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large birch trees, substituted cedar bark; but it was so iutlauiniable 
that many preferred the bark of the elm or ash. Tliis could not be 
transported as easily as birch-bark, but the Iroquoians had not the 
same need for portable dwellings as the Algonkians, because they 
occupied the same village sites for several years in succession. They 
did, in fact, carry birch-bark on some of their hunting and fishing 
excursions; but more often they simply constructed rude shelters of 
brush, bark, skin, or anything else that lay ready to their hands. 
Summarizing for eastern Canada as a whole, we may say that the 
northern tribes, the Crec, Naskapi, and certain bands of the Mon- 
tagnais, used mainly skin coverings both winter and summer; the 
Indians of southern Quebec and of the Maritime Provinces used 
birch-bark; the Iroquoian tribes used the bark of cedar, ash, elm, or 
spruce; and the Ojibwa, with some of their Algonkian neighbours, 
adopted birch-bark for summer lodges and rush mats for winter. 
The plains’ area was the home of the tipi, a tent of buffalo hide 
stretched around a conical framework formed by fourteen to eighteen 
long poles, whose points radiated like a funnel above the peakA 
Two projecting “ears” near the top, on the outside, served as cowls 
for the smoke-holes, each being adjusted by a pole in accordance 
with the direction of the wind. The doorway, which could be closed 
with a small flap, was a narrow aperture in the face of the tent ; the 
fireplace was in the centre, and beyond it, facing the door, sat the 
head of the household. Sometimes an inner curtain of hide three 
or four feet high was suspended behind him to cover half the back 
wall. The furniture was meagre; two or three tall tripods that sup- 
ported triangular back-rests of parallel twigs; some fur robes for 
bedding at their base; one or two leather bags containing clothing, 
and a few household tools and utensils. An average tipi of the 
Blackfoot Indians had a floor diameter of fourteen feet. 
Apart from the “ears,” there was little difference between this 
plains’ tipi and the conical tent of the eastern Indians already 
mentionefi, which often had a covering of skins. Tents of the same 
type, without ears and with coverings of either skin or brush, pre- 
vailed throughout much of the Alackenzie basin, although a 
few tribes in this area, notably the Hare and the Slave, generally 
1 The tops of three, or, in some tribes, four, poles, were first lashed together and set up like a 
tripod; the remaining poles were then spaced evenly between them, resting against the forked apex. 
