Of course I remember nothing of these things; but I have told the story as I heard it from the lips of my mother.
[1] General George A. Custer.
Hidatsa Earth Lodge.
II
CHILDHOOD
Like-a-fish-hook village stood on a bluff overlooking the Missouri, and contained about seventy dwellings. Most of these were earth lodges, but a few were log cabins which traders had taught us to build.
My grandfather’s was a large, well-built earth lodge, with a floor measuring about forty feet across. Small Ankle, his two wives and their younger children; his sons, Bear’s Tail and Wolf Chief, and his daughter, my mother, with their families, dwelt together. It was usual for several families of relatives to dwell together in one lodge.
An earth lodge was built with a good deal of labor. The posts were cut in summer, and let lie in the woods until snow fell; men then dragged them to the village with ropes. Holes were dug the next spring, and the posts raised. Stringers, laid along the tops of the posts, supported rafters; and upon these was laid a matting of willows and dry grass. Over all went a thick layer of sods.