CONCLUSION.
The references brought together and presented on the preceding pages will reveal the nature of the dwellings and the appearance of the camps and villages which stood, so short a time ago, in the region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. First encountered in the southern part of the country by the Spanish expeditions led by De Soto and Coronado before the middle of the sixteenth century, and by the French who entered the upper and central portions of the Mississippi Valley during the latter part of the seventeenth century, all types of structures continued to be reared and occupied until the latter half of the nineteenth century, while some forms are even now in use, although it is highly probable that within another generation these, too, will have disappeared.
Various writers during the eighteenth century mentioned the tribes of the Upper Missouri Valley, but all accounts prepared at that time are rather vague, as was their knowledge of conditions on and in the region bordering the Great Plains. And not until after the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, and as a result of the several expeditions sent out by the Government to explore the newly acquired territories, did the various groups of tribes, with their peculiar characteristics, become known with a degree of certainty. But with the transfer of Louisiana conditions rapidly changed. Hunters and traders soon penetrated the wilderness where few had gone before. Fort Crawford, at the mouth of the Wisconsin; Fort Snelling, just below the Falls of St. Anthony; and Leavenworth, on the Missouri, were established before the close of the first quarter of the century. Towns were built farther and farther beyond the old frontier, and on April 18, 1851, Kurz wrote in his journal:
"St Joseph, formerly the trading post of Joseph Robidoux, is at the foot of the Blacksnake hills, on the left bank of the Missouri.... The streets are crowded with traders and emigrants on their way to California and Oregon. Many Indians of the tribes of the Pottowatomis, Foxes (Musquakees), Kikapoos, Iowas, and Otoes are continually in the town.... In summer the Bourgeois, or Chiefs, the clerks and Engagés of the fur companies enliven the streets.... St. Joseph is now what St Louis was formerly—their gathering place." Thus the Indian in his primitive state was doomed, as were the vast herds of buffalo which then roamed, unopposed, over the far-reaching prairies.
In studying the various types of structures it is interesting to learn how the natural environments influenced the form of dwellings erected by the tribes of a particular section. Thus in the densely timbered country of the north, about the headwaters of the Mississippi and far beyond, the mat and bark covered wigwams were developed and employed practically to the exclusion of all other forms of habitations. But on the plains, and in the regions bordering the great buffalo ranges, the skin-covered conical tipis predominated, although other forms were sometimes constructed by the same people. The earth lodges as erected by certain tribes of the Missouri Valley were the most interesting native structures east of the Rocky Mountains, and these at once suggest the Rotundas, or great council houses once built by the Cherokees and Creeks east of the Mississippi.
In treating of the habitations and villages of the several tribes references have been made, incidentally, to the manners and ways of life of the people who once claimed and occupied so great a part of the present United States.