Great Woman: Buffalo Bird Woman of the Hidatsa, 1839-1932

The early reservation era among Native people was traumatic in many ways.  Not only were some people deported hundreds of miles into country that they did not know and weren't prepared to live in, but they also lost contact with important rituals and life-ways that had been practiced for centuries.  Despite this upheaval, some older tribal members were able to keep the flame alive and preserve important knowledge, and they had help from unusual allies. 

Buffalo Bird Woman, 1839-1932 lived on Fort Belknap Reservation.  Despite the pressure from reservation authorities to assimilate, she was able to keep her traditional culture alive, gardening, food preparation, weaving and oral history.  She told much of her knowledge to Gilbert Wilson, a Protestant missionary living among the Hidatsa people.  Wilson and his brothers were Presbyterian ministers but they were open-minded enough to believe that the life experience of Buffalo Bird Woman, her brother Henry Wolf Chief and her son Edward Goodbird, were worth preserving.  In a series of interviews with Bufalo Bird Woman and her family, he began to learn much about traditional Hidatsa life that would have otherwise been lost.  With Wilson's help, Buffalo Bird Woman authored two books, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, and Buffalo Bird Woman, An Indian Girl's Story.  The books were republished by the University of Nebraska Press in the 1990's.

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