Pacy Crochets: 3/1/12

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden

Last night I bought a new book on dehydrating. Drying With an Attitude By Mary T. Bell. At the start of this book she states "One of my mentors has been Buffalo Bird Woman." She describes this book as "a rare and valuable window into the past by clearly documenting specific details of how Native Americans grew, harvested, dried, stored, and cooked their food."

This reminded me that A while ago when I read The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. Carol frequently referred to Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden.

Buffalo Bird Woman, a Hidatsa Indian born about 1839, was an expert gardener. Following centuries-old methods, she and the women of her family raised huge crops of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers on the rich bottom lands of the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. When she was young, her fields were near Like-a-Fishhook, the earth-lodge village that the Hidatsa shared with the Mandan and Arikara. When she grew older, the families of the three tribes moved to individual allotments on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.In Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, first published in 1917, anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson transcribed the words of this remarkable woman, whose advice today's gardeners can still follow. She describes a year of activities, from preparing and planting the fields through cultivating, harvesting, and storing foods. She gives recipes for cooking typical Hidatsa dishes. And she tells of the stories, songs, and ceremonies that were essential to a bountiful harvest.A new introduction by anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jeffery R. Hanson describes the Hidatsa people's ecologically sound methods of gardening and Wilson's work with this traditional gardener.

After reading reviews of this book that glowingly state testimonials such as "As a messenger of the old ways, she detailed how to build drying platforms, the best days to dry corn, beans, squash, buffalo, serviceberries, prairie turnips, and more. She cached food for two years in case the next growing season was a failure." I knew this is a must read for me.

Each of the pictures of the books in this post are links to amazon where you can purchase them. But if your ~~cheap~~ frugal like me, I wanted to share a link I found where you can download a copy of Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians for free from the