166 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



sacred songs while shaping the vessels. Women were considered more 

 skillful in impressing into the damp walls of the vessels the various 

 designs and patterns which they had bought the right to use either at 

 the time when the initial rights were purchased or at a later time 

 when a particular design owned by other women met their fancy. So 

 they would bar the door to their lodge, pass the word about through 

 the village that they were making pottery, and work in secret. It 

 was necessary to keep ojff drafts from the wet clay and the newly 

 shaped vessels. 



Most of these finished vessels were given to their own immediate 

 relatives as gifts, knowing that the receivers were looking after their 

 welfare. In other instances, the vessels were traded directly with 

 women desiring pots for those things which the family did not already 

 have. It is not known today how many pottery makers there were 

 in the Hidatsa villages, but informants believed that only a few 

 families made pottery. 



Another category of specialists who preferred to live alone because 

 of the nature of their activities were those who worked with flints 

 and other stones. The Hidatsa secured most of their flint from the 

 higher buttes and uplands west of the Missouri River. Here, ir- 

 regular layers of flint were exposed and they had a number of tradi- 

 tional places where they quarried the stone. The best stone was 

 that which was covered with dirt and had to be exposed, using hard- 

 ened ash poles as digging sticks to break off the layers. Working of 

 chipped stone was a ceremonial activity, and goes back to two ancient 

 traditional systems; one derived from the large birds, such as the 

 eagles, hawks, owls, and thunderbirds, and the other derived from 

 the beavers. Concerning the latter system, little is known today 

 other than what has been passed on traditionally. The former 

 system was connected with the sacred arrows of which there were a 

 number of bundle owners living at the time my informants were 

 young men. Even so, they no longer practiced their skills of stone 

 flaking. It is said that in former times a man working at stone 

 flaking operated in a closed lodge using the light from the fireplace 

 and, like the potters who kept their clays stored away in cache pits 

 or shallow pits near the inner edge of the lodge, the stoneworkers 

 likewise kept their flints moistened and covered until used. It was 

 believed that the stone would fracture irregularly if people stood 

 around watching and, like pottery making, stonework was done in 

 secret. 



Another organized group was that of the berdaches. These people 

 were men who, during their late teens and after many dreams from 

 the Holy-Woman-Above, changed their clothing to that worn by 

 women and assumed special roles in the community. They usually 



