The best published account of aboriginal tobacco-culture is that given to G. L. Wilson by Buffalobird-woman, an old member of the Hidatsa tribe. The Hidatsa raised a different species of tobacco from the eastern Indians (_N. quadrivalvis_), and their methods were somewhat different. She says, “The old men of the tribe who smoked each had a tobacco garden planted not very far away from our corn-fields, but never in the same plot with one. Tobacco gardens were planted apart, because the tobacco plants have a strong smell which affects the corn; if tobacco is planted near the corn, the growing corn-stalks turn yellow, and the corn is not so good. Tobacco seed was planted at the same time sunflower seed was planted (as early in April as the soil could be worked). The owner took a hoe and made soft every foot of the tobacco garden; and with a rake he made the loosened soil level and smooth. He marked the ground with a stick into rows about eighteen inches apart, and sowed the seed very thickly in the row. He covered the newly sowed soil very lightly with earth which he raked with his hand. When rain came and warmth, the seed sprouted. The plants came up thickly so that they had to be thinned out. The owner of the garden would weed out the weak plants, leaving only the stronger standing. The earth about each plant was hilled up with a buffalo rib into a little hill like a corn hill. A very old man, I remember, used a big buffalo rib, sharpened on the edge, to work the soil and cultivate his tobacco. He caught the rib by both ends with the edge downward; and stooping over, he scraped the soil toward him, now and then raising the rib up and loosening the earth with the point at one end. He knelt as he worked. “Tobacco plants began to blossom about the middle of June; and picking then began. Tobacco was gathered in two harvests. The first harvest was these blossoms, which we reckoned the best part of the plant for smoking. Blossoms were picked regularly every fourth day. If we neglected to pick them until the fifth day, the blossoms would begin to seed. Only the green part of the blossom was kept. When we fetched the blossoms home to the lodge, my father would spread a dry hide on the floor in front of his sacred objects and spread the blossoms on the hide to dry. The smoke hole of the lodge, being rather large, would let through quite a strong sunbeam, and the drying blossoms were kept directly in the beam.