Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Available via Google:Books and World Wide School.org

Chapter 10, Section III: Wild Harvests

“After all, the wild Indians could not be justly termed improvident, when their manner of life is taken into consideration. They let nothing go to waste, and labored incessantly during the summer and fall to lay up provision for the inclement season. Berries of all kinds were industriously gathered, and dried in the sun. Even the wild cherries were pounded up, stones and all, made into small cakes and dried for use in soups and for mixing with the pounded jerked meat and fat to form a much-prized Indian delicacy.

Out on the prairie in July and August the women were wont to dig teepsinna with sharpened sticks, and many a bag full was dried and put away. This teepsinna is the root of a certain plant growing mostly upon high sandy soil. It is starchy but solid, with a sweetish taste, and is very fattening....

There was another root that our people gathered in small quantities. It is a wild sweet potato, found in bottom lands or river beds.

The primitive housekeeper exerted herself much to secure a variety of appetizing dishes; she even robbed the field mouse and the muskrat to accomplish her end. The tiny mouse gathers for her winter use several excellent kinds of food. Among these is a wild bean which equals in flavor any domestic bean that I have ever tasted. Her storehouse is usually under a peculiar mound, which the untrained eye would be unable to distinguish from an ant-hill. There are many pockets underneath, into which she industriously gathers the harvest of the summer.

She is fortunate if the quick eye of a native woman does not detect her hiding-place. About the month of September, while traveling over the prairie, a woman is occasionally observed to halt suddenly and waltz around a suspected mound. Finally the pressure of her heel causes a place to give way, and she settles contentedly down to rob the poor mouse of the fruits of her labor.”

From Running Fox by Cassie Edwards

Pages 173-174

“I shall begin by explaining my people’s religion to you. The religion of the Lakota consists principally, but not wholly, in the worship of visible things of this world, animate and inanimate. We know of a god and a devil. We call the god Wakantanka....”

Page 175

“Our people’s chief object of worship is Unkteri, the mammoth. We have pieces of the bones of the mammoth in our possession.... The species of mammoth that we worship resembles the buffalo or ox but is of more enormous size than those that wander the earth today. Since it so much exceeded other animals in size, it was only natural that we Lakota adopted it as our chief god. To his worship, our most solemn religious festivals are dedicated....

Even I have found fossil bones, as a young brave.... I found them at the bottom of a river when I went there during water challenges. Those bones are highly prized for magical powers....”

“His Lakota people concluded that unkteri’s dwellings were in the water.”

From “The Dakotas in Minnesota in 1834”
From Collections by the Minnesota Historical Society Volume XII
Published in 1908
Original from The University of Michigan

Accessed using Google:Books

Popup Image of Page Available

”The religion of the Dakotas consisted principally but not wholly in the worship of visible things of this world animate and inanimate. Their chief object of worship was Unkteri the mammoth though they held many erroneous opinions concerning that extinct species of elephant and did not know that the race was extinct. They had seen bones of the mammoth pieces of which they had in their possession and they were too well acquainted with comparative anatomy not to know that it was a quadruped. They described the species as resembling the buffalo or ox but of enormous size. As they worshipped many other animals it was natural that the mammoth which so much exceeded the others in size should be adopted as their chief god.

To his worship their most solemn religious festivals were dedicated. They supposed that the race was still in existence and as they were not seen on land and their bones were found in low and wet places they concluded that their dwelling was in the water. Their bones were highly prized for magical powers and were perhaps as valuable to them as relics of a saint are to a devout Catholic. A Dakota told me that he had discovered some of the fossil bones in the lake opposite Shakopee but was unable to raise them without some boat larger than a canoe.”