I do not know why my father put his medicine shrines in the rear of the lodge. Ours was a big family and there was not room enough for all the beds on one side. Probably Small Ankle wanted the medicine objects near his bed and not where the children were.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MAKING OF A DRYING STAGE
Stages in Like-a-fishhook Village
There were about seventy lodges in Like-a-fishhook village, when I was a girl. A corn drying stage stood before every lodge.
That before Small Ankle’s lodge was a three-section stage, of eight posts. White Feather, or his wives, owned two of these big eight-post stages, one before each of their two lodges; for White Feather had four wives. Many Growths—a woman—had a big eight-post stage. There were a few other eight-post stages in the village, but they were small, with narrow sections and posts placed relatively rather close to one another.
The rest of the stages in the village, as I recollect, were all six-post, or two-section, stages.
In all cases, whether of a six-post or eight-post stage, the floor was upheld by two long, but narrow beams, that ran the whole length of the stage.
The description I shall now give of the making of a drying stage, is of an eight-post stage, such as always stood before my father’s lodge.