A brief description of the Arikara village as it appeared early in June, 1850, is to be found in Culbertson's journal. On the 12th of that month the steamboat, ascending the Missouri, reached Fort Clark, "a small fort, about one hundred feet in length on each side." Just above the fort was the village of the Arikara. "The village is composed of two hundred lodges, as near as I could learn from the interpreter, and is built upon the top of a bluff bank rising about seventy-five feet perpendicular from the water. The huts are placed very irregularly, sometimes with very narrow, and sometimes with quite broad spaces between them. A number of platforms of poles, as high as the lodges themselves, are interspersed among them for the convenience of drying meat and dressing robes. I noticed a number of squaws busily employed in dressing robes." (Culbertson, (1), p. 117.) The typical earth lodge is described, one similar to those mentioned on other pages of this sketch, but his account of the interior of a habitation is most interesting. He, with others, stopped at a large lodge, when, so he wrote: "We were conducted to the place of honor, opposite to and facing the door. To our right, along the wall, were arranged several bedsteads, rudely made, while to the left, a part was cut off by a couple of poles, for the accommodation of the horses; the chickens had a coop in one corner, but roam at large on most occasions, and the centre is used for a fireplace. The lodge was clean, airy, light and comfortable, and there was plenty of room for more than those, who I suppose, inhabit it. Behind us were hung bows with spears on the ends, and two rude instruments of music, made of a number of pumpkins.... Near the fireplace a small wooden mortar was sunk in the ground, for pounding corn. The large and high room appeared rather scarce of furniture." Many burials were encountered when passing between the village and Fort Clark, and there "were little patches of corn and pumpkins, generally enclosed by a slight bush fence," these probably being the gardens belonging to the people of the near-by town. The mortar, "sunk in the ground," as mentioned by Culbertson, was evidently similar to the example shown in plate 52, _b_, a form which was indicated by Bodmer in his sketch of the interior of a Mandan lodge, plate 40. It will be recalled that the village mentioned in the preceding notes was the home of the Mandan during the memorable winter of 1804-05, when the expedition of Lewis and Clark encamped a few miles below, and there the Mandan continued to dwell until after the epidemic of 1837.