BUSHNELL |] VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI PU 
little beauty or neatness about an Indian town. The lodges are built 
in the shape of a half egg. They frequently are twenty feet in height, 
and sometimes sixty in diameter. The roofs are formed of long poles, 
which diverge like the radii of a circle, from one common centre. 
The ring of the circle is formed of upright posts, driven closely to- 
gether in the ground, and projecting upward about five feet. These 
are interwoven with brushwood and the smaller branches of trees, 
and form the support of the outer end of the poles composing the 
roof, the interstices of which are also interwoven with twigs and 
brushwood. The whole is then covered with earth, and when finished 
resembles a large hillock. The town contained about seventy of these 
lodges, standing’ singly or in groups, without any attention to order 
or regularity. Within, they are capacious, but dark, being lighted 
merely by a small aperture at the top, which serves both as window 
and chimney. The fire is built in a cavity in the centre, directly under 
_ the hole in the roof, by which the smoke escapes after floating in easy 
wreaths about the interior. 
“As the lodges are very spacious, a little back from the fire there 
is a circular range of tree trunks standing like columns, and con- 
nected by timber laid in their forks, forming a support for the roof, 
which otherwise, from the great length of the poles that form it, and 
the heavy mass of superincumbent earth, might fall in, and bury the 
inhabitants. Around the wall of the building, are ranged cribs or 
berths for sleeping, screened from view by heavy mats of grass and 
rushes. Over the fire is inclined a forked stake, in the hook of 
which hangs a large kettle, generally filled with buffalo flesh and 
corn. This, to judge from its looks, is never removed from the fire, 
even for the purpose of cleaning it.” (Op. cit., pp. 158-160.) 
A week or more passed after the arrival of the party at the Oto 
village before a council was held with the chief men of the tribe, 
“for the purpose of forming a treaty, with respect to the lands lying 
in the neighbourhood of the Nemahaw river.” The time for holding 
the council having arrived, the commissioner and his party proceeded 
from their camp to the earth-covered lodge in which the ceremony 
was to be enacted. They entered and “ found nearly the whole tribe 
assembled, and seated in circles, in the large lodge of the Totan chief. 
At the far end of the building was.the Iotan; and by his side were 
stationed those two worthies, the Big Kaw and the Thief. Next 
them were the stern forms of the older warriors and braves... 
The lodge was excessively crowded. One ring was formed beyond 
another: one dark head rose behind another; until the dim, dusk out- 
lines of the more distant were lost in shadow, and their glistening 
eyes alone could be seen. The passage which led to the air was com- 
pletely crowded with women and children; and half a dozen curious 
faces were peering down through the round hole in the roof. 
