Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story

This is a rare thing: a Native American woman's voice from the early 20th century, preserved in her own words. Waheenee, also known as Buffalo-Bird Woman, was born in an earth lodge at the mouth of the Knife River in present-day North Dakota, three years after the devastating smallpox winter that nearly destroyed the Mandan people. Her account captures a world on the verge of vanishing forever: the earth lodges, the cornfields along the river bottoms, the customs and beliefs of the Hidatsa people before reservation life transformed everything. Gilbert Livingstone Wilson recorded her memories with meticulous care, and the result is both an intimate memoir and an invaluable ethnographic record. Waheenee writes of her own naming, her childhood illnesses, the old ways of getting fuel and building homes, the rhythms of planting and harvest. This is not the ethnographic other, seen from outside. It is one woman's life, Specific and irreplaceable. It remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the Plains peoples on their own terms.