Redman's America; The Pueblos; Nomad Indians of the Plains

Admit. It. I am I am. Gowatsina. That is a greeting in the language of the ??Charisin?? pueblos. Pueblo, oh I think I've said before, is a Spanish word meaning village. When the Spaniards first came to the United States area in 1540, they found Indians already living in real villages. I don't mean hunting camps and I don't mean farming hamlets; real villages, sometimes with 2,000 people in them

and built either of brick or of stone. We're going to show pictures of those pretty soon. Now these Pueblo Indians are really unique in the United States. Their dramatic ceremonies and their beautiful costumes and their really civilized ways in general are quite different from those of most of the Indians I've been talking about. Now here are two Pueblo Indians. I won't say just which pueblo they're from because their costumes are a little mixed I think. The girl you see wears her hair simply hanging down as the women did often for daily work. And her costume, though, is very beautiful. I think I have mentioned that the Spaniards brought sheep-- black sheep and white sheep of a very ancient sort--and that the Pueblos, who had already been weaving long before the Spaniards came from 700 A.D. in fact, that they easily took to using wool and that they used it on their looms and began to make their clothing mostly of wool. Now she is wearing a very beautiful dress. It really is just in the form of a blanket, a square blanket. In

fact they didn't cut and shape clothing at all and I think you'd find it hard to cut and shape a beautiful piece of cloth that you had woven yourself. You'd rather wear just that way which is what they did. Now she is apparently from the pueblo of Acoma, so her dress is a black blanket made of the wool of black sheep but it's embroidered in red in designs which were used on their basketry. They took their designs right over and they're very interesting and pretty designs if we could see them clearly. It's embroidered in red and of course the Spaniards brought the needles and showed them about embroidery, so we think. There is a little discussion though. Now she's sorting corn and since she's wearing her beautiful costume I think she may be getting ready for a feast. Her young husband standing there beside her has a fillet around his head and in old times that might have been for...or I don't know just what. At present all the Pueblo Indians who are of many different villages and still keep their old customs, they usually wear a red bandana tied in just

the way he has tied it. It's the sign of Pueblo Indian and people getting off the train at Albuquerque or getting out of their cars on Route 66 may see Indians dressed in this way and they'll know that they've come from a pueblo with some of their Pueblo crafts to sell. Now his blanket is also made of wool. They did... We'll hear later how they also used cotton but his blanket is made of wool, ah, the ah, mostly of the wool of black sheep which really were sort of brownish. Then it has stripes from the white sheep and in between there are little stripes of indigo. The Spaniards brought indigo up from Mexico where it really grows and the Pueblos were willing to learn. Indians, I keep saying, will always learn if they see something they want. It's only when they're told to do something they don't want that they act as though they couldn't possibly learn. So do other people. Now his stockings are of white cotton and they're knitted in a very elaborate open-work style. We haven't quite decided whether that's ancient but it seems that possibly it is. Then his moccasins are high, you see,

above the ankle. They're made in quite a new shape. We haven't seen any moccasins like that in the other sessions we've had. These are made somewhat as our tennis shoes or sneakers are made; that is, the sole is crimped up a little bit around the upper. The upper is made of buckskin but it's dyed with alder bark and so that these moccasins, if we could see the color, are brown. We'll hear later that other people in the Southwest also wore those brown moccasins. Now in his hand he has the rabbit stick. I think these people must be getting ready for a feast. And that he is going out with that rabbit stick to help the other people hunt rabbits. And this stick I did show when I was talking about the really ancient pueblos and mention that the men would chase a whole group of rabbits and throw these boomerang shaped sticks to club them and leave them unconscious so they could easily pick them up and, I guess, wring their necks. Now we had better look at the map because the fact is, that these Pueblos are

many and different. And I won't be able nearly enough to talk about the differences and name all the Pueblos. Many people are surprised, have been when they heard these talks, to know that Indians are different. Well not only Indians in the United States are different but Pueblos are different. There are at least 20 villages and a good many more now. And especially of two different kinds. Now here on our map is New Mexico where the Rio Grande and the Pinca, those rivers had a good deal more water in them in ancient days and the white strips here show that this was valley country where there was grass and where the people could have fields pretty easily and even make little irrigation ditches, very simple ones, from the rivers to water their fields. So they didn't have quite as difficult a time as the people further out in the desert. Now out in this direction, which people pass if they take Route 66 which many do now on vacation, here we have the brown

desert. And it really is a desert. If you look out of the train windows or look out of the car windows and you see absolutely flat barren fields with almost nothing in them. Sometimes there are little twisted juniper trees where you can't get a long straight log and just very small bushes. So here, the people had a really hard time and it's amazing the devices and the interesting ways of living that they worked out to overcome that difficulty. One thing is that it's dry most of the year and that the rains only come in mid summer. Now we have a film that shows how some of the old pueblos looked. This one is in two or three stories you can see. If anybody's crossed New York harbor from New Jersey to the New York side, you may have seen the medical center in a terraced building like a modern version of one of those ancient pueblos. Here is the pueblo of ??Walti?? It looks pretty well dilapidated and I think part of this is a deserted section of

it. But you can see this one happens to be built of stone because in the desert there isn't even clay that can work well. These are little stones. Then here is another pueblo, Acoma, which is on top of a big flat mesa, which the Spaniards could not scale. The Pueblo people by the way, when they were attacked, some of them simply threw themselves off the edge of that pueblo, committing suicide rather than have the Conquistadores conquer them. You can see the little houses and the ladders going up the second stories that's rather far back. Now we have a larger model of a pueblo which will show you a little more about how it was built. I mentioned, in talking about other places, that every Indian group had some particular material which they used for everything they possibly could: for houses and for utensils and sometimes canoes and so forth, and I've mentioned how the forest people used poles and bark and the people in the plains used buffalo hides for their houses and

even for their containers and their cooking things. Now here there was no forest and there was no buffalo and what they used was just the clay, the earth itself. It's amazing the devices that they worked out of clay and stone. Now here's the pueblo. Here is the wall of the lowest tier of houses. You can see here the bricks, which are the insides. And then it's, ah, over the bricks comes clay, which in this case is generally brown. The men make the bricks and set them them up but the woman did the smearing with clay. They're surprising small hands. The women would stand here and smear. You can almost see the curved lines. with which she covered the bricks with her little brown...brown clay. Then over it comes the roof. This was made of tall pine logs. And of course they had to go a long distance as time went on to get those logs. They are placed across the top the walls. Then over them in the

other direction go smaller, lighter poles. Over that goes a great heap of brush and then over that clay so that you finally have a roof almost two feet thick and strong enough to walk on. Now here you can see how the roof juts out, the roof of the lower story juts out, and the next story is set back so that the people who live in this house have a little terrace on which they can come out. And here is their oven. This, by the way, the Spaniards called a beehive oven. It does look the shape of a beehive. It's a very ancient shape. You can find things like that in Mesopotamia in very early days and I've photographed them on the island of Cyprus. Now here's the ladder by which people go up from the first story to the second. The first story has no windows and no doors. And in case of attack by an enemy, people could simply pull up this ladder and it was an impregnable fortress. Now the ladder is rather modern. In ancient times, they got one of those straight pine logs, put notches in it, and leaned it against the wall.

This building, of course, having no door has to be entered from the roof, through a trap door. And inside there is another ladder going down so that in old Pueblo stories when you hear about a man entering a house, sometimes he did it with a deer on his shoulder, but here it says so then he went up the ladder and down the ladder. There was of course no door here in very ancient days. It would be another ladder and a trap door here and somebody would go up the ladder and down the ladder. A man with a deer or a woman with a pot of water on her head. And here is the next story. On the very top story quite often the crier stood when there was a ceremony or when people were going to gather for common word, the crier would stand up there and call come all you people, it's time to do this or do that. Now we have some pictures of the building of a pueblo house. Of course, it was of clay. In fact, I think this picture is clay. In the far desert sometimes the houses were stone. There was good flat stone that broke off in flat

pieces which they could easily use. Here we have a man mixing clay. Of course, he's a modern Indian. We have really no pictures of the very ancient ones. The man mixed the clay only with water. Sometimes he puts some straw with it. Remember the Israelites in ancient times. Here he is building the wall. These bricks, in very old times, were shaped by hand. Of course, each one was more or less different. They looked like big pin cushions. Then later a great wooden frame that stretched over yards of land was made. Something like an enormous muffin tin we might say. Then the men built the wall and men put the roof on. Then women, as I've said, smeared the wall with clay, and it was a privilege. Sometimes tourists have seen an old lady smearing the clay on and been quite shocked and wondered why the men didn't do that for her. But that was her privilege. She would have

been insulted if they'd taken it away from her. Now here's a picture of an old pueblo. My ideal picture of course, cut open so you can see the various rooms in it. Each family generally had one room. At least one room with light. You see these would have a trap door. Then inside there would be a little door leading far in. You can see that the rooms under this great mass would be entirely dark. And there, the harvest was kept: the corn, beans and squash which they tried to have for three years ahead because there were sometimes absolutely barren years when the rain wasn't enough to let you have the crops. Now each of those rooms would belong to one woman and her husband. The house was the woman's property in the western pueblos and changed a little bit as we go east to where things are a little more comfortable. But in the west the woman owned the house. Her husband came to live with her. And when her daughter was old enough to marry, a new building, a new room, might be put on here

and the daughter's husband would come to live with her and another daughter's husband would live with her. Then here we see the outside of a pueblo. This is again a rather modern one because it has windows and doors and we see the beehive oven and the women working here and the men coming with a burden. Outside on the terrace or on the ground was a regular place where people work because obviously inside was pretty dark and cold. Here is a picture of a room inside. I think the wall, this being a museum exhibit, the wall's a little too smooth. But now we see the chimney which was built out of wood actually, then covered with clay, ah built with wood by the man, then covered with clay by the woman. And, ah, here are the grinding bins which I'll show in a minute. The man is coming in from the field perhaps with some harvest in his carrying basket. His boy with a digging stick is with him and the woman sits here making a mat that they'll put on the floor so as not to sit on the earth.

Then here's a large picture. There's a fireplace again. Within it are three stones. And the fires, everybody knows, that Indian fires were small. Our idea of a great pile of blazing logs is a European idea from forest country. But the Indians made a little fire then above it is the standby of some of the Western Pueblos. I find I am talking more about the Western ones because they've kept some of their old customs the Eastern ones are getting pretty well changed. Well here is the flat stone very flat and smooth indeed on which she makes the wafer bread out of corn meal and water, mixing it in this. She's mixing it now in the jar. Then she will take out a handful, throw it on the hot stone, let it sizzle just for a half second, turn it over, take it out and she has wafer bread for the ceremony. Now the man of course had a very different occupation. His job was planting and we have a film that shows a little of

that. With other Indians I've talked about the women did the planting, most people may remember, and the men were occupied with war and hunting. But in this barren country there wasn't much hunting. And nobody wanted to attack the pueblos very much and at most times there was nothing to get and so they were fairly peaceful people and that took away the men's old occupation. So the men here, we'll find, did the planting. You can see that he has taken a stick and made little holes in the ground. Then his boy came behind him and put in four kernels of corn into each. There they are again, you can get a better view of them. The boy puts four kernels into each hole and then covers it. The tool that the man was using was a planting stick and this is just a piece of wood from as straight a tree as they could find and it wasn't easy to find a straight tree. It has little crutch on which he puts his foot when he is

making the whole. And, ah, that was the only tool. Sometimes they didn't weed at all. Sometimes they did just cut off the tops of the weeds and they sent the children to scare the crows away which was very, very necessary. Now while the corn was in the field in the Western pueblos, at least, it belonged to the man who did the planting. In fact the men did the planting in all the pueblos, although the ownership of house by women and inheritance through the mother was mostly in the west. Now here we can see a great harvest of corn. It's most impressive if you go to the pueblo of ?Jemez? in New Mexico at harvest time. You can still see these great piles of corn. And the corn was in four colors at least: black, white, yellow and blue, which is a sort of gray, and sometimes pink and sometimes varied. You can see piles at least as large as this. And they were all laid out in colors, the colors separate, on a roof.

Here are the chili peppers, which were not really a food of the Pueblos but it was brought up from Mexico very early and the Pueblos now all use chili peppers. Now after the corn had been housed and that was done, it'd be a very gay and pleasant affair when the young people got together and sang songs and competed with each other as to how many corn, how many ears they could husk. When that was done, the corn was dried on the roof, as I've said. Then it had to be ground into flour and that was the job that the woman did every day of her life. Generally it was the girls who did it, but here we see an older woman. She's rather modern, too. She has a gingham blouse on instead of the bare shoulder that we saw the other woman has. Now in the eastern area, people may remember that the corn was pounded, that the woman took a great mortar made of a hollow tree trunk and pounded the corn into

flour; got the husks away. Here in the West, we always find the corn ground. And this woman has in her house, this is a real Pueblo house in a real photograph, you can see how rough the wall looks. And you also, I'm afraid, she has some modern cans but she is doing the old grinding. Now this first bin, the bins are, ...well there's a piece of wood here but this is a bit modern. The first bin has a sloping stone of granite which is very rough. Then she puts the corn kernels on it and takes this cylindrical stone, which the Spaniards called a mono, and we do that still--rubs that up and down on the coarse kernels and reduces them to some extent. Then somebody else takes the final one or if she has no daughter, in this case she does, moves to this one and grinds it finer and then to this one, grinds it finer yet. Now before ceremonies three women would grind together -- generally maidens who were supposed to be getting ready for marriage and showing what good

work they could do. A man then might stand in the doorway, way over here, and play the flute while they did it. And we have some music that is not exactly like the song that was sung for grinding but might give you some idea. Then also we have a film that shows the women grinding with their... There's one at the edge who has the coarsest material. You can probably see how [Indian singing in background] coarse it looks. The next one has a finer and beside her is [Indian singing in background] the pile of other corn. There you see how very rough the corn is in this first bin. [Indian singing in background] And you may possibly hear the music that goes slowly and rather in monotone. [Indian singing in background] Now the corn is cooked, with the Pueblos, in [Indian singing in background] dozens of different ways. In fact, there seems to be something like 50 [Indian singing in background] recipes for corn, in cakes and in mush and mixed with meat, mixed with berries, all sorts of varieties. A very

usual way to cook it was as mush. And this is a cooking pot. I had shown this before when I was talking about the ancient days in Pueblo country when a pot was made by coiling, and we're going to see that later, and it was roughened on the outside with little nicks from a piece of wood. This is a regular cooking pot and it had mush in it so often that it's become completely watertight. Although most of the Pueblo pots really were not watertight. Tourists have found that out to their sorrow. This is a more elaborate pot. And then, ah, then we have also baskets. Now I have mentioned that every people that has ever been heard of has made some sort of container out of grass or branches. That would be the easiest thing to do of course for any people. Even if they didn't have much technique they could put some branches together and make some sort of container to carry fish or firewood. Our Pueblos didn't all

make baskets. They had too many pots that actually they didn't have to. This is a Hopi tray which was made by the bride when she was going to marry and wish to show what good work she could do. And this is the wafer bread that I've spoken of, from the hot stone, like a very thin pancake. It was made of blue corn meal and water and served at ceremonies. Then here is another basket, a tray again made by a Hopi. And this is a winnowing tray on which the beans were put after they had been harvested and they had been trampled, maybe by goats and sheep, maybe people, to get the husks a little bit separated. Then the woman would bounce the tray up and down in a wind and pretty soon the light husks would fly off and the heavier beans would be there. Then here's another tray. This one also was used by the bride

to put the wafer bread that she had cooked for her husband because brides had to do a good deal of work before they were accepted as proper to marry. Now I really have a bride to show you. This is a Hopi bride. And she's dressed in a very conventional bride's costume. In the first place, her hair is done in what was called a butterfly style. She took little rounds of willow, which is easily curved, tied them together and then tied her black hair over these rounds so that they stuck out on each side like a butterfly wing. The butterfly headdress was used in dances too. And of course when a maiden was dressed like this, it was a sign she was either ready to marry or was really a bride. Now over her shoulders she wears a white cotton mantle which was woven by her fiance, or he and his friends. Then she has one of the really old dresses.

The Spaniards called these mantas. They were little square blankets made out of the wool of black sheep. And sometimes there was a little blue at top and bottom. The weave was specialized. It had to be done just that way. Herringbone at one point and another kind of weave at another. It was just a little square blanket. In fact these Pueblo people who wove never cut their clothing at all. They just used square blankets for the girl and for the man. And you can see why. I think if I had woven a good square piece of material, I would hate to cut it. And of course they didn't have sewing machines to bind the edge. That would have been pretty hard. Now she has a sash which is red, with interesting designs on it in rather basketry shape and a very elaborate sort of weave that I won't take time to describe. And on her feet and legs she has white buckskin moccasins. To make those too

it was necessary that her fiance should get a deer. Because it takes a whole deer skin to do these. They're made...the style of them is like the brown moccasins that the man had in our first exhibit. But then there's sort of ?putty? arrangement around her legs almost up to the knee. Now it's good hard work to make such moccasins. The boy had to go out and hunt deer, get a good skin. Then it had to be dressed. And the men did the deer skin dressing in this tribe, in all these tribes. Obviously we can see they didn't have so much hunting to do and they had almost no war so they had time for these very interesting crafts, as well as their farming. Now he and his relatives, his male relatives, did the work of making this whole trousseau. I've mentioned that especially in the Western pueblos, and here I'm talking about Hopi which is a western pueblo. In those desert pueblos, the man went home to live with his wife. And it was he with his male relatives in his

family who got the trousseau together. They did the weaving and they got the deer. He couldn't of course ask his father who belonged to a different clan. He asked his brothers and his cousins and his mother's brothers and they all gathered in their ceremonial room, which the Hopis called a kiva, and did this work for months. Then there was a very elaborate arrangement which I won't have time to go into by which the woman proved that she could cook and the man proved he could hunt and their relatives had various conferences. It all took a month before they were properly married. But finally everything was decided and the girl took her man home to live with her. If she, if they hadn't done all of this payment--sometimes people said if she had a man without paying it was no real marriage. But most of them in old days always did. So now that we have done so very little in telling the ways of the Pueblos--I could take weeks on them, and of course I could on almost any Indian group. I keep saying that and it's true. But since we've had first glimpse of them, I'll talk later about their government and religion and then give a little time to their crafts, which were very interesting and which are being carried out in the present day in some Pueblos. But now the time is up so I bid the Charisin's goodbye. ?Drewichasay, drewichasay? [Indian music and singing]

Indian music and singing Indian music and singing Indian music and singing

Indian music and singing Indian music and singing Indian music and singing Indian music and singing. Hau kola. That's my Sioux Indian greeting which means "hail friend", and this time is very appropriate because I really

am going to talk about Sioux along with the other wandering buffalo hunting Indians of the plains, including the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Black Foot, and further south, Kiowa, Ute, Comanche and a great many others. I have already mentioned the fact that there were early village dwellers in the plains, long before the great inrush of wandering buffalo hunters arrived. I've talked about the men and so forth. Now we get to the wanderers, who are really the people that everybody thinks of as the Indian. In fact I know Europeans who are amazed to hear there's any other kind of Indian. This time we have some actual Plains Indian in the old dress that they wore before the white traders had arrived and had given them too many beads and too much cloth. This is Running Bull and his wife. Running Bull, you can see, wears an old costume of the date before beads were used. It

is made of buckskin. I regret to say that he doesn't have the two long braids he ought to have. After all he's a modern Sioux and doesn't wear this costume every day. His shirt is a buckskin trimmed with fringe not beads. He has then a red woolen breech cloth. I'm afraid I couldn't get everything of buckskin. And finely, buckskin leggings. Now his moccasins you might like to look at. I've been talking often about the difference in moccasins and anyone who wants to become a sort of expert on Indian costume and at least recognize customs of the different areas knows that in the east the moccasins had soft soles. I've showed those. They were a sort of piece of buckskin just wrapped around the foot and gathered up the instep. Now when Indians got to the plains they began, not immediately, but they finally did begin to take a heavy, untanned buffalo hide and make hard soles. Would you turn them over Running Bull and let us see the hard sole? That's really very different from other moccasins I've showed

and perhaps when you go to museums you'll be able to notice that sort. They ought not to have had bead decorations that isn't always possible for me to get things of just the right era and of just the right material. Even any museum can hardly be supplied with all it needs in that way. Now his wife is ?Hodessa?. And that means that she is from one of those village tribes I've talked about before--the people who moved into the plains and lived along the Missouri before buffalo hunting became a great universal practice. And when they were raising some beans and corn and squash. Her name is Good Cherries. It really is her name. And she is wearing the kind of costume that you ought to recognize as a Plains woman costume. The eastern Indians whom I've shown before wore two-piece costumes: a wrap around skirt--very simple, I hope people remember-- and then often they didn't have any sort of shirt but they did sometimes wear a sort of cape on the upper part of the body or else something like a sack or the upper

part of a kimono. Now the Plains women wore a whole dress and it's a very handsome garment, you can see. There was once an attempt to popularize those and to get the American women to wear them for evening. But it's too hard to clean buckskin. I think that's what happened. Now it's just two buckskin sewed together, the sleeves being part of the whole dress. And they sewed down the side. Would you hold up your arm so we see the seam down the side decorated with fringe? Then in her hand she holds something that was the usual job of women on the plains. It's a root which she dug in great quantities, called wild turnips. And I really do not know the botanical name. That's a sign of what women's work was. Then on her feet she has a sort of moccasin that the women often wore. The legging is part of the moccasin. They're sewed together but those also have hard soles

and this is a real old one, again dating from the time before the traders had brought the beads. And sometimes of course Plains Indians traded for porcupine quills or could get some. I once went out with a carload of Plains Indians and we looked for porcupine. We found one. We were in Canada this time and there some were trees quite near. It wasn't thorough plains. We found the porcupine who ran ahead of us and we all ran after him. The men ran after him and I ran after the men. The women sat in the car and they laughed their heads off to see these great big people chasing a little animal, which finally went up in a tree and just sat and looked at us. Well the Plains Indian women did sometimes get quills but more often before the beads came the decorations were fringe. Now behind them hangs a buffalo robe and that of course was one of the staples, one of the important articles of clothing. We'll see later that they use it also to make their dwellings. But the man

should have been wearing that over his shoulder if he could stand the heat of it. It's unchanged fur on one side and then on the other side--would you hold it up so we see the decoration? The decoration, it's been thoroughly cleaned by the woman, of course. She has cleaned and fleshed it and rubbed it, as you'll see in a little film that we can show later. And then the man has painted on it a design. You can just see a little of it. Now let us look at the map which I have to show every time to give people some idea of where these people live of whom we're talking. Here's our great big relief map of the United States and on it is the enormous plains area. This is a bigger area than we've had for any Indians. You can see it goes from the border of Canada and across the plains with Plains Indians in them stretched into Canada also. But I'm not including that in these talks. Then it

goes all the way down to halfway through Texas. It goes practically to the Mississippi on one side and to the Rockies on the other side. Now many people imagine that the Plains Indians lived in that area and hunted buffalo in it, oh perhaps, for thousands of years. They often talk as though they believe that. But of course that isn't the case at all. The fact is that Plains Indians of the kind we're talking about this time--the horse and buffalo Indians--did not move there until they could get horses in quantity. And that didn't happen until beginning in 1600. The Spanish came to south New Mexico in 1598 just about. Department store name just about 1600 really. And they brought horses. Then they traded them to the Indians. The Indians also stole them, going up to the ranches and scaring the horses, stampeding them out and taking them back to their own camps. And they also traded. The Indians, as I'll be saying later, used to take slaves. And Indians did do that. They would take slaves and

trade them with the Spaniards for horses and little by little the use of horses stretched all the way up through this big Plains area. Now when that was so, Indians who had been living in the woodlands or in the desert or in the mountains and just coming occasionally to get a buffalo as well as they could on foot, those people began to move. And the Sioux came from somewhere on the Mississippi where they had been eating plant food and hunting deer and rabbits and using canoes. We never think of the Sioux and canoes, but they had. And they finally came from Minnesota. It's our last news of them before they crossed the Missouri and really got out into the plains. Then the Cheyenne and Arapaho came from the eastern woodland country somewhere. They had ledgers of it, we don't know just where. The Kiowa came from somewhere in the south apparently. Comanche from over here. Shoshone from up here. And others from all around that big area were charmed

by this wonderful possibility of the horse who would make buffalo hunting in quantity possible. Now that began in 1600. Many of them didn't get horses, the Sioux didn't, in fact, until after 1700. And that great hunting life ended in the late 1800s. So you see it was not a long, well entrenched life. It was a short life. But it was a rich one. And I've often alluded to those horse Indians as the new rich of the plains, who were rich for about 200 years and then lost their riches and have been in great despair, many of them, since. Now we have some films that give some picture of the life of Indian people after they had horses. It as hard to get anything before that time. This is a picture of a camp and you can see the home is the famous teepee. Many people imagine that all Indians lived in teepees. But, no, the teepees were used by wandering people. They weren't always

covered with buffalo hide. These that you see were covered with buffalo hide. And there's one that you see close by. Later on you'll see something of how they were made. Here is a meat-drying rack. The meat drying in the sun. They didn't use smoke for it at all. Now, that's just a faint picture of what could be done after they had horses. I did mention I think in another talk when I was talking about the village Indians and how they ultimately got horses and what they did. I was mentioning how difficult it was to get buffalo before the horse arrived. You can imagine those enormous creatures that weigh a ton or so and go in herds of thousands that it was no simple thing for a man on foot to do anything about such animals. This is a painting, of course, by from descriptions by Indians of a herd of buffalo crossing the Missouri. The Missouri, of course, was the great river in the plains and it's the one that the Sioux had to cross in

their deer-skin boats now and then when they moved. There's a herd crossing. Actually the stories say and the old pioneers said that the buffalo who blackened the plains so you couldn't see that there was grass there, it looked like a moving like carpet, that they took three days to cross the Missouri. And of course there was a great chance then for people to shoot them with arrows as they went. Now another way that could be done before the horses were got and could run along beside the buffalo, another way was for men to take a wolf skin, then to go on all fours. These are the man's arms and he has a white wolf skin over his back, two of them. They could crawl up quite close to the buffalo who weren't very much afraid of such a small animal. Of course when the wolf got really near and started to jump for their throat, which was the wolf's way of attack, then the buffalo would all stampede and go off in a thundering herd. But before that the men had their bows and arrows hidden under the white skin and they could get one or two but that was not much

meat really. That was what had to be done before the great event of the horses. Also I might mention that they, and I have mentioned I think in another talk, that they sometimes managed to drive the buffalo over a cliff and break their legs so that then they could come up and get them skinned, just as early people have done with the mammoth. Now when the horse finally arrived, and I'll keep mentioning that fact of the late arrival of the horse with different tribes and the amazing change in the life of any tribe which came when they got the horse. Just as great a change as when they got corn for instance. Here is a picture, due to Indian description, of how the hunt was carried on when they had horses. You can see how close a man could get to the buffalo and how he could stab him just forward of the hump. This man is doing an amazing feat jumping from one buffalo to another. Some of those tricks which Indians taught themselves, worked out for themselves, in their buffalo hunt were taken over by our

cowboys. And here these people have cut off a small group of buffalo from the herd just as the cowboys cut off a number of cows that are to be shipped. And then they bring in among them with their horses and they're doing something like bulldozing actually. A good deal of that cowboy technique that you see in rodeos came from the Indians actually. Now when the horse had come and when this great riches was before a tribe so that they could have all the meat they wanted, they didn't have to wander and dress themselves up in skins and wait and hope. They could all go together with their horses to a point where they thought the buffalo would be passing and they could set up camp. Now this is a picture of the kind of camp that was set up in midsummer when the buffalo really were migrating through the plains. The Indians would, a whole tribe--the Omaha did it this way, the Sioux, almost all of them--the whole tribe would migrate. They would set up their teepees, and I must talk further about teepees in a moment. These are their little pointed

dwellings covered with buffalo hide. They set them up, usually in a circle. Then the men with their horses and the women with their gathering equipment would all settle down, wait for the herd to appear then the hunters would go out on their trained horses and cut the number out from the herd, follow them along, stab them with their spears or perhaps wound them with arrows and then tell the women to come bring in the meat. Now another short film, giving you some idea of the treatment of buffalo hide. These women are carrying a hide. They have brought it from the field where the man had killed a buffalo. Now they take it out on the ground and in the first place flesh it, get the flesh and fat off. First they're they're pegging it with wooden pegs so that it'll be straight. Then generally two women work together. And I remember one poetic Sioux who told me that those great sleeves they had with a fringe which you now see, they look like angel sleeves. She first scraped with a buffalo horn. Now she's smoothing with a smooth stone,

getting the hide ready so that the man, if he wishes, can paint pictures of his exploits on it and then they could hang it up in the teepee as a sort of wallpaper to keep the wind out. Now I did talk about the wild turnips that the woman gathered as well as bringing in the hide, treating it, getting the meat ready. She also gathered berries. The wild plums, which we have a great deal in Colorado, also grew all over the plain. The woman would gather those. And here's a film giving some picture of what she did with both the meat and the vegetables. She's, I think she's preparing a fire here. Small fire. Then she has taken out the paunch of the buffalo. She has made a tripod. Oh, this is first, the drying of meat. The meat had to be cut across the grain in very, very fine slices. I've seen that and in fact I've eaten it but I don't say I enjoyed it. It's hung up to dry in the sun.

Now she has the tripod where she's going to hang up the paunch of the buffalo. Here she has a little fire. She has two long tongs, we might say, of green wood. She's taking hot stones which have been heated in the fire, puts them in the buffalo paunch and inside there is the soup. She's going to heat the soup. Now she's pounding berries. This is a different kind of food. This is probably what Good Cherry knows about. She has either wild plums or wild cherries, some of the desert foods. They have to be pounded. Then they are dried. I suppose they've already been dried in this picture. Now they're being put into a skin sack and that can be carried on their wandering. It can be kept all winter. Or she may mix it with dried meat and pound them both and put the whole thing into an envelope. Now the meat has been put in the buffalo paunch and boiled and she's taking it out with her green stick as a

tong. I've eaten that at feasts and of course the idea at a feast was to have just as much of it as possible. But it's cooked without salt and they like it cooked very well-done. So I can't say that it suited the taste of a modern white person. Another film is going to show us more about the teepee. In all the areas where we've been so far I've mentioned there's some natural resource that is being used. And here buffalo hide is the one. Now she could not get any large logs to make this dwelling. She has three tall slender poles and those are carried with the family when they move. They're really so rare in the plains that they have to be carried. Now the three poles have been put up. Some tribes use four but this tribe uses three. Around them has been draped a great cape-like cover of buffalo hide. It looks like a circular cape only it's immensely larger. It takes sometimes 12 hides. Here is the inside of the teepee. A fire is going. The

man is sitting, he ought to be sitting, at the back of the teepee. The woman builds the fire and she's doing something rather naughty; she shouldn't go in front of the man. You didn't perhaps see the teepee too well and I'll show us more models that we have. It's made of buckskin, of course, not buffalo hide for such a small thing. But it's a very authentic model as far as the Indian who made it could tell us. You can see it's painted and the painting on the outside of the teepee was done by the man. Now women painted some things, but they never did the outside of the teepee. On that he painted horses. You can hardly see the horses but they are wonderful colors; they are purple and yellow and all sorts of magic colors. Then up here are other animals, perhaps meant to be deer. The teepee is the circular cape, as it were, out of which it's made is opened on the front and put together with sticks that go through holes

something like toggles. Then below it is a door. This would be a door of very heavy buffalo hide and sometimes it would have a design on it if the chief was an important one. Nowadays the women often bead that design. Now you see how the door is. It doesn't go down to the floor and it's quite small so that no enemy could get in there; could hardly get his foot or his head in without being smashed with a good club so that this was a very safe dwelling. Now one more thing about it is the ventilation. This circular cape is made with long pieces that stick out at the top and those have separate poles attached. The Indians call them the ears. This is one of the ears and I can take it quite down so that there's a great hole at the top to let in air. This would be done on warm days as they'd also open the whole front and put the flaps back. Then if the wind was blowing from this direction the ear can be completely closed. I won't try to close the other because it's fastened.

But this ear would be closed. The other would come up with it. A tight warm place where the family could sit. There were other things made of buffalo hide and I can't emphasize too often the fact that hide was used in this part of the world for all sorts of things which in the east might be made of reeds and in some of the western places might be made of basketry. It's a very good idea to realize the resources of any one area and then see how completely the Indians who live there use them. They make everything they possibly could out of their great resource and of course in this case buffalo hide. They use the hide for the covering of the teepee and they use it for the soles of the moccasins and undressed hide for their robes. And then there were numbers of bags and containers. I'll show more of them next time because we don't finish the plains this time. There's a film that gives us some idea of how the woman worked at her hide

making different things. This woman, this is a young girl supposedly, and the woman is showing her what to do. She has an awl. You saw an Iroquois woman doing the same thing. It was the Indian method of sewing before they got needles. She punches holes with an awl. Then she pulls sinew through it and that sinew is threaded through beads. She was doing bead work there. Then another use for buffalo hide was to make something which the white men used to call an Indian trunk. Now this is an Indian trunk. It's a very heavy, stiff piece of buffalo hide, not softened as they could soften it for a robe. It's made in envelope shape. When I open it you can see that it has a space where a good deal could be packed. Now inside that the woman could pack her dried meat which had been pounded up and mixed with dried berries and with fat. Fat is quite a preservative so that when that was all mixed together it would keep a very long time. Then she has painted her buffalo hide.You

remember the men's decoration on the teepee was horses and animals and perhaps something out of his dream. The woman never did things like that. The woman painted geometric designs. She was conservative. And this she did, I might mention, that both of them did their painting with the soft spongy end of a bone, not with a brush. I've often seen Indian painting represented, the Indian having a brush, but he didn't. It was the soft spongy end of a bone which would be drawn along. And these are water colors of course, iron oxide and, ah, well I'm afraid some of this is dye. (Laughs) We couldn't get a thoroughly original one but they did use iron oxide and zinc in various colors. This is a woman's decoration on her trunk. Then the man did some handicraft work. He made wooden dishes with stone tools in the first place. And we've seen wooden dishes before; they were a very much used

utensil with people who didn't have much pottery. Now the Plains people had hardly any pottery. It's almost safe to say they had none because they made a few quite rough things, not by the usual pottery method, but very rough, jerry-built method, you might say. But the man did carve out this bowl which would be used to serve all that boiled buffalo meat in. The people would sit down around the campfire with a bowl among them and everybody would take the meat out with his hand. It's been hollowed out, first by fire, and then smoothed with a stone then hollowed again, just as the eastern ones were done. Sometimes a spoon was used if there were guests and there might be small bowls or something in which the guests' food was to be placed. Here's a horn spoon made of a buffalo horn which was softened and then shaped. It's all in one piece. This is its handle and there is a little decoration of porcupine quills on it, with a very beautiful quill decoration hanging down.

This is the woman's implement. This is the hammer with which she pounded up the dried meat after the meat was thoroughly dry. If you ever see that, jerky is the name the white men use for it. It really was an old South American way to try to be "char'ki", but the whites got to calling it jerky. And we all use it now. She made it by pounding with a hammer. And pounding up the meat and pounding the berries and mixing them with fat. Now there is one more film that will show you the final dismantling of the teepee and moving away. You'll see that this teepee is a most useful, moveable dwelling. Here she's already got the poles down. Now those poles, the very ones that supported the buffalo hide, are tied to a horse's back. And then to the poles would be tied the trunks, the parfleches, the French used to call them and the whole family would go off perhaps putting a baby on top of the

trunk. And here you see them moving off across the plains with all their worldly goods dragging behind them tied to the poles which are going to form their abode when they get to the next camping place. In summer, as I've mentioned, the whole group would get together for the buffalo. And then they had perhaps a good deal of government. I'm coming to that next time too. They would have some government, they would have ceremonies, but then when winter came--when the buffalo migration was over--then they would hitch the ?travel? and they would go back, each family to some little creek perhaps where they could get water and where there were a few trees to give shelter or some buttes behind which they could put their tepees. They put the tepees up again and live on their dried meat for the winter. And also they often had a good deal of deer hunting and could get rabbits and other small game. That was the general life of the wandering Indians. The winter in separate families

in secluded little valleys and draws. Then the summer gathering together with a great pride where they'd all meet together and have a wonderful time. I asked a white man once, one of the Indian agents, what they did in this long summer camp. He said "oh, they just get acquainted, that's what they like". And I myself visited those camps several times found that there was a guest teepee. They found out that I had been sleeping in my car and they said "why didn't you come, we had a guest teepee, we could have taken care of you". Well there's more about them on another talk. Meantime it's time to say goodbye, but since I have a real Sioux with me I see no reason that I should try to talk Sioux. Will you say goodbye to us? (Man speaking another language). (Underhill) And tell us what that means. (Man) it means I shake your hand (Man speaking in another language). Tells us what that means. Man with a good heart. (Underhill) It's really a very beautiful goodbye. I wish we could have anything in English that would sound like that and that I could do. (Laughs) Say the last word again. (Words spoken in another language). Well, I've given up. But I hope

you've heard it. Music and singing Music and singing Music and singing Music and singing Music and singing Music and singing Music