WIGWAMS OR LODGES. 287 
found, he at once designates the nation to 
which it belongs—even a track 1s often suf- 
ficient to identify them.* Also by the ‘sign,’ 
and especially the remains of fires, he deter- 
mines the interval elapsed since their depart- 
ure with remarkable accuracy. 
The lodges ate composed of a frame of 
small poles or rods, covered usually with buf- 
falo skins, which receive but little further pre- 
paration than the currying off of the hair. 
Some give their lodges a round wagon-top 
shape, as those of the Osages, which com- 
monly consist of a frame of bent rods, re- 
sembling wagon-bows, and covered with skins, 
the bark of trees, or, as is generally the case 
in their villages, with grass and earth. Again, 
some dispose the poles in two parallel lines, 
and incline them against a ridge-pole, which 
gives the wigwam the shape of a house-roof: 
others, planting small rods in a circle, so twine 
the points together as to resemble, in some 
degree, when covered, a rounded hay-mow: 
but by far the most general style, among the 
wild tribes, of constructing their wigwams, is 
by planting the lodge-poles so as to enclose a 
circular area of from ten to twenty feet in 
diameter (the size depending upon the num- 
ber of the family) ; and the tops being brought 
together, it forms a conical frame, which 
is closely covered with skins, except an 
aperture in the apex for the escape of the 
* As many tribes make sued moccasins of different shapes— 
some with hooked toes, others i—some with the seam on the 
bottom, etc., there is always a palpable difference in the tracks 
