Old-style (round) lodges of Rees 43 Log-cabins of Rees 28 --- Total number of houses of Rees 71 Old-style lodges of Grosventres and Mandans 35 Log-cabins of Grosventres and Mandans 69 --- Total number of houses of Grosventres and Mandans 104 Total of houses in village 175 The note states that "owing to the stupidity of the interpreter" it was not possible to separate the Grosventres from the Mandans, which was to be regretted. The "old-style lodges" were the earth-covered lodges, and Matthews follows with an excellent description of how they were constructed. He tells of the building of the frame, "covered with willows, hay, and earth," and over the opening in the center of the top "of many of the lodges are placed frames of wicker-work, on which skins are spread to the windward in stormy weather to keep the lodges from getting smoky. Sometimes bull-boats are used for this purpose." (Matthews, (1), pp. 3-6.) A comment on the work of the early artists is worthy of being mentioned at this time: "Prince Maximilian's artist [Karl Bodmer] usually sketches the lodge very correctly; but Mr. Catlin invariably gives an incorrect representation of its exterior. Whenever he depicts a Mandan, Arickaree, or Minnetaree lodge, he makes it appear as an almost exact hemisphere, and always omits the entry." (Op. cit., p. 6.) Game, especially the buffalo, was becoming less plentiful in the vicinity of the villages, and Matthews told how, "Every winter, until 1866, the Indians left their permanent village, and, moving some distance up the Missouri Valley, built temporary quarters, usually in the center of heavy forests and in the neighborhood of buffalo.... The houses of the winter-villages resembled much the log-cabins of our own western pioneers. They were neatly built, very warm, had regular fire-places and chimneys built of sticks and mud, and square holes in the roofs for the admission of light." About that time some cabins of this sort were erected "in the permanent village at Fort Berthold; every year since, they are becoming gradually more numerous and threaten to eventually supplant the original earth-covered lodges." And in 1877 "game has recently become very scarce in their country, they are obliged to travel immense distances, and almost constantly, when they go out on their winter-hunts. Requiring, therefore, movable habitations, they take with them, on their journeys, the ordinary skin-lodges, or 'tepees,' such as are used by the Dakotas, Assiniboines, and other nomadic tribes of the region." (Op. cit., pp. 6-7.)