Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the MississippiBushnell, David I. (David Ives)
History
Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi
Bushnell, David I. (David Ives)
Algonquian Indians; Caddoan Indians; Indians of North America -- Dwellings; Siouan Indians
"The tepees are pitched with all the regularity of an organized camp, in
a large circle, inside which the stock is driven at night or on an alarm
or occasion of danger. Outside the door is struck a spear or pole, on
which is suspended the shield of the chief and a mysterious something
tied up in a bundle, which is great medicine." (Dunraven, (1), pp.
94-95.)
A white shield supported outside a tipi is visible in the photograph
reproduced as plate 47. This remarkable picture has not, unfortunately,
been identified, but it was undoubtedly made in the Upper Missouri
Valley, and from the nature of the tipis, many appearing to be quite
small, it may be assumed that it was a party of Indians who had come on
a trading trip, rather than that it represented a regular village.
Several accounts are preserved of large structures discovered in the
region frequented by the Crows which, although not positively
identified, were possibly erected by members of that tribe. Thus Lewis
and Clark on July 24, 1806, arrived at an island in the Yellowstone
River between 5 and 6 miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork, and wrote:
"It is a beautiful spot with a rich soil, covered with wild rye, and a
species of grass like the blue-grass, and some of another kind, which
the Indians wear in plaits round the neck, on account of a strong scent
resembling that of vanilla. There is also a thin growth of cottonwood
scattered over the island. In the centre is a large Indian lodge which
seems to have been built during the last summer. It is in the form of a
cone, sixty feet in diameter at the base, composed of twenty poles, each
forty-five feet long, and two and a half in circumference, and the whole
structure covered with bushes. The interior was curiously ornamented. On
the tops of the poles were feathers of eagles, and circular pieces of
wood, with sticks across them in the form of a girdle: from the centre
was suspended a stuffed buffaloe skin; on the side fronting the door was
hung a cedar bush: on one side of the lodge a buffaloe's head; on the
other several pieces of wood stuck in the ground. From its whole
appearance, it was more like a lodge for holding councils, than an
ordinary dwelling house." (Lewis and Clark, (1), II, p. 386.) This was
undoubtedly a ceremonial lodge, and it was probably quite similar to
another observed a few years later. To quote the description of the
second example: "In the country of the Crow Indians, (Up-sa-ro-ka,) Mr.
Dougherty saw a singular arrangement of the magi. The upper portion of a
cotton-wood tree was implanted, with its base in the earth, and around
it was a sweat house, the upper part of the top of the tree arising
through the roof. A gray bison skin, extended with oziers on the inside
so as to exhibit a natural appearance, was suspended above the house,
and on the branches were attached several pairs of children's mockasins
and leggings, and from one of the limbs of the tree, a very large fan
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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