Lily's Moving Day

by Margot Ford McMillen
illustrated by Diana Jayne

From the long house village to the prairie.

Native Americans lived here long before the first European explorers followed the Mississippi River to this place we call Missouri. Skilled hunters and fishermen, Native Americans also planted gardens and gathered fruits and nuts that grow here naturally. To hunt and gather from a variety of ecosystems, families left their home villages near the waterways and camped other places.

In this story, an Osage family is leaving for their early summer buffalo hunt on the prairie. We don't know exactly what that day might have been like or what they called the things they used because the Osage did not write about themselves. Researchers have reconstructed their way of life from tools and other things the Osage left behind. This story is based on that research.

Lily peeked out from under her soft deerskin blanket and saw Mother sitting in the doorway, rocking and nursing the baby. "Pssst. Mother," Lily whispered, and Mother gave a little wave with her hand. Lily pulled the deerskin over her head to rest another minute.

Outside, people were waking up, making packs, calling the dogs. Lily remembered suddenly: This was the day when the families would move to the prairie. This was exciting.

Lily's mother was teaching her the names of plants and uses for their leaves, flowers, stems and roots. People said that Lily might become an important root digger and healer. She had even had a dream of a bear, an animal good at digging for roots. This was an important sign, and she hoped it would come again. In the meantime, she would learn all she could.

It was hard work-so many good plants, with so many uses. There were plants of the woods, rivers, marshes, savannah, prairie, and so many dangerous ones that you should not eat or touch. How could you know? Lily thought there must be a secret.

Mother packed last year's corn meal and dried strips of pumpkin for their journey. Along the way, they would eat many plants they found and gather plants, like delicious prairie turnips and valuable yucca, the soap plant, to take home.

The family would pass through swampy fields where spring greens, like mustard, lamb's quarters, watercress and dock, grew in sunny patches beside morel mushrooms. And right next to them grew dangerous impostors-poisonous young greens that looked delicious and false morels that could make you sick.

Cattails grew in the wettest places. That was a most useful plant! The leaves could be woven into mats to cover the long house, the stalks made play arrows for her brother's target practice, and the roots could be dried and ground into a meal like corn. Mother even used the soft fuzz from the seed head, along with a layer of moss, to line the baby's cradle board.

Thinking about cattails reminded Lily of the water lotus or lily, her namesake. Growing in still places along the creeks, there was great excitement when the first yellow blossoms pushed up from the green lilypads. When they saw them, all the women, young and old, waded into the water laughing and singing. They dug with long, pointed sticks, and always put part of the first root pulled back into the water. The young leaves and stalks, ripened seeds and the large roots were all good to eat.

It was easy to see that cattails and lilies were useful, but some plants were mysterious. How could you know whether to pick them? Lily was sure that there was a secret, but Mother only smiled. "Learn each one by look and smell. And only take what we need," Mother had said. "Leave flowers so there will be flower babies."

This was hard advice. Under her nose, violets and blackberries bloomed, smelling delicious. High above, choke cherry trees, hawthorns, butternuts, grapes, oaks, persimmons and pawpaw trees and so many others flowered, reminding her that many fruits and nuts would be ready later. Even the native bees seemed happy and passed from flower to flower, gathering pollen in orange, white or green lumps on their spiny legs.

The good uses for some of the fruits and nuts were easy to see. Other plants had to be processed carefully. Acorns, for example, had to be dried, ground and washed over and over to get rid of the bitterness. The wet acorn meal could be eaten as a mush or baked overnight on leaves in a fire pit. Lily preferred it baked because it had a sweet and nutty taste.

The uses of some plants were completely mysterious. Mother used the bark of the willow to stop pain. And if they were on the prairie, she would use the cone flower. How did she know? What was the secret?

Lily heard Mother putting the baby on the cradleboard, wrapping him firmly so he could not wiggle. Tight packages were easier to carry than loose ones, and the family had a long way to go. Lily had a light pack, and she and Mother would trade the baby and the light pack as they travelled from dawn to nightfall.

As the sunshine came through the door of the long house, Mother smoothed Lily's hair with a brush made of porcupine grass and used a dye made of earth and bloodroot to paint a red line on Lily's scalp from her forehead to the nape of her neck. This would bring strength all day while Grandfather Sun journeyed to his Mother's house in the west.

Everything about the day was special. The men had painted their faces in a special way. The young men were carrying bows made from the Osage orange and arrows with dogwood shafts and points of flintstone. One of Lily's brothers was in that group. She had promised to find him a cardinal flower. He would mix the dried roots and flowers with prairie parsley, columbine and ginseng to make a powerful charm to attract a girl friend.

By the fire, the women had prepared special foods. Lily ate corn meal and persimmon cake, sweet and delicious. She chewed it slowly, thinking that persimmon was an odd fruit. Until there was a frost, persimmon tasted terrible and made your lips pucker. Cold weather made it sweet and delicious.

The families sang songs of farewell to the village and the woods, and songs of hopefulness for the hunt. There were verses for the woods, waterways and prairie, and the plants and animals that lived in all those places.

After the singing, the grown-ups got busy loading the dogs and tying on packs. Lily went to the sassafras tree. She chewed a sassafras twig to clear her mouth. The sassafras is another odd tree, she thought. Leaves with one, two or three lobes-sometimes all on the same branch. Were all the useful trees and plants odd?

There was ginseng-another odd, useful plant. It had leaves like a tree but its root was shaped like a man. Ginseng root tea made people feel energetic, and the leaf sometimes cured a fever.

Hog peanuts were another odd plant, found by mice and brought into their homes. If you found a mouse house and its peanuts you could take them, but only if you paid the mouse back in corn. If you didn't, the mouse mother would haunt your dreams.

Some of the prairie plants were odd, too. Yucca had a root that made a lather for cleaning, and fibers that could be used for sewing. Prickly pear cactus was odd, but it was good to eat, if you were careful when peeling off its thorny skin. Its juice could be rubbed on dyed robes to keep the colors bright.

Lily thought she had found the key to discovering useful plants. She ran to tell her mother. "Mother," she said, "All the useful plants are odd. Is that the secret?"

Mother smiled at Lily's question. "Secret?" she said, "There is no secret, Lily. You must learn the use of each one. All the plant nations have their places, even the bad ones. Without each the world would be sad and imperfect."

Lily joined the long line of people and dogs leaving the village, each with a pack. They would return carrying dried buffalo meat, useful new tools, furry buffalo hides and plants from the prairie.

"No secret?" thought Lily. "Then there are too many. I'll never learn them all." As she started the long walk, she tried to remember all the plants of the prairie, their looks, their smells, and what uses they had.