I have said that we began cooking food in an iron kettle in my father’s family when I was about eighteen years old; but the great iron kettle that lies in Goodbird’s yard was given us by an Arikara woman before I was born. CHAPTER XIII TOBACCO _Observations by Maxi´diwiac_ Tobacco was cultivated in my tribe only by old men. Our young men did not smoke much; a few did, but most of them used little tobacco, or almost none. They were taught that smoking would injure their lungs and make them short winded so that they would be poor runners. But when a man got to be about sixty years of age we thought it right for him to smoke as much as he liked. His war days and hunting days were over. Old men smoked quite a good deal. Young men who used tobacco could run; but in a short time they became short of breath, and water, thick like syrup, came up into the mouth. A young man who smoked a great deal, if chased by enemies, could not run to escape from them, and so got killed. For this reason all the young men of my tribe were taught that they should not smoke. Things have changed greatly since those good days; and now young and old, boys and men, all smoke. They seem to think that the new ways of the white man are right; but I do not. In olden days, we Hidatsas took good care of our bodies, as is not done now. _The Tobacco Garden_ The old men of my tribe who smoked had each a tobacco garden planted not very far away from our corn fields, but never in the same plot with one. Two of these tobacco gardens were near the village, upon the top of some rising ground; they were owned by two old men, Bad Horn and Bear-looks-up. The earth lodges of these old men stood a little way out of the village, and their tobacco gardens were not far away. Bear-looks-up called my father “brother” and I often visited his lodge. Tobacco gardens, as I remember them, were almost universal in my tribe when I was five or six years of age; they were still commonly planted when I was twelve years old; but white men had been bringing in their tobacco and selling it at the traders’ stores for some years, and our tobacco gardens were becoming neglected. As late as when I was sixteen, my father still kept his tobacco garden; but since that day individual gardens have not been kept in my tribe. Instead, just a little space in the vegetable garden is planted with seed if the owner wishes to raise tobacco. The seed we use is the same that we planted in old times. A big insect that we call the “tobacco blower” used always to be found around our tobacco gardens; and this insect still appears about the little patches of tobacco that we plant.