The Hidatsa red bean was “traditionally tougher than nails,” buts it makes excellent chili. Photo by Tom Stromme

When the first light of dawn reaches prairie, the sound of rustling corn stalks and women singing undulates across the grassy plains. Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa women are acknowledging the Creator. They are beginning their day in the gardens near the Like-A-Fishhook village just above the Missouri River in North Dakota.

That was some 90 to 100 years ago. Remnants of what happened then are now being captured by the Fort Berthold Community College, Three Affiliated Tribes, University of North Dakota, and community volunteers who are gardening with the same seeds used by the tribal members’ ancestors.

A seminar about the history of Oscar Will’s seed company sparked the interest of Amy Mossett in traditional gardening and its cultural aspects. Dr. Fred Schneider, professor of anthropology at the University of North Dakota, presented the history of the Oscar Will seed company. He told the seminar audience that many of Will’s seeds came from Fort Berthold. The Three Tribes’ corn, potatoes, beans, squash, and other seeds have spread throughout this nation and the world. According to Schneider, these seeds were the starting points of some of the current crops we have today.

The Hidatsa red bean, for example, was “traditionally tougher than nails,” he said. Tribal people who have used the beans have told Schneider that the texture and flavor make excellent chili. The Mandan red corn is good for parching corn because of its flavor. The corn doesn’t have the hard outer shell. Both traditional winter Arikara (Sahnish) and Mandan banquet squash have a very good taste. People who don’t like squash have told Schneider that this winter squash tasted very good. The squash is well adapted to the harsh Dakota climate, growing hardy and productive plants.

The project at Fort Berthold Community College (FBCC) started three years ago as an apprenticeship program involving community elders. “We are the master gardeners. We are the teachers,” said Amy Mossett, then a tribal college instructor. She recruited Tillie Walker and Rosemarie Mandan, both Hidatsa elders, to work in the program. Mossett, a Mandan-Hidatsa and herself a tribal college graduate, said, “We have always gardened. Women were hard workers, and they did most of the gardening,” she said. Now they are passing these skills on to the apprentices.

The project site resembles the area where the old gardens grew. It is located in the fertile lowlands south of the Four Bears bridge where the fingers of Lake Sakakawea reach into the Three Tribes’ community. When it floods, the land is left rich in nutrients, just as the old gardens along the river were. Corn and beans have a symbiotic relationship, Mossett said. “They take care of each other — they nourish each other.” The vines keep the corn stalks in place, and the corn stalk and leaves provide shade for the beans. The squash was planted on the edges of the garden because the leaves were so huge. They use the sunflowers as a fence to keep plants from cross pollinating. The traditional sunflowers were different from those grown today. Each one has many heads, like a bouquet of flowers.

None of this would be possible if it weren’t for O.H. Will and his son, George, who owned a seed company in Bismarck. They collected and saved the ancient seeds, Schneider said. George continued his father’s business. Mossett said they also received traditional seeds from Schneider; Gerard Baker (Mandan-Hidatsa), former superintendent of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park; and two Hidatsa elders, Tillie Walker and Cora Black Bear.

Pearl Howard, an Arikara elder from White Shield, said she remembered George Will visiting their farm when she was young. “He was the seed man,” she said. “We always had gardens. We needed to. If we didn’t, we would starve in the winter,” Howard said. Not only did the Wills buy and sell seeds, but they were the first company to hire Indian people in North Dakota, said Schneider. “You can look at their records and see the names of the Indian people they hired.” The largest private seed preservation project in the Americas is The Seed Savers Exchange, located in Decorah, Iowa, and they have corn and squash from the Three Tribes. Despite efforts to preserve the Three Tribes’ seeds, however, not all of them have survived. Castle McLaughlin, who was working on the Will collection, found some black bean seeds, but they were too old to germinate.

FBCC President Elizabeth Yellow Bird Demaray (Arikara) knows the college’s gardening projects are benefiting the whole community. “I took a trunk load of vegetables to the elders, and they were very pleased,” she said.

For more information about the history of seeds, see George Will and George Hyde’s book, Corn Among the Indians of the Missouri River. For information about the traditional gardens, contact FBCC President Liz Demaray at 701/ 627-4738.

Amy Mossett demonstrates traditional gardening using an antler rake. Photo by Tom Stromme

Remembering traditional foods

Dorreen Yellow Bird (Arikara) is a journalist and columnist for the Grand Forks Herald. Writing the article brought back many memories for about her youth on the Fort Berthold Reservation: “My mother and aunt can remember the seed guys coming around. We had gardens using traditional parch corn seeds that my dad, Grover Yellow Bird, planted when I was young. I don’t know what happened to the seeds. He always kept and stored them himself. I thought about that when I was doing this story.

“He did the planting and tending of this corn. Then in the winter, he would make tongue soup and parch the corn. He used a cast iron skillet and stirred the corn with a corncob. He would make a tongue sandwich, put the soup in a bowl, and pour the parch corn over the soup — kind of like oyster crackers. Sometimes we would just eat it with butter and salt. He had a ritual about his parch corn. It had to be a cold day in the winter. Remembering this makes me hungry.

“I might have been the only one of the 13 kids who would eat the tongue sandwich, probably because of how it looked. Since my father passed away some 25 years ago, I’ve never cooked it for my family because they couldn’t stand the sight of it. When I started Sundancing several years ago, our fast was broken after four days without food by boiled buffalo tongue and warm chokecheery juice. Nothing tasted better than that juicy, succulent tongue.”