128 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
It was a communal house, in accordance with the usages and institutions of 
the American aborigines, and growing naturally out of their mode of life. 
I counted forty-eight houses, which would average forty feet in diameter, 
all constructed upon this plan, besides several rectangular log houses of 
later erection and of the American type. 
These houses, of which a representation is given in Fig. 19, were 
thickly studded to- 
gether to economize 
the space within the 
stockade, so that in 
walking through the 
village you passed 
along some circular 
foot-paths. There 
was ho street, and 
F1G. 19.—Mandan house. it was impossible to 
see in any direction, except for short distances. In the center there was 
an open space, where their religious rites and festivals were observed * 
Not the least interesting fact connected with these creditable structures 
was the quantity of materials required for their erection and the amount of 
labor required for their transportation for long distances down the river, and 
to fashion them, with the aid of fire and stone implements, into such com- 
fortable dwellings. ‘The trees are here confined to the bottom lands between 
the banks of the river, the river being bordered for miles by open prairies, 
and the trees growing in patches at long distances apart. To cut the tim- 
ber without metallic implements, and to transport it without animal power, 
indicate a degree of persevering industry highly creditable to a people who, 
at this stage of progress, are averse to labor on the part of the males. 
Habitual male industry makes its first appearance in the next or the Middle 
Status of barbarism. The men here did the heavy work. 
In the spaces between the lodges were their drying-scaftolds (Fig. 20), 
one for each lodge, which were nearly as conspicuous in the distance as the 
1The war post, which stood in the center, and a number of stone and bone implements I brought 
away with me, as mementoes of the place. They are now in my collection. 
