BULL. 30] 



EAST ABEIKA EAST GREENL ANDERS 



411 



served for the keeping of Kicred objects 

 and the reception of guests. In the winter 

 curtains of skin were hung from the beams 

 of the inner circle of posts, making a 

 smaller room about the fireplace. The 

 shields and weapons of the men were sus- 

 pended from these inner posts, giving 

 color to the interior of the dwelling, 

 which was always picturescjue, whether 

 seen at night, wdien the tire leaped up 

 and glinted on the polished blackened 

 roof and when at times the lodge was 

 tilled with men and women in their gala 

 dress at some social meeting or religious 

 ceremony, or during the day when the 

 shaft of sunlight fell through the central 

 opening over the fireplace, bringing into 

 relief some bit of aboriginal life and leav- 

 ing the rest of the lodge in deep shadow. 

 Few, if any, large and well-built earth 

 lodges exist at the present day. Even 

 witb care a lodge could be made to last 

 only a generation or two. 



Ceremonies attended the erection of an 

 earth lodge from the marking of the cir- 

 cle to the putting on of the sods. Both 

 men and women took part in these rites 

 and shared in the labor of building. To 

 cut, haul, and set the heavy posts and 

 beams was the men's task; the binding, 

 thatching, and sodding that of the women. 



The earth lodge was used by the Paw- 

 nee, Arikara, Omaha, Ponca, Osage, and 

 other tribes. A similar abode was found 

 in the Aleutian ids., on Kodiak id., and 

 in s. w. Alaska. There were habitations 

 among some of the California tribes that 

 had features in common with the earth 

 lodge, and there are evidences of relation- 

 ship between it, the Navaho hogan, and 

 one form of Pima dwelling. 



Among the Pawnee are preserved the 

 most elaborate ceremonies and traditions 

 pertaining to the earth lodge. These 

 tribes are said to have abandoned the 

 grass house of their kindred at some dis- 

 tant period and, under the teaching of 

 aquatic animals, to have learned to con- 

 struct the earth lodge. According to 

 their ceremonies and legends, not only 

 the animals were concerned with its con- 

 struction — the badger digging the holes, 

 the beaver sawing the logs, the bears car- 

 rying them, and all obeying the directions 

 of the whale — but the stars also exercised 

 authority. The earlier star cult of the 

 people is recognized in the significance 

 attached to the four central posts. Each 

 stood for a star — the Morning and Even- 

 ing stars, symbols of the male and female 

 cosmic forces, and the North and South 

 stars, the direction of chiefs and the aljode 

 of perpetual life. The posts were painted 

 in the symbolic colors of these stars — red, 

 white, black, yellow. During certain 

 ceremonies corn of one of these colors was 

 offered at the foot of the post of that 



color. In the rituals of the Pawnee the 

 earth lodge is made typical of man's abode 

 on the earth; the floor is the plain, the wall 

 the distant horizon, the dome the arching 

 sky, the central opening the zenith, 

 dwelling place of Tirawa, the invisible 

 power which gives life to all created 

 beings. 



The history of the distribution of this 

 kind of dwelling among peoples widely 

 scattered is a problem not yet fully solved. 

 See Grass lodge, Habitations. (a. c. f. ) 



East Abeika. {Aiaheka, 'unhealthful 

 place'). A former Choctaw town at the 

 mouth of Straight cr., an affluent of the 

 Sukenatcha, in Kemper co., Miss. Called 

 East Abeika to distinguish it from another 

 town of the same name. — Halbert in Miss. 

 Hist. Soc. Publ., VI, 425, 1902. SeeAbiliku. 



Abeeka. — Romans, FloridM, 313, 1775. Aiabeka. — 

 Halbert, op. fit. East Abeeka. — Ibid., 309. East 

 Abeika. — West Florida map, ca. 1775. 



Eastern Indians. A collective term ap- 

 plied by the early New England writers 

 to all the tribes n. e. of Merrimac r. It 

 is used by Hubbard as early as 1680. 

 These tribes, including the Pennacook, 

 Abnaki, Malecite, and Micmac, were gen- 

 erally in the French interest and hostile 

 to the English. (j. m. ) 



Eastern Indians. — Form used by most early Eng- 

 lish writers. Eastward Indians. — Winthrop (1700) 

 in N. Y. Doc. Col. Hist., iv, 612, 1.S54. Estward 

 Indians. — Owaneeo (1700), ibid., 614 ("the Nowon- 

 thewog or the Estward Indians"). 



Eastern Shawnee. A division of the 

 Shawnee now living in Indian Ter. They 

 formerly lived with the Seneca (Mingo) 

 near Lewistown, Ohio, but sold their 

 lands in 1831 and removed with the latter 

 tribe to Kansas. In 1867 they separated 

 from the Seneca and removed to Indian 

 Ter. under the name of Eastern Shawnee. 

 They are now under the Seneca school 

 and numbered 95 in 1904. (.i. m.) 



East Greenlanders. The Eskimo inhab- 

 iting the E. coast of Greenland. They 

 are divided into two groups: The Ang- 

 magsalingmiut, inhabiting the fjords 

 about C. Dan; and the southern group, for- 

 merly scattered along the coast south- 

 ward. They have long lived in complete 

 isolation, three-fourths of them in the 

 Angmagsalik district, others farther s. 

 about Iluilek, C. Bille, and Tingmiarmiut. 

 (Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, i, 

 321-371, 1890). They have developed 

 some of the peculiar arts of the Eskimo 

 to their highest perfection, especially the 

 use of harpoons with shafts that become 

 detached and float in the water, while 

 the seal swims off with the line and blad- 

 der, and of flexible-jointed lances also 

 for killing the struggling animal. The 

 more easily handled double bladder is 

 their invention. They employ the 

 double-bladed paddle altogether, wear 

 skin-tight garments that fit in the waist 

 of the kaiak so closely that no water 



