Corn Drying Ioway Style
By Melinda Carriker
Living History Farms, Site Supervisor - 1700 Ioway Farm
Drying of food for preservation has taken place for thousands of years. When the Ioway tribe was living in the area that is now the state of Iowa, the women grew about 3-5 acres of crops per family. The field's worth of corn (wadúje), beans (úñinge), and squash (wadwán) then needed to be dried and stored for use throughout the coming year.
At Living History Farms' 1700 Ioway Farm we grow, harvest, dry, and reuse the same three crops. Over the past 26 years the Ioway section of LHF has gone through many changes. There are many factors that contribute to what we do. Archaeological surveys of actual village sites give important clues to the size and shape of structures, as well as distance between structures.
Early fur trader and explorer journals give some descriptions of items. Older members of the tribe were interviewed in the early 1900s about what life was like in the past for the tribe and the information was then compiled and published.
When it comes to Native American farming practices there is really only one book that goes into specific details, Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden, which is information given by Buffalo Bird Woman of the Hidatsa tribe to Gilbert Wilson in 1911, who then compiled and published it.
At LHF we use the information Buffalo Bird Woman gave to help us with our farming. One item that has evolved at the Ioway Farm is our corn drying rack. Two years ago, after rereading the aforementioned book, I realized our drying rack had never been properly built. I decided to build a new 8' X 24' corn drying rack.
In order to accomplish this, I needed logs. I contacted a state forestry here in Iowa. They kindly harvested 16 cottonwood logs, each between 9-12 inches in diameter and around 12' long. When we arrived at the state preserve to pick the logs up, the first of many challenges began.
We held our breath as each log was loaded on the trailer, watched the tires, and prayed we would not have too much weight. We then traveled very carefully back to Des Moines. The next challenge was to get all of the logs unloaded from the trailer and moved to the farm site. Now the construction could begin.
We spent some of last fall and most of this summer splitting all the logs in half using wedges, a sledge hammer, and brute strength. After much consideration, it was decided that the logs would still be too heavy, so we spent the rest of the summer through September planning the logs, or flattening the rounded side, with hand axes, the small metal kind the French fur traders would have brought to Iowa.
The main upright Y poles, 6 in all, we chose to make from locust trees, in hopes the wood will stand up well to the damp conditions our valley brings. Working around the thorns to chop down the trees was not an easy task for our staff. Then arrived the challenge of cutting, moving to the site, and lifting into place the two crossbeams.
The planked logs were lifted into place, side by side down the length of the crossbeams, 26 planks in all were used, until we had a platform, which is about 7.5' from the top to the ground. Next were the upper Y poles, 6 in all, about 12' tall and the upper crossbeams. Each Y pole used is sunk about 2-3' in the ground as well. The last thing to go into place was the ladder, which has 6 notches cut into the log for steps and one notch on the upper backside to fit onto the rack.
After many scrapes, cuts, bruises, and blisters and with a great deal of sweat, the corn drying rack is now finished and ready to use. Corn stalks have been placed in the cracks between the platform logs, corn has been harvested and braided into strands using the corn's husk, and dry fall days are at hand.
Braided strands of the blue flour corn grown here are hung from the beams in the upper Y poles and loose ears are placed on the platform to dry. The corn is then used in soups (tányi), for grinding into flour (wéshunga), and for seed for replanting. This has been a long, tiring process, but now that it is done, I can sit back, look up, and smile.
The corn drying rack really is a neat structure to behold!
Photos provided by Melinda Carriker (click on photos to view larger images)
Pi Ke! Great work Melinda and LHF folks! What hard work, and fine results :-) It must be very exciting to know you are doing something very few know about....reading is good, but it is only a start, and there are things you learn by doing that you can never learn by reading...you will learn some things people haven't thought of for a very long time...Pi ke!!
Posted by: Lance Foster | October 09, 2008 at 09:34 PM
Shared photo of the drying rack with Kindergarten class this morning(after singing song about indians grinding dry corn). They asked 'how long does it take for the corn to dry? A very good question indeed!
Posted by: D.J. Shaw | January 12, 2009 at 10:12 AM