78 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 77 - 
large island.” From here Sergeant Ordway and four men were sent 
. to the Omaha village and returned the following day. “After cross- 
ing a prairie covered with high grass, they reached the Maha creek, 
along which they proceeded to its three forks, which join near the 
village: they crossed the north branch and went along the south; the 
walk was very fatiguing, as they were forced to break their way 
through grass, sunflowers, and thistles, all above ten feet high, and 
interspersed with wild pea. Five miles from our camp they reached | 
the position of the ancient Maha village: it had once consisted of 
three hundred cabins, but was burnt about four years ago, soon after 
_ the smallpox had destroyed four hundred men, and a proportion of 
women and children, On a hill, in the rear of the village, are the 
graves of the nation.” (Lewis and Clark, (1), I, pp. 44-45.) 
Seven years after Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri the 
traveler Bradbury visited the Omaha village standing on or near 
the site of the one mentioned in the earlier narrative. May 12, 1811, 
while away from the boat and traversing the country in search of 
botanical specimens, he arrived on the summit of the bluffs, and, to 
quote from his journal: “I had a fine view of the town below. It 
had a singular appearance; the framework of the lodges consists of 
ten or twelve long poles, placed in the periphery of a circle of about. 
sixteen feet in diameter, and are inclined towards each other, so as 
to cross at a little more than half their length from the bottom; and 
the tops diverging with the same angle, exhibit the appearance of one 
cone inverted on the apex of another. The lower cone is covered with 
dressed buffalo skins, sewed together, and fancifully painted; some 
with an undulating red or yellow band of ten or twelve inches in 
breadth, surrounding the lodge at half its height; on others, rude 
figures of horses, buffaloes, or deer were painted; others again with 
attempts at the human face, in a circle, as the moon is sometimes 
painted; these were not less than four feet in diameter. I judged 
there were not fewer than eighty lodges. I did not remain long on 
the summit of the bluffs, as I perceived, from the heaps of earth, some 
of these recent, that it was a burial ground, and I knew the venera- 
tion they have for the graves of their ancestors.” (Bradbury, (1), 
pp. 65-67.) 
It is interesting to read of the number of decorated lodges then 
standing in an Omaha village, but in later years fewer structures 
were so ornamented. A typical example of a tipi of half a century 
ago is shown in plate 26, a, from a photograph made by Jackson in 
1871. 
According to the best authorities on the Omaha, from whose mono- 
eraphs much of the following information has been gleaned, the 
earth lodge and the skin tipi are the only forms of habitations made 
