Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/161

 same inclination, and resting-against the stringers, which when completed surrounded the lodge with a wooden wall. Four round posts, each six or eight inches in diameter, are set in the ground near the center of the floor, in the angles of a square, ten feet apart, and rising from ten to fifteen feet above the ground floor. These again are connected by stringers resting in forks at their tops, upon which and the external wall the rafters rest.

The engraving exhibits a cross-section, as described. Poles three or four inches in diameter are placed as rafters from the external wall to the string-pieces above the central parts, and near enough together to give the requisite strength to support the earth covering placed upon the roof. These poles were first covered over with willow matting, upon which prairie grass was overspread, and over all a deep covering of earth. An opening was left in the center, about four feet in diameter, for the exit of the smoke and for the admission of light. The interior was spacious and tolerably well lighted, although the opening in the roof and a single doorway were the only apertures through which light could penetrate. There was but one entrance, protected by what has been called the Eskimo doorway; that is, by a passage some five feet wide, ten or twelve feet long, and about six feet high, constructed with split timbers, roofed with poles, and covered with earth. Buffalo-robes suspended at the outer and inner entrances supplied the place of doors. Each house was comparted by screens of willow matting or unhaired skins suspended from the rafters, with spaces between for storage. These slightly-constructed apartments opened towards the central fire like stalls, thus defining an open central area around the fire-pit, which was the gathering place of the inmates of the lodge. This fire-pit was about five feet in diameter, a foot deep, and encircled with flat stones set up edgewise. A hard, smooth, earthen floor completed the interior. Such a lodge would accommodate five or six families, embracing thirty or forty persons.