earth lodges of the mandan, hidatsa, and arikara

[larson1951]

I drove up to mandan the other day and went to the library and took a bunch of pictures of these displays they have in there
these images show the huge size of the earth lodges (which were built by the women)
these were built in about 7-10 days
one image is a painting of Lewis and Clark sitting in on a ceremony
the size of these would allow room for many people, dogs, bull boats, and later on horses
the last image shows a boat

 

[quito]

To cool Lars, thanks for sharing that with us. It is nice to see how they had their lodges arranged. After the winter we just went through, it really hit home that these guys were some tough sob's to survive these Dakota winters.

I really like that picture depicting the natives touching the first black man they ever saw. The Lewis and Clark Journals are some excellent reading Lars, and if you haven't read the book yet, I would very highly recommend it.

One of my neighbors has an earth lodge site that it now his home and farm building site. Our lodges over east here were more oblong, and dug into the ground about 4 foot.

Joel