The woodland habitations were chiefly tent-shape structures of saplings
covered with bark, rush mats, skins, or bushes; the prairie habitations
were mainly earth lodges for winter and buffalo-skin tipis for summer.
Among many of the tribes these domiciles, simple as they were, were
constructed in accordance with an elaborate plan controlled by ritual.
According to Morgan, the framework of the aboriginal Dakota house
consisted of 13 poles;(33) and Dorsey describes the systematic grouping of
the tipis belonging to different gentes and tribes. Sudatories were
characteristic in most of the tribes, menstrual lodges were common, and
most of the more sedentary tribes had council houses or other communal
structures. The Siouan domiciles were thus adapted with remarkable
closeness to the daily habits and environment of the tribesmen, while at
the same time they reflected the complex social organization growing out
of their prescriptorial status and militant disposition.
Most of the Siouan men, women, and children were fine swimmers, though
they did not compare well with neighboring tribes as makers and managers
of water craft. The Dakota women made coracles of buffalo hides, in which
they transported themselves and their householdry, but the use of these
and other craft seems to have been regarded as little better than a
feminine weakness. Other tribes were better boatmen; for the Siouan Indian
generally preferred land travel to journeying by water, and avoided the
burden of vehicles by which his ever-varying movements in pursuit of game
or in waylaying and evading enemies would have been limited and
handicapped.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38