supported rafters; and upon these was laid a matting of willows and dry grass. Over all went a thick layer of sods.

The four great posts that upheld the roof had each a buffalo calf skin or a piece of bright-colored calico bound about it at the height of a man’s head. These were offerings to the house spirit. We Hidatsas believed that an earth lodge was alive, and that the lodge’s spirit, or soul, dwelt in the four posts. Certain medicine women were hired to raise these posts in place when a lodge was built.

Our lodge was picturesque within, especially by the yellow light of the evening fire. In the center of the floor, under the smoke hole, was the fireplace; a screen of puncheons, or split logs, set on end, stood between it and the door. On the right was the corral, where horses were stabled at night. In the back of the lodge were the covered beds of the household, and my grandfather’s medicines, or sacred objects. The most important of these sacred objects were two human skulls of the Big Birds’ ceremony, as it was called. Small Ankle was a medicine man and when our corn fields suffered from drought, he prayed to the skulls for rain.