518 PREHISTORIC VILLAGES IN TENNESSEE [ETH. ANN. 41 
Finally they were tamped with earth and made impervious to rain. The en- 
trance way, 6 to 10 feet long, projected from the door and was built in the same 
manner as the lodge and formed a part of it. A curtain of skin hung at the inner 
and one at the outer door of this entrance way. Much labor was expended on 
the floor of the lodge. The loose earth was carefully removed and the ground 
then tamped. It was next flooded with water, after which dried grass was 
spread over it and set on fire. Then the ground was tamped once again. This 
wetting and heating was repeated two or three times until the floor became hard 
and level and could be easily swept and kept clean. Brooms were made of 
brush or twigs tied together. Couches were arranged around the wall in the 
spaces between the posts of the framework. These were provided with skins 
and pillows and served as seats by day and as beds by night. * * * 
Near each dwelling, generally to the left of the entrance, the cache * * * 
was built. This consisted of a hole in the ground about 8 feet deep, rounded at 
the bottom and sides, provided with a neck just large enough to admit the body 
of a person. The whole was lined with split posts, to which was tied an inner 
lining of bunches of dried grass. The opening was 
a stse, ipo wiser syste 
WY protected by grass, over which sod was placed. In 
Uy these caches the winter supply of food was stored; 
< the shelled corn was put into skin bags, long strings 
of corn on the cob were made by braiding the outer 
husks, while the jerked meat was packed in par- 
fleche cases. Pelts, regalia, and extra clothing were 
J generally kept in the cache; but these were laid in 
ornamented parfleche cases, never used but for this 
purpose. 
Uy When the people left the village for the summer 
VW buffalo hunt, all cumbersome household articles— 
as the mortars and pestles, extra hides, ete.—were 
placed in the caches and the openings carefully 
concealed. The cases containing gala clothing and regalia were taken along, as 
these garments were needed at the great tribal ceremonies which took place during 
that period. 
Plate 101, 6 (a reproduction from pl. 22 of the Twenty-seventh 
Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which accom- 
panies the above account), shows how the Omahas remove the earth 
from the center and throw it into a ring around the walls, very much 
as was done on the Gordon site. The floors appear to have been 
prepared in a similar way. 
Figure 131, which is also a reproduction from the same report, 
page 98, shows the common form of the Omaha cache. This cache 
recalls the one found under the floor and walls of temple circle No. 1 
of the Gordon site. 
In the erection of the Gordon building, when the surface soil of 
the interior had been removed down to the original hard clay subsoil, 
this subsoil was smoothed and hard packed.and apparently hardened 
by fire to form a firm floor. Many of these clay floors showed traces 
of the action of fire. 
Ui 
Fic. 131.—Common form of cache 
Fire Bowi 
A diagram of the interior of circle No. 3 is shown in Figure 129. 
Resting on the floor, at the exact center of the circle, is the fire bowl 
No. 8. To the northeast of this fire bowl was a beautiful black, 
