DENSMORE] MANDAN AND HIDATSA MUSIC 53 
When the corn was almost ripe, it was closely guarded by the 
women of the tribe. Scaffolds or platforms were erected for this 
purpose. ‘These were not so strong as the corn-drying scaffolds in 
the village and were usually placed near a tree, or provided with 
artificial shade.** There the women sat, often busying themselves 
with some handiwork, and around these guarding platforms there 
centered much of the inner life of the village. This is evidenced in 
the character of many of the garden songs which were sung by the 
watchers and are said to have been sung also by the women when 
cultivating the young plants. They are social songs, it being ex-- 
pressly stated that the songs were not “intended to make the corn 
grow.” Many phases of village life found expression amid the sweet 
surroundings of the garden, or in the gentle dawn when the women 
went early to their work. Many of the garden songs were the posses- 
sion of certain individuals who, it appears, sometimes put new words 
to oid melodies, as in Nos. 12 to 17. Other songs may have been indi- 
vidual compositions. One woman, bowed with years, said that “the 
garden songs were always lonesome songs,” and we find in some 
of them a sadness that was undoubtedly repressed in the village. 
Others are evidently the songs of young girls, and in them we find the 
word 7’mupa, which is translated “my best friend,” but is more 
accurately expressed by the word “chum,” as it contains the idea 
of the first excluding affection of a young girl by which she chooses 
one particular girl of her own age as her constant companion. This 
word occurs also in a song of the Little River Women Society (No. 
39). It was not unusual for two young girls to watch adjacent 
cornfields from the same guarding platform. Such girls might 
have sung No. 12. 
A suggestion of the difficulties connected with gardening is pre- 
served in the following song, which is said to have been taught to 
very young girls. The words are freely translated thus: “It is 
hard work to care for a garden. The blackbirds come and eat it 
up. Come, my brother, and kill them.” 
The gardens of the Mandan probably differed little from those of the Hidatsa. Cf. 
Wilson, Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, pp. 22-34. Concerning the varieties of 
corn, see Will and Hyde, Corn among the Indians of the Upper Missouri, pp. 284~—317. 
