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Buffalo Bird Woman
Hidatsa: Maaxiiriwia
Hidatsa leader
Personal details
Born	ca. 1839 Knife River, North Dakota
Died	1932 Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota
Relations	Brother, Henry Wolf Chief; grandmother, Otter; adopted grandmother, Turtle
Children	Edward Goodbird
Parent(s)	Father, Small Ankle, mother, Want-to-be-a-woman; stepmothers, Red Blossom and Strikes-many-women
Known for	Recording Hidatsa gardening, agriculture, and culture

Buffalo Bird Woman (ca. 1839-1932) was a traditional Hidatsa woman who lived on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Her Hidatsa name was Waheenee, though she was also called Maaxiiriwia (variously transcribed as Maxidiwiac). She was known for maintaining the traditional lifestyle of the Hidatsa, including gardening, cooking, and household tasks. She passed on the traditional ways of her culture and oral tradition through interviews with Gilbert Wilson, in which she described her own experience and the lives and work of Hidatsa women.

Biography

Waheenee was born to Small Ankle and Want-to-be-a-woman, both of the Native American Hidatsa tribe. The exact date of her birth is unknown, but is believed to be circa 1839. She also had a brother, Wolf Chief.

Suffering after a smallpox epidemic in 1837, the Hidatsa moved to the newly created Like-a-Fishhook Village in North Dakota in 1845. Waheenee was four years old at the time. The Hidatsa was joined by the Mandan and, in 1863, the Arikara tribes as well. Together, the tribes are known as the Three Affiliated Tribes.

When she was six, Waheenee's mother died of smallpox during another outbreak. From that time, she was raised by her grandmother Turtle and her great-grandmother's adopted daughter Otter.

Waheenee was declared her official name at a naming ceremony when she was ten. However, Small Ankle began to call her Maaxiiriwia, which translates to Buffalo Bird Woman. This is the name by which she is most commonly known.

Buffalo Bird Woman married twice. Her first husband, Magpie, died of tuberculosis. She later married Son-of-a-star. In 1869, the two had their only child, Tsaka'kasakic, commonly known as Edward Goodbird.

A map denoting the locations of Like-a-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, the locations in which Buffalo Bird Woman spent most of her life.

Around 1885, the tribes began to move to the land along the Missouri River. The area that was settled came to be known as the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Buffalo Bird Woman spent the majority of her adulthood on the Reservation, populated by the Three Affiliated Tribes. She gardened using traditional Hidatsa agricultural styles throughout her life. She never learned to speak English. Her brother Wolf Chief, by contrast, had learned English, converted to Christianity, and added Henry as his first name.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden

Buffalo Bird Woman's connection to greater United States society came about through her son. Edward Goodbird, who had gone to mission school and become a pastor, was fluent in four languages. He established a connection with ethnographer Gilbert Wilson, who was visiting Fort Berthold in 1906. Between 1907 and 1918, Wilson conducted interviews with Buffalo Bird Woman, Henry Wolf Chief, and Goodbird. Conversations with the former were the basis of his doctoral dissertation, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. Wilson published the dissertation in the University of Minnesota's Studies in the Social Sciences academic journal.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians is the work for which Buffalo Bird Woman is best known. Originally titled Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation, the book is a compilation of information from Buffalo Bird Woman about Hidatsa harvesting practices. The interviews which make up the majority of the content were conducted and edited by Wilson, with Goodbird acting as interpreter.

The majority of Wilson's book informs readers of Hidatsa agricultural practices. However, the interviews covered other subjects as well, which are also included in the book. Buffalo Bird Woman also discusses the Hidatsa's origin myths, history of her tribe, and cultural practices.The book also has photographs of an elderly Buffalo Bird Woman gardening. Goodbird's drawings of maps and of Hidatsa agricultural tools, based off of Buffalo Bird Woman's own tools, are included as well.

The interviews and stories told by Buffalo Bird Woman were left essentially unchanged by Wilson in the dissertation. As he explains of his work in the Foreward, "It is an Indian woman's interpretation of economics; the thoughts she gave to her fields; the philosophy of her labors." Wilson also mentions that he hopes that his account will lead to better treatment for all Indians once readers understand the work that went into Buffalo Bird Woman's life.

Wilson published several more works about the Hidatsa. Goodbird the Indian, published in 1914, reveals further details of her son's life. Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story, Told by Herself, published in 1921, is an autobiography of Buffalo Bird Woman and Goodbird. The books were also conducted through transcribed interviews.

Contents

Foreward

Chapter I- Tradition

Chapter II- Beginning a garden

Chapter III- Sunflowers

Chapter IV- Corn

Chapter V- Squashes

Chapter VI- Beans

Chapter VII- Storing for winter

Chapter VIII- The making of a drying stage

Chapter IX- Tools

Chapter X- Fields as Like-a-Fishhook Village

Chapter XI- Miscellanea

Chapter XII- Since the white men came

Chapter XIII- Tobacco

Legacy

Buffalo Bird Woman is today remembered for her accounts of traditional Hidatsa life as well as for her gardening techniques. Copies of Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, complied in Wilson's original layout, are still available for purchase. The most recent publication was released by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in 1987, and includes a contemporary introduction by anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jeffery R. Hanson. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden is also accessible for free on the University of Pennsylvania's Digital Library website.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden has largely fallen into obscurity. However, those who read the book praise its historicity and still-useful gardening accounts. Tom Woods laments in Minnesota History that Hanson does not provide any contextual reference with regard to the Hidatsa's agricultural practices compared to other tribes. However, the review is mostly positive. Woods praises the Minnesota Historical Society Press for "rescuing this book from the dusty shelves of obscurity."

A children's picture book, Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story was published in 2012. Written by S.D. Nelson, the book uses Wilson's dissertation to construct a fictionalized account of Buffalo Bird Woman's childhood.

Books by Buffalo Bird Woman

• Buffalo Bird Woman. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-87351-219-0.
• Buffalo Bird Woman. Waheenee, an Indian girl's story. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Article evaluation

Article: Harvard Classics

• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
  • Yes, everything is relevant. I was distracted in by the "Enduring success" section, which included quotes about the collection but did not state the dates when the quotes were said. A section about the collection's relevance should mention when the quotes praising the Classics were stated.
• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
  • Information seems to be up to date. However, the article misses any kind of critical response about the Harvard Classics. Articles which cover similar topics, such as Great Books of the Western World, make sure to include this information. The article also does not explain why the works that are part of the Classics were selected, or why the Shelf of Fiction was created later.
• What else could be improved?
  • More information about the selection of the works should be added, and the "Enduring success" section needs more concrete information.
• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
  • The article does not mention any negative responses towards the Harvard Classics (though it is possible that there are no relevant/important ones). It is very much in support of the Classics, though it does not overstate its importance in popular culture, suggesting that it is mostly neutral.
• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
  • See above — according to the article, there is essentially no negative reaction to the Harvard Classics.
• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
  • Yes, the citations work. Many lead to copies of the works that are included in the Classics.
• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
  • Some facts from the first few paragraphs are supported by a 2001 article by Adam Kirsch, published in Harvard Magazine. The magazine article itself actually criticizes the Classics and says that they should be updated in some way, but this is not expressed in any part of the article. The magazine article is used only to provide facts about the history of the Classics. However, it seems strange to use a Harvard source — the same organization that the Classics were published under — to establish base facts. The bias from this piece is not noted in the Wikipedia article.
  • The rest of the sources seem to be appropriate, reliable, and more neutral than the Harvard article.
• What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
  • The most recent comment on the Talk page is from July 2018, and it is about attempts to implement archive links to the article page. A few other comments are on the page, some dating from the early 2000s. There are no conversations, just comments and questions that were left unanswered.
• How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
  • The article has not been rated, but is classified as Stub-Class. It is part of WikiProject Books.
• How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
  • We didn't cover Harvard Classics in class, but if we had, we would have spent time discussing the fact that the majority of the collection's authors were white men of European descent. We would have addressed the responses to Harvard Classics from when it was first published compared to today.

Peer review

Article: Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

• Everything in the article is relevant, and there is enough information to ensure that a reader will be well-educated on the topic. I was distracted by some of the names being written in capslock, but assume that this was because the text has them formatted that way.
• The information in "Part Three: The Six Nations" seems a bit lengthy for a casual reader, but it is well-researched.

Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

• The article is neutral. It explains how Cusick wrote Sketches as a mytho-historic narrative, not arguing that the history he tells is accurate. And the article provides information about the controversial nature of Sketches as well, explaining how it was not well-received by all reviewers.

Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

• More information about positive reception to Sketches would be interesting to read about, if there was any that was significant. It would also be interesting to find out about Native American feedback to the work.

Check the citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

• The sources work and support the article's claims.

Is each fact supported by an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

• Much of the information comes from a copy of Sketches. The critical remarks come from Native American anthologies of literature, literary companions, and a Native American magazine. The sources are all reliable and neutral.

Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that should be added?

• Information is up-to-date, including modern reception to Sketches.
• Nothing needs to be added! Great job!