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Show THE MANDANS----AGRICULTURE----ANIMALS USED FOR FOOD. 347 cultivated by the Mandans, Manitaries, and Arikkaras, attains a great height, and is suffered to grow up from the seeds, without having any care whatever bestowed upon it. It is not transplanted. When it is ripe the stalks are cut, dried, and powdered; or the leaves, with the small branches, are cut into little pieces. The taste and smell are disagreeable to an European, resembling camomile rather than tobacco. The plant is not now so much cultivated as formerly, being superseded by the more pleasant tobacco of the Whites ; but the species is still preserved. It is only on solemn occasions, for instance, in negotiations for peace, that this tobacco is still smoked ; the seed is, therefore, preserved in the medicine bag of the nation, that the plant may never be lost. When they mean to smoke this tobacco, a small quantity of fat is rubbed on it. The cultivation of the maize and other fields, of which each family prepares three, four, or five acres, takes place in the month of May. Rows of small furrows are made, into which the grains of maize are thrown singly, and covered with earth. Three times in the summer the plants are hoed, and the earth heaped up against them, that the moisture may have better access to them. The harvest takes place in October, when men, women, and children, each lend a helping hand. At present the women use, in their field labour, a broad iron hoe, with a crooked wooden handle, which they obtain from the merchants. Charbonneau recollected the time when they used the shoulder blade of the buffalo for this purpose. The fields are never fenced, but lie quite open and exposed. The wild plants of the prairie are used by the Mandans, and other people of the Upper Missouri; and to those before-mentioned, I can only add the feverolles (Faba minor equi?ia)t a fruit resembling the bean, which is said to grow in the ground, but which I did not see; there are many other roots in the prairie, which are used for food. The gourds are eaten fresh as well as dry. The beans are seldom eaten of one kind, but many sorts are mixed together. The maize is boiled or roasted, then pounded, mixed with fat, and made up into small cakes and baked. There are, of course, many other ways of dressing it. The sweet maize has a very pleasant taste, especially when it is in what is called the milky state; it is then boiled, dried, and laid by for use. All kinds of animals serve the Mandans for food; the bear, when it is young and fat, the wolf, the fox, in short, everything except the horse; the ermine is not eaten by many; and of birds they dislike the turkey-buzzard, and the raven, because they feed on the dead bodies deposited on the stages. They have a great aversion from serpents, but eat the turtle; the buffalo is the chief object of their chase, as it supplies them with skins, meat, tallow, marrowbones, sinews, and many other necessaries. Next to the buffalo the beaver is the most indispensable to them, since it not only furnishes them with valuable skins, but supplies them with delicate food, the fat tail, especially, being considered quite a dainty morsel by the Indians. Pemmican, I |