BUSHNELL] VILLAGES WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI 179 
skilled agriculturists is attested by a note referring to the time 
they were still living in the old Mandan village below Fort Clark, 
October 11, 1853. In the journal of a party at that time descending 
the Missouri from Fort Benton to St. Louis appears this entry: 
“ Arrived at Fort Clark, or Aricaree’s village. It is situated on 
the top of a very high bluff on the bank of the river. . . The Rees 
are not friendly to the whites, and are kept from. open hostilities 
only by fear. They are a large tribe, and on the fertile meadows 
they occupy, raise a great amount of corn and pumpkins, which they 
exchange with the Crows and Dacotahs for dried buffalo meat and 
robes. They exported five thousand bushels of excellent corn this 
year...” (Saxton, (1), p. 265.) And it must be remembered that 
the principal implement was the primitive hoe, formed of a scapula 
of a buffalo attached to a wooden handle. 
WICHITA, 
Like the other members of this linguistic family, whose villages 
have already been described, the Wichita had two forms of dwell- 
ings, which they occupied under different conditions. One served 
as the structure in their permanent villages, the other being of a 
more temporary nature. But, instead of the earth-covered lodges 
used farther north, their fixed villages were composed of groups 
of high circular structures, entirely thatched from bottom to top. 
Their movable camps, when away from home on war or hunting 
expeditions, consisted of the skin-covered tents of the plains. 
The peculiar thatched structures were first seen and described 
by Europeans in the year 1541, when Coronado crossed the vast 
rolling prairies and reached the Quivira (the Wichita) about the 
northeastern part of the present State of Kansas. Here extensive 
village sites, with innumerable traces of occupancy, undoubtedly 
indicate the positions of the ancient settlements. 
In the narrative of the expedition led by Coronado, prepared by 
one of the Spanish officers, Juan Jaramillo, appears an interesting 
’ though very brief description of the thatched dwellings of the people 
of Quivira: 
“The houses which these Indians have were of straw, and most 
of them round, and the straw reached down to the ground like a wall, 
so that they did not have the symmetry or the style of these here 
[referring to pueblos]; they have something like a chapel or sentry 
box outside and around these, with an entry, where the Indians 
appear seated or reclining.” (Winship, (1), p. 591.) Castafieda, 
writing of the same villages, said: “'The houses are round, without 
a wall, and they have one story like a loft; under the roof, where 
they sleep and keep their belongings. The roofs are of straw.” 
