The Indian family almost always carry with them the necessary equipment for making camp, but hunters and solitary travelers must improvise something from the material at hand. The permanent village is composed of fairly substantial and rain-proof dwellings, called “teepees,” “wigwams,” and as many names as there are Indian languages. Slighter shelters are quickly put up in an emergency. You will enjoy copying some of these for your temporary or regular camp.
A substantial wigwam is built of poles and bark in either six-sided or octagonal form. In my day, we used six poles cut off at a fork about ten feet high. These are set two feet deep in the ground, eight to twelve feet apart, and joined by other poles resting on the forked ends. This forms the framework or hexagon. There are four more poles in the center, forming a square, and also connected at the top, and in the middle of this little court a shallow hole is dug for a fireplace and lined with flat stones.
Fig. 2.
The outer wall of the bark house is of split poles driven into the ground quite close together and neatly overlaid with the bark of the birch, elm, or basswood, in strips eight feet long by four to six feet wide. The trees should be peeled if possible when the sap flows in spring, and the strips spread one upon another on the ground and weighted with stones, so as to dry smooth and flat. Between every two inner posts is an outside post to support the crosspieces, light saplings which hold the bark in position. You can also tie these crosspieces to the split poles with strips of tough cedar bark.
