BUSHNELL } VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI 57 
beds sufficient for the accommodation of the whole family, a frame 
is erected about four or five feet from the ground, in which the 
younger part of it sleep.” (Carver, (1), pp. 152-154.) Though 
lacking much in detail, nevertheless the preceding notes are :of his- 
torical interest and value, describing as they do the primitive habita- 
tions which were reared and occupied by the native tribes living in 
the upper Mississippi Valley about the middle of the eighteenth 
century. Skins of the elk and deer were evidently used as coverings 
for the conical tipi, which seems to prove the lack of a sufficient 
number of buffalo skins to serve the purpose, although farther west, 
beyond the timbered country, where buffalo were more easily ob- 
tained, their skins were made use of and covered the shelters of tribes 
by whom they were hunted. 
YANKTON. 
When the expedition under the leadership of General Atkinson 
ascended the Missouri, during the summer of 1825, he wrote regard- 
ing the Yankton: “ The Yanctons are a band of the Sioux, and rove 
in the plains north of the Missouri, from near the Great Bend, down 
as far as the Sioux river. They do not cultivate, but live by the chase 
alone, subsisting principally upon buffalo. They cover themselves 
with leather tents, or lodges, which they move about from place to 
place, as the buffalo may chance to range. They are pretty well sup- 
plied with fusees, and with horses, and a few mules. They are esti- 
mated at 3,000 souls, of which 600 are warriors. They are comfort- 
ably habited in frocks, or shirts of dressed skins, and leggings, reach- 
ing to the waist, of the same; they use besides, robes of buffalo skins, 
which are frequently beautifully wrought with porcupine quills, or 
painted tastefully; are friendly to the whites, but make war upon 
almost all other tribes, except those of their own nation. Their 
trading ground is on the river Jaques.” (Atkinson, (1), pp. 8-9.) 
On June 17 the party arrived at Fort Lookout, a post of the 
American Fur Company, and four days later, “on the 21st, the 
Tetons, Yanctons, and Yanctonies, three distinct bands of the Sioux 
Nation, having arrived, a council was opened, and, on the 22d, a 
treaty concluded with them.” This great gathering of the tribes, 
with their numerous skin-covered tipis, would have presented a sight 
similar to that witnessed and described by Catlin just seven years 
later, in the vicinity of Fort Pierre. 
An excellent description of the skin-covered tipi of the Sioux, but 
of the structures of the Yankton in particular, is contained in Maxi- 
milian’s narrative. Writing on May 25, 1833, he said the “Sioux 
Agency, or, as it is now usually called, Fort Lookout, is a square, 
of about sixty paces, surrounded by pickets, twenty or thirty feet 
