There are but few old people of either sex. Their lives are too laborious, precarious, and exposed to secure an advanced age.[30] [30] There is some tautology in treating the foregoing subject of death and its incidents, but it could not be helped without omitting some portions of the subject. LODGES The lodges of the Sioux, Crows, Assiniboin, Cree, and Blackfeet are made of buffalo skins, hair shaved off and dressed, then sewed together in such a manner that when placed upright on poles it presents the form of an inverted funnel. The skins are dressed, cut out, and the lodge made up altogether by the women. When cut and sewed and laid on the ground it is in shape nearly three-quarters of a circle, with the two wings of skins at the small end to serve as vanes, which are changed by moving the outside poles with the wind, to prevent the lodge from smoking. The tent is stretched on poles from 12 to 20 feet in length according to the size of it, each family making one to suit the number of persons to be accommodated or their means of transporting it; therefore their sizes vary from 6 to 23 skins each, the one being the smallest, and the other the largest size in general use, the common or medium size being 12 skins, which will lodge a family of eight persons with their baggage, and also have space to entertain two or three guests. The area of a lodge of 12 skins when well pitched is a circumference of 31 feet, and the space each grown inmate requires for bed and seat would be about 3 feet in width. People seldom stand upright in a lodge. They enter in a stooping posture, and moving forward in this way to the seat opposite, sit there until they leave. (Pls. 74, 75.)