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
"upright flattened posts," as mentioned in the Long narrative? If so, it
is evident similar habitations were reared by the Foxes and were
encountered by Schoolcraft at the Fox village standing on the left bank
of the Mississippi, below the mouth of the Wisconsin, August 6, 1820.
However, the statements are rather vague, and the various dwellings may
have been quite similar to the bark houses more clearly described in
later narratives. But it is beyond question that some of the structures
were strongly built, and Long on July 16, 1817, wrote: "Passed a Sioux
village on our right containing fourteen cabins. The name of the chief
is the Petit Corbeau, or Little Raven.... One of their cabins is
furnished with loop holes, and is situated so near the water that the
opposite side of the river is within musket-shot range from the
building.... The cabins are a kind of stockade buildings, and of a
better appearance than any Indian dwellings I have before met with."
(Long, (1), p. 31.)
One of the most interesting accounts of the villages just mentioned is
contained in the journal of a traveler who visited them in 1849, the
year the Territory of Minnesota was created. On May 16 of that year he
"passed Wapasha's Prairie ... a beautiful prairie in Minnesota, about
nine miles long and three miles wide, occupied by the chief Wapasha (or
Red-Leaf) and his band of Sioux, whose bark lodges are seen at the upper
end of the prairie." (Seymour, (1), p. 75.) And later in the day, after
leaving Lake Pepin, "an Indian village, called Red Wing, inhabited by a
tribe of Sioux is seen on the Minnesota shore. It appears to contain
about one dozen bark lodges, and half as many conical lodges, covered
with buffalo skins; also, a log or frame house, occupied by a
missionary. Indian children were seen running, in frolicsome mood, over
the green prairie, and Indian females were paddling their canoes along
the shore. This village is near the mouth of Cannon River." On the
following day, May 17, 1849, Seymour passed the village of Kaposia,
occupied by the chief Little Crow, or Little Raven. It stood on the west
bank of the river about 5 miles below the then small town of St. Paul.
The Indian village at that time consisted of about 40 lodges, having a
population of some 300. A few days later he went to the village, and
regarding the visit wrote: "During the time I visited them, the Indians
were living in skin lodges, such as they use during the winter, and when
traveling. These are formed of long, slender poles, stuck in the ground,
in a circle of about eight feet in diameter, and united at the top, and
covered with the raw hide of the buffalo, having the hair scraped off.
They are in the form of a cone, and can be distinguished from those of
the Winnebagos and other Indians as far as they can be seen. During the
summer they live in bark houses, which are more spacious, and when seen
from a distance, resemble, in form and appearance, the log cabins of the
whites.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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