338 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 194 



First Creator brings Yellow Dog's people another herd of buffaloes ; Grandson 

 sends out the Red Fox and he reports the people are not starving. Again First 

 Creator asks Grandson to free the animals. 



First Creator brings Yellow Dog's people a fourth herd of buffaloes and shortly 

 afterward Grandson sends out Mousehawk who is captured, fed, and freed to return 

 to Dog Den where he reports to Grandson that the people are not starving. Again 

 First Creator asks Grandson to free the animals. 



Grandson sees that he is defeated. He enumerates the many things he did for 

 the people while he was on the earth for which, never once, did he ever receive 

 any offerings or pay. He now rules that since he never once received an offering, 

 if people of any village ever make an offering to him hereafter, that village will 

 be destroyed.^" 



Then Grandson returned to the sky for all time. He is one of the large stars 

 [Venus] and never is seen in the sky during the summer while the buffaloes are 

 calving for he is afraid of a foetus or a newborn calf. Neither does he, in his 

 travels across the sky, appear near the Moon, his father, for his father was in- 

 strumental in causing the death of his mother when she attempted to escape from 

 above. 



The myth of Old- Woman- Who-Never-Dies provided the basis for 

 native behefs and practices for the propagation of the cultivated 

 crops and she was considered the "goddess" of all vegetation. It 

 was probably with this latter belief that she was associated by non- 

 agricultural groups in the area such as the Crow and Cheyenne. 

 The Hidatsa thought of her as the custodian of all vegeta,tion that 

 ripens or sheds its leaves in the fall and is "rejuvenated" in the spring 

 with the northern flights of the waterbkds which she accompanied. 

 She was equally regarded as the "producer" of wild fruit crops; 

 occasionally, offerings of calicoes and meat were offered to the shrubs 

 and bushes. Many of the unorganized household rites relating to her 

 showed considerable variability. 



In light of the universal distribution of Old-Woman- Who-Never- 

 Dies rites in the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, the existence of Corn 

 rites among those groups such as the Cheyenne who no longer practiced 

 agriculture during the 19th century, and similar myths for the Crow 

 where there were no organized Corn rites, it would appear that the 

 native view of Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies as "goddess" of vegeta- 

 tion was an early belief that preceded agriculture. Only in the earth 

 lodge villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa do we find these myths 

 organized into formal rituals. For the Mandan we find that the Corn 

 rites have been associated with the Women's Goose society (Densmore, 

 1923, pp. 183-205) which was organized by Good-Furred-Robe to 

 dance during the northern and southern flights of the water birds and 

 whenever the gardens suffered from drought. Nowhere in the 

 Hidatsa sacred myths do we find reference to the origin of the Goose 

 society. Consistent with Hidatsa concepts that those institutions 



'" I found no evidence that offerings were made to Grandson. 



