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An earth lodge is a semi-subterranean building covered partially or completely with earth, best known from the Native American cultures of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. Most earth lodges are circular in construction with a dome-like roof, often with a central or slightly offset smoke hole at the apex of the dome. [1] Earth lodges are well-known from the more-sedentary tribes of the Plains such as the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara, but they have also been identified archaeologically among sites of the Mississippian culture in the eastern United States.
Earth lodges were typically constructed using the wattle and daub technique, with a thick coating of earth. The dome-like shape of the earth lodge was achieved by the use of angled (or carefully bent) tree trunks, although hipped roofs were also sometimes used. During construction the workers would dig an area a few feet beneath the surface, allowing the entire building to have a floor somewhat beneath the surrounding ground level. They set posts into holes in the ground around the edges of the earth lodge, and made the tops meet in (or near) the middle. This construction technique is sturdy and can produce large buildings (some as much as 60 feet (18 m) across), in which more than one family would live. Their size is limited by the length of available tree trunks. Internal vertical support posts were sometimes used to give additional structural support to the roof rafters.
After a strong layer of sticks (or reeds) was wrapped through and over the radiating roof timbers, the people often applied a layer of thatch as part of the roof. The structure was then entirely covered in earth. The earth layer (and the partially subterranean foundation) provided insulation against the extreme temperatures of the Plains. The structures consisted of a clay outer shell over an inner shell of long grasses and a woven willow ceiling. The middle of the earth lodge was used as a fire pit, and a hole was built into the center. This smoke hole was often covered by a bullboat during inclement weather. Logs were gathered each spring as the ice receded and sheared them off; fresh logs were also cut. The most common wood used was cottonwood. Cottonwood was a wet, soft wood; this meant that lodges often required rebuilding every six to eight years.
In Hidatsa culture, men only raised the large logs; the rest of the work was done by women. Therefore, a lodge was considered to be owned by the woman who built it. A vestibule of exposed logs marked the entrance and provided an entryway; these vestibules were often a minimum of 6 to 9 feet (1.8 to 2.7 m) in length (determined by the size of the lodge and resulting outer-clay thickness). A windbreak was built on the interior of the lodge, blocking the wind and giving privacy to the occupants. Earth lodges often also contained cache pits (root cellar-type holes) lined with willow and grasses, within which dried vegetables were stored. [2]
Earth lodges were often built alongside tribal farm fields, alternating with tipis (which were used during the nomadic hunting season). A reconstructed earth lodge can be seen at the Glenwood, Iowa's Lake Park. A village entirely made up of earth-lodges may be seen at New Town, North Dakota. The village consists of six family-sized earth lodges and one large ceremonial lodge. In addition, a garden area and corrals have been built for authenticity. The park is open to the public and located west of New Town at the Earthlodge Village Site. The family earth lodges are roughly 40 feet (12 m) in diameter. The ceremonial earth lodge is more than 90 feet (27 m) in diameter. The park is the central point in a rebuilding and cultural renewal effort by the three affiliated tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. This is the only village of its kind to be constructed by the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations in over 100 years.
A number of major Mississippian culture mound centers have identified earth lodges, either beneath (i.e. preceding) mound construction or as a mound-top building. Sequential constructions, collapses, and rebuilding of earth lodges seems to be part of the mechanism of construction for certain mounds (including the mound at Town Creek Indian Mound and some of the mounds at the Ocmulgee National Monument). In Kanabec County, Minnesota, the Groundhouse River flows through such a center. According to Newton H. Winchell in The Aborigines of Minnesota, the river was named for the earth lodges of the Hidatsa, who lived in the area before being driven westward to the Missouri River by the Sioux. The Hidatsa lived in wooden huts, covered with earth.
The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, is a federally recognized Native American Nation resulting from the alliance of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples, whose Indigenous lands ranged across the Missouri River basin extending from present day North Dakota through western Montana and Wyoming.
The Arikara War was a military conflict between the United States and Arikara in 1823 fought in the Great Plains along the Upper Missouri River in the Unorganized Territory. For the United States, the war was the first in which the United States Army was deployed for operations west of the Missouri River on the Great Plains. The war, the first and only conflict between the Arikara and the U.S., came as a response to an Arikara attack on U.S. citizens engaged in the fur trade. The Arikara War was called "the worst disaster in the history of the Western fur trade".
The Arikara, also known as Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree, or Hundi, are a tribe of Native Americans in North Dakota. Today, they are enrolled with the Mandan and the Hidatsa as the federally recognized tribe known as the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.
The Mandan are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still reside in the area of the reservation; the rest reside around the United States and in Canada.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Native Americans of the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park is a North Dakota state park located 7 miles (11 km) south of Mandan, North Dakota, United States. The park is home to the replica Mandan On-A-Slant Indian Village and reconstructed military buildings including the Custer House.
The Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, which was established in 1974, preserves the historic and archaeological remnants of bands of Hidatsa, Northern Plains Indians, in North Dakota. This area was a major trading and agricultural area. Three villages were known to occupy the Knife area. In general, these three villages are known as Hidatsa villages. Broken down, the individual villages are Awatixa Xi'e, Awatixa and Big Hidatsa village. Awatixa Xi'e is believed to be the oldest village of the three. The Big Hidatsa village was established around 1600.
A pit-house is a house built in the ground and used for shelter. Besides providing shelter from the most extreme of weather conditions, this type of earth shelter may also be used to store food and for cultural activities like the telling of stories, dancing, singing and celebrations. General dictionaries also describe a pit-house as a dugout, and it has similarities to a half-dugout.
Like-a-Fishhook Village was a Native American settlement next to Fort Berthold in North Dakota, United States, established by dissident bands of the Three Affiliated Tribes, the Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa. Formed in 1845, it was also eventually inhabited by non-Indian traders, and became important in the trade between Natives and non-Natives in the region.
A platform mound is any earthwork or mound intended to support a structure or activity. It typically refers to a flat-topped mound, whose sides may be pyramidal.
Mato-tope was the second chief of the Mandan tribe to be known as "Four Bears," a name he earned after charging the Assiniboine tribe during battle with the strength of four bears. Four Bears lived in the first half of the 19th century on the upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota. Four Bears was a favorite subject of artists, painted by George Catlin and Karl Bodmer.
Fort Buford was a United States Army Post at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in Dakota Territory, present day North Dakota, and the site of Sitting Bull's surrender in 1881.
Garden Creek site is an archaeological site located 24 miles (39 km) west of Asheville, North Carolina in Haywood County, on the south side of the Pigeon River and near the confluence of its tributary Garden Creek. It is near modern Canton and the Pisgah National Forest. The earliest human occupation at the site dates to 8000 BCE. The 12-acre site features remains of two villages (31Hw7) occupied first in the Woodland period and, most prominently, in the Pisgah phase associated with the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. A total of four earthwork mounds have been found at the site; three have been excavated.
Double Ditch, also known as the Double Ditch State Historic Site, Burgois Site, 32BL8, Bourgois Site, and Double Ditch Earth Lodge Village Site, is an archaeological site located on the east bank of the Missouri River north of Bismarck, North Dakota, United States. It is named for the two visible trenches that once served as fortifications for the village, but archaeologists found a further two ditches outside these indicating that the population was originally larger.
The Wilbanks Site (9CK5) is a Late Mississippian culture Native American archaeological site in Cherokee County, Georgia, United States. The site was located about midway between the towns of Cartersville, Georgia to the west, and Canton, Georgia to the east. It was on the south bank of the Etowah River, but is now submerged underneath Lake Allatoona, under roughly 80–90 feet of water.
The Mandeville site (9CY1) is an archaeological site in Clay County in southwest Georgia in the United States. The site now lies under the Walter F. George Reservoir, which is a part of the Chattahoochee River basin.
The Dyar site (9GE5) is an archaeological site in Greene County, Georgia, in the north central Piedmont physiographical region. The site covers an area of 2.5 hectares. It was inhabited almost continuously from 1100 to 1600 by a local variation of the Mississippian culture known as the South Appalachian Mississippian culture. Although submerged under Lake Oconee, the site is still important as one of the first explorations of a large Mississippian culture mound. The Dyar site is thought to have been one of the principal towns of the paramount chiefdom of Ocute, perhaps Cofaqui.
The Lamar mounds and village site (9BI2) is an important archaeological site on the banks of the Ocmulgee River in Bibb County, Georgia, several miles to the southeast of the Ocmulgee mound site. Both mound sites are part of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, a national park and historic district created in 1936 and run by the U.S. National Park Service. Historians and archaeologists have theorized that the site is the location of the main village of the Ichisi encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539.
The Cahokia Woodhenge was a series of large timber circles located roughly 850 metres (2,790 ft) to the west of Monks Mound at the Mississippian culture Cahokia archaeological site near Collinsville, Illinois, United States. They are thought to have been constructed between 900 and 1100 CE, with each one being larger and having more posts than its predecessor. The site was discovered as part of salvage archaeology in the early 1960s interstate highway construction boom, and one of the circles was reconstructed in the 1980s. The circle has been used to investigate archaeoastronomy at Cahokia. Annual equinox and solstice sunrise observation events are held at the site.
Crow Flies High was the chief of a band of dissident Hidatsa people from 1870 until their band joined the reservation system in 1894. This band was one of the last to settle on an Indian reservation. A North Dakota State Park is named after him.