Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

144 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
Three or four women would normally work in the
booth at one time, threshing the corn with flails
of ash or cottonwood.
In some sources, cited previously, the use of a
knife in shelling corn appears to be almost a
taboo. On the other hand this procedure is reported
for the Iroquois (Harrington, 1908:589)
and for the Prairie Potawatomi or Mascouten
(Skinner, 1926b: 284).
Some American Indian groups employed
pointed sticks in shelling corn. The Pawnee used
such tools to pry off kernels from ears of mature
corn (Weltfish, 1965:244, 246, 252). This practice
is also indicated for the Hidatsa in Buffalobirdwoman's
statement that pointed sticks were sometimes
used in conjunction with the thumb or a
mussel shell in shelling corn (Wilson, 1917:40-
41). This method is also reflected in the 26th
stanza of an Omaha maize ritual song which,
freely translated, reads: "O hasten!/Rip from its
cob/My fruit as I stand/And eat me!" (Fletcher
and LaFlesche, 1911:262-268). The second line
of this Stanza is literally translated as "to push off
with a stick, to shell." Peter LeClaire, generally
recognized as the leading Ponca historian, reported
the former use of wooden stick corn shellers
among his tribe, and he carved such an implement
for James Howard (1965:45, pi. 22e).
Another technique employed by some Native
Americans apparently involved pounding the kernels
off the cob with a pestle or grinding stone.
Among the Pawnee, for example, Weltfish
(1965:240), describing a harvest scene in which
Grandma went to stay in a temporary willow
sapling shelter in her cornfield, narrated as follows:
She had a kettle along and a small mortar and pestle for
preparing her meals. She would pound some of the fresh
corn kernels from the roasted cobs and wrap them in corn
husks, putting them in the boiling water to make dumplings.
Arthur C. Parker (1910:54), an anthropologist of
Seneca background, discussed a similar method
in his extensive tome on Iroquois maize preparation
techniques:
Another method of bruising green corn on the cob was to
place a flat grinding stone in a large wooden or bark bowl,
hold the ear on the stone with one hand and mash the unripe
kernels with a milling stone held in the other hand. The
bruised corn was then brushed from the mortar stone and
the kernels that yet adhered to the cob, scraped off. When
enough material had been thus prepared the lower stone was
removed from the bowl and the mashed corn removed for
cooking.
Beyond these cases, of course, American Indians
almost everywhere used grinding stones, mullers,
mortars, and pestles in pulverizing corn kernels
once they were detached—by whatever method—
from the cob.
The use of deer jaws for shelling corn is exemplified
in tribes ranging from the northeastern
United States to the Plains. These artifacts were
first documented among the Iroquois by Parker
in 1903 and subsequently reported by him in
bulletins of the New York State Museum (Parker,
1907:544; 1910:53). Deer jaw corn scrapers were
also documented among the Iroquois by Harrington
(1908:580) and Waugh (1916:96, pi. 6c).
Parker (1910:53) described the type specimen,
which he collected among the Seneca, as follows:
It is simply one of the rami of a deer's lower jaw and is
complete without trimming or finishing in any way. The jaw
was held by the anterior toothless portion and with the sharp
back teeth the green corn was scraped from the cob. The
name of the implement, Yigassho"'gaya"to', is derived from
ogo"'sa, green corn, and yigowe"'to', it scrapes.
The Seneca housewife when she uses the jaw scraper, with
characteristic humor, says, "I am letting the deer chew the
corn first for me."
Contrary to the above statement that the deer
jaws were not finished in any way prior to being
used as corn shellers, one should note that Parker's
original specimen and also those illustrated
by Waugh and Harrington all have had their
ascending rami removed. This trimming does
indeed, as pointed out by Harrington (1908:580),
appear to be a systematic preparation of the jaws
for use as corn shellers. Farther west, the use of
deer rami as corn shellers is documented for the
Sauk (Skinner, 1925:137) and the Prairie Potawatomi
or Mascouten (Skinner, 1926a:284). On
the basis of worked and utilized deer rami found
at protohistoric and historic archeological sites in
Nebraska and Kansas, Wedel (1936:86) has sug-