48 TRADITIONS OF THE ARIKARA. 
went through the squash field and began to shoot at the squash. The 
old woman came upon the boy and caught him. She called him her 
grandson, and told him that she had been waiting for him for a long — 
time. She took the boy home. 
The boy was satisfied to be with his grandmother. His grand- 
mother, before she went into the field, used to roast a lot of corn. 
Then she scattered this corn in her lodge, then would go out hallooing, 
and say, “Blackbirds, come and eat of this corn that I have prepared 
for you.” The blackbirds would come in flocks and enter the lodge, 
and there they would eat the corn that she had scattered over the 
ground in the lodge. Then the old woman would go into her field and 
would leave the boy at home. Sometimes the boy went out to hunt 
rabbits and little birds. In the evening, when the old woman came 
home from the field, she used to take a lot of corn and put it in her corn 
mortar and pound it. She made mush out of the pounded corn. ‘There 
was a curtain of buffalo hide in the lodge. The old woman, after she 
had made the mush would place a bowl of it behind the buffalo hide 
curtain. Why she did this the boy did not know. 
One day when the old woman had gone out to feed the blackbirds, 
the boy began to roast some corn. After he had got a big pile roasted 
he went out and yelled, and said, “Come, blackbirds, I have prepared 
for you the corn that my grandmother told me to prepare; come and 
eat!’ The blackbirds came in flocks into the lodge. The boy went out 
and stopped the smokehole with a piece of buffalo hide, then went into 
the entrance and stopped up the passageway with a dry buffalo hide, 
so that the birds could not go out. The boy then picked up a club and 
said: “Blackbirds, I am going to kill you all, for you have been eating 
my grandmother’s corn all this time. You shall not eat my grand- 
mother’s corn any more.” So the boy began to run around in the lodge 
after the birds, hitting them with the club and killing them. He killed 
all of them, and placed them in a pile. 
When the grandmother came home the boy said, “Grandmother, 
I have killed all these blackbirds that have been eating your corn all 
this time; they shall not eat your corn any more.” The old woman 
appeared glad. She told the boy that he had done right in killing the 
birds. The boy said, “You may cook the blackbirds, a few at a time.” 
The old woman really was not glad, for these blackbirds guarded her 
field for her. She owned these blackbirds. She placed them upon her 
robe and took them out. She brought them to life again, and said: 
“My blackbirds, fly away.” The old woman returned to the lodge. 
