Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30 143
of September when they returned to harvest their
corn:
This (roasting-ear time) was a specially busy season. After
providing a good supply of fuel, fires were built about the
patches, and the squaws and children were occupied from
early morning till nightfall in gathering, roasting, shelling,
and drying corn. The corn after picking was thrown in
armfuls into the fire and roasted, still in the husks. The husks
were then removed, the kernels cut from the cob with the
sharpened edge of a clam shell and spread upon outstretched
blankets or skins till dried by the rays of the sun. It was then
stored away in skin bags for future use. The work of drying
usually continued as long as any corn was to be found in fit
condition. Whatever corn was not dried was allowed to ripen
till October, when it was gathered and cached.
Gene Weltfish (1937:35, 40; 1965:240-245) corroborated
Dunbar's observations on the Pawnee.
She described further the method of drying the
shelled corn after it had been removed from the
cob (Weltfish, 1965:245):
The kernels were cut off the cob row by row with a
freshwater clam shell and spread on a tanned hide to dry.
At night the kernels were first winnowed to remove any
chaff, gathered up and put in a flour sack, and then taken
into the tent. They were put in a wooden bowl and spilled
out from a height so that the wind would blow the chaff
away. Next morning they were again spread out on the
tanned hide. After several days, as they were being spilled
for winnowing in the evening, they would make a tapping
noise when they hit the hide, showing that the kernels were
completely dry.
Weltfish also stated that most of the ears of sweet
corn, as well as selected ears of green corn, were
braided together by their husks and hung up in
the earth lodges for the purposes of storage.
The tradition of shelling corn with mussel
valves apparently continued among the Pawnee
after they were removed to Oklahoma. When
Effie Blaine, a Pawnee woman, moved to Oklahoma,
she is reported to have brought some clam
shells with her from Nebraska (Martha Royce
Blaine, pers. comm., 1980). Viola Blaine Mcintosh,
Effie Blaine's daughter, remembers
watching her mother shell corn with clam shells,
and she recently described the procedure to Martha
Royce Blaine (pers. comm., 1981). The process
was essentially that recorded earlier among
the Pawnee in their Nebraska homeland.
The shelling of green corn with clam shells
appears to have been practiced also by the Wichita
within the twentieth century. When Clara
Moonlight, a Wichita, was a child, she observed
her mother preparing green corn. Her observations
were recalled recently to Waldo R. Wedel
who subsequently shared the information with
me (Waldo R. Wedel, pers. comm., 1980). According
to Clara Moonlight, her mother selected
cobs of corn with their husks still attached. The
corn was cooked on an iron sheet placed over a
trench in which a fire had been built. Sharpened
freshwater clam shells were then used to detach
the kernels from the partially roasted cobs.
Alternate Methods of Shelling Corn
Corn kernels can be detached from the cob in
several different ways other than with mussel
shells or with metal spoons, the Euro-American
trade counterparts of shells. Corn was probably
shelled by hand by many groups. This was the
procedure among the Iroquois (Morgan, 1962:
370) and Hidatsa (Wilson, 1917:38, 40, 48).
Buffalobird-woman, for example, described holding
ears of parboiled green corn in her left hand
while detaching kernels with her right thumb tip
or thumbnail. She also shelled seed corn from
ears dried on the drying stage in this manner. In
addition Buffalobird-woman commented that
"sometimes we shelled an ear by rubbing it
against another ear" (Wilson, 1917:48).
Threshing corn kernels off dried ears is another
method noted in the literature. The Illinois, observed
in 1687, dried their husked corn on reed
mats for about a week, and then threshed it "with
big sticks six or seven feet long, in a place which
they surround with matting to prevent the flying
kernels from getting lost" (Pease and Werner,
1934:344). The Hidatsa also threshed corn that
had been dried on the drying stage (Wilson,
1917:49-53). The threshing was carried out in
rectangular skin-covered booths constructed beneath
the drying stages. These structures were
described in detail by Buffalobird-woman and
were illustrated by her son, Edward Goodbird.