154 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 77 
earth is beaten down hard, forming a smooth floor, and in the mid- 
dle burns the fire, the smoke finding an exit through an aperture 
at the top. The portions of the tepee assigned to each family or 
couple are divided by a kind of wicker-work screen at the head and 
foot, separating a segment of a circle of about eight or ten feet in 
length and five or six in breadth, closed by the screen at either end, 
and at the outer side by the wall of the lodge, but being open to- 
wards the interior. The fire is common property, and has a certain 
amount of reverence paid to it. It is considered very bad manners, 
for instance, to step between the fire and the place where the head 
man sits. All round, on the lodge poles and on the screens, are sus- 
pended the arms, clothing, finery, and equipment of the men and 
their horses. Each lodge forms a little community in itself. 
“The tepees are pitched with all the regularity of an organized 
camp, in a large circle, inside which the stock is driven at night or 
on an alarm or occasion of danger. Outside the door is struck a 
spear or pole, on which is suspended the shield of the chief and a 
mysterious something tied up in a bundle, which is great medicine.” 
(Dunraven, (1), pp. 94-95.) 
A white shield supported outside a tipi is visible in the photo- 
graph reproduced as plate 47. This remarkable picture has not, un- 
fortunately, been identified, but it was undoubtedly made in the Up- 
per Missouri Valley, and from the nature of the tipis, many appear- 
ing to be quite small, it may be assumed that it was a party of 
Indians who had come on a trading trip, rather than that it repre- 
sented a regular village. 
Several accounts are preserved of large structures discovered in 
the region frequented by the Crows which, although not positively 
identified, were possibly erected by members of that tribe. Thus 
Lewis and Clark on July 24, 1806, arrived at an island in the Yellow- 
stone River between 5 and 6 miles below the mouth of Clark’s Fork, 
and wrote: “It is a beautiful spot with a rich soil, covered with wild 
rye, and a species of grass like the blue-grass, and some of another 
kind, which the Indians wear in plaits round the neck, on account 
of a strong scent resembling that of vanilla. There is also a thin 
growth of cottonwood scattered over the island. In the centre is a 
large Indian lodge which seems to have been built during. the last 
summer. It is in the form of a cone, sixty feet in diameter at the 
base, composed of twenty poles, each forty-five feet long, and two 
and a half in circumference, and the whole structure covered with 
bushes. The interior was curiously ornamented. On the tops of the 
poles were feathers of eagles, and circular pieces of wood, with sticks 
across them in the form of a girdle: from the centre was suspended 
a stuffed buffaloe skin: on the side fronting the door was hung a 
