184 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 77 
CONCLUSION: 
The references brought together and presented on the. preceding 
pages will reveal the nature of the dwellings and the appearance of 
the camps and villages which stood, so short a time ago, in the region 
between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. First encoun- 
tered in the southern part of the country by the Spanish expeditions 
led by De Soto and Coronado before the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and by the French who entered the upper and central portions 
of the Mississippi Valley during the latter part of the seventeenth 
century, all types of structures continued to be reared and occupied 
until the latter half of the nineteenth century, while some forms 
are even now in use, although it is highly probable that within an- 
other generation these, too, will have disappeared. 
Various writers during the eighteenth century mentioned the tribes 
of the Upper Missouri Valley, but all accounts prepared at that 
time are rather vague, as was their knowledge of conditions on and 
in the region bordering the Great Plains. And not until after the 
transfer of Louisiana to the United States, and as a result of the 
several expeditions sent out by the Government to explore the newly 
acquired territories, did the various groups of tribes, with their 
peculiar characteristics, become known with a degree of certainty. 
But with the transfer of Louisiana conditions rapidly changed. 
Hunters and traders soon penetrated the wilderness where few had 
gone before. Fort Crawford, at the mouth of the Wisconsin; Fort 
Snelling, just below the Falls of St. Anthony; and Leavenworth, on 
the Missouri, were established before the close of the first quarter 
of the century. Towns were built farther and farther beyond the 
old frontier, and on April 18, 1851, Kurz wrote in his journal: 
“St Joseph, formerly the trading post of Joseph Robidoux, ‘is at 
the foot of the Blacksnake hills, on the left. bank of the Missouri . . . 
The streets are crowded with traders and emigrants on their way 
to California and Oregon. Many Indians of the tribes of the Potto- 
watomis, Foxes (Musquakees), Kikapoos, Iowas, and Otoes are con- 
tinually in the town ... In summer the Bourgeois, or Chiefs, the 
clerks and Fngagés of the fur companies enliven the streets . . . St. 
Joseph is now what St Louis was formerly—their gathering place.” 
Thus the Indian in his primitive state was doomed, as were the vast 
herds of buffalo which then roamed, unopposed, over the far-reaching 
prairies. 
In studying the various types of structures it is interesting to 
learn how the natural environments influenced the form of dwellings 
erected by the tribes of a particular section. Thus in the densely 
timbered country of the north, about the headwaters of the Missis- 
