In 1916 anthropologist Gilbert L. Wilson worked closely with Buffalobird-woman, a highly respected Hidatsa born in 1839 on the Fort Berthold Reservation in western North Dakota, for a study of the Hidatsas' uses of local plants. What resulted was a treasure trove of ethnobotanical information that was buried for more than seventy-five years in Wilson's archives, now held jointly by the Minnesota Historical Society and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Wilson recorded Buffalobird-woman's insightful and vivid descriptions of how the nineteenth-century Hidatsa people had gathered, prepared, and used the plants and wood in their local environment for food, medicine, smoking, fiber, fuel, dye, toys, rituals, and construction.
From courtship rituals that took place while gathering Juneberries, to descriptions of how the women kept young boys from stealing wild plums as they prepared them for use, to recipes for preparing and cooking local plants,
Uses of Plants by the Hidatsas of the Northern Plains
provides valuable details of Hidatsa daily life during the nineteenth century.
Gilbert L. Wilson (1869-1930) was a well-known anthropologist whose dissertation on Hidatsa agriculture was published in 1917 and is still available in print today.
Michael Scullin is a codirector of Midwest Ethnohorticulture LLC. His articles have appeared in the journal
Plains Anthropologist
and in many edited volumes.