OCR Text |
Show 136 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1700 upper part of this tent is left open to act as a smoke vent and to create a draught for the fire, which is built in the centre of the structure; the lower part is left separated as a door and is covered with a skin flap. The bottom of the entire covering is fastened to the ground with pins or weighted with stones. Among certain of the Siouan tribes these tipis were elaborately decorated with symbolic designs. The structure and local arrangement of the lodges of the Siouan stock were generally determined in certain features by religious considerations and ritual as well as by the clan relationship of the owners. 1 The Mandan tribe of this family, who seem to have developed along special lines, built rather an elaborate structure, circular in outline and as much as forty to sixty feet in diameter. The frame- work was of stout posts and beams, the roof was conical, and the whole covered in with mats, grass, and hard-packed earth.* The interior was divided into triangular compartments, each of which was assigned to a family and separated from the others by partitions of decorated mats and skins. Villages of such structures were surrounded by a stockade of posts and were practically impregnable to the methods of Indian warfare. Essentially land- dwellers, the Sioux and their lDorsey, " Siouan Cults" ( Bureau of Ethnology, Eleventh Annual Report). 1 Catlin, Letters and Notes, II., 81. |