Hidatsa Garden -- Knife River Indian Villages NHS, Stanton ND
N 47° 19.901 W 101° 23.069
14T E 319847 N 5244781
An interpretive panel at the Knife River Indian Villages NHS explains traditional Hidatsa gardening techniques
Waymark Code: WM17GE6
Location: North Dakota, United States
Date Posted: 02/17/2023
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The Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site is a fascinating glimpse into the way that Indian tribes along the Missouri and Knife Rivers lived before the Europeans arrived.
This National Historic Site also contains the Indian village that to St. Charbonneau and his wife Sacajawea lived in at the time the Lewis and Clark expedition came through and hired them both to accompany the explorers on their trek to the Pacific Ocean and back.
The waymarked historical marker reads as follows:
"HIDATSA GARDEN
With simple tools, Hidatsa women grew corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers in the fertile soil along the Missouri and Knife rivers.
“My grandmother Turtle made scarecrows to frighten away the birds . . . She drove to sticks for legs, and bound to other sticks to them for arms; on the top she fastened a ball of cast-away skins . . . Such a scarecrow looked wicked!”
[photo]
Hidatsa woman hoeing squash with bone hoe, 1912
Buffalo Bird Woman, known in Hidatsa as Maxidiwiac, was born about 1839, in an earth lodge along the Knife River in present-day North Dakota. In 1845, her people moved upstream and built Like-a-fishhook village, which they shared with the Mandan and Arikara. There, Buffalo Bird Woman grew up to become an expert in traditional Hidatsa gardening.
Mapi (Sunflower)
“Usually we planted sunflowers only around the edges of the field. We thought a field surrounded thus by a sparse sown row of sunflowers, had a handsome appearance.”
Ko’xati (Corn)
“We knew when corn planting time came by observing the leaves of the wild gooseberry bushes. This is the first of the woods to leaf in the spring.”
Ama’ca (Beans)
“In the spring, when I came to plant beans, I was careful to select seats for the following points: seed should be fully ripe . . . plump, and of good size.”
Kaku’I (Squash)
“We had a reason for planting the squash seeds in the side of the hill. If we planted them in level ground the rains would beat down the soil . . . but if we planted the sprouts on the side of the hill, the water from the rains would flow over them and keep the soil soft.”
Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden"
Roadside: no
City: no
Other: yes
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