"Our camp on a summer's evening was a cheerful scene. At this hour, fires burned before most of the tipis.... Here a family sat eating their evening meal. Yonder, a circle of old men... in the firelight, joked and told stories.... We had dancing almost every evening in those good days.

"But for wee folks bedtime was rather early. In my father's family, it was soon after sunset. My mothers had laid dry grass around the tent wall, and on this had spread buffalo skins for beds.... My father often sat and sang me to sleep by the firelight.... with the moon of Yellow Leaves, we struck tents and went into winter camp. My tribe usually built their winter village down in the thick woods along the Missouri, out of reach of the cold prairie winds. It was of earth lodges, like those of our summer village... a second, or "twin lodge," was often built. This was a small lodge with a roof peaked like a tipi, but covered with bark and earth. A covered passage led from it to the main lodge. The twin lodge had two uses. In it the grandparents could sit, snug and warm... and the children of the household used it as a playhouse. I can just remember playing in our twin lodge, and making little feasts with bits of boiled tongue or dried berries that my mothers gave me."
 
- Waheenee (Buffalo Bird Woman), Hidatsa
 
 
 
 
"I am an old woman now. The buffalo and black-tail deer are gone, and our Indian ways are almost gone. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I ever lived them.... We no longer live in an earth lodge, but in a house with chimneys; and my son's wife cooks by a stove. But for me, I cannot forget our old ways. Often in summer I rise at daybreak and steal out to the cornfields; and as I hoe the corn I sing to it, as we did when I was young. No one cares for our corn songs now. Sometimes at evening I sit, looking out on the big Missouri. The sun sets, and dusk steals over the water. In the shadows I seem again to see our Indian village, with smoke curling upward from the earth lodges; and in the river's roar I hear the yells of the warriors, the laughter of little children as of old. It is but an old woman's dream. Again I see but shadows and hear only the roar of the river; and tears come into my eyes. Our Indian life, I know, is gone forever."