Volume 1

338 MANDAN ARCHITECTURE.
hills or muskrat cabins. The nearly circular huts are
placed very irregularly ; some so close to each other as
scarcely to leave a foot-passage, others again at a distance
of 20 to 30 feet apart. But about the center of each village
is an open space of about four acres, around which
the huts are regularly built at equal distances, fronting the
open space. This circle is of about 30 huts, which I have
no doubt were the first erected on the spot. Friends, who
joined them afterward for various causes, erected their huts
in the rear, wherever they found it most convenient. This
continues to be the case ; huts are continually demolished
in one village and others built to replace them in another.
This often proceeds from misunderstandings the people
have either with the chiefs of the village, or with their
own neighbors ; when, finding the situation unpleasant and
likely to lead to quarrels, they shift their quarters ;
but they
always take up their new residence among their own tribe.
The Mandanes and Saulteurs [Souliers] are a stationary
people, who never leave their villages except to go hunting
or on a war excursion. They are much more agricultural
than their neighbors, the Big Belhes, raising an immense
quantity of corn, beans, squashes, tobacco, and sunflowers.
A Mandane's circular hut is spacious. I measured the one
I lodged in, and found it 90 feet from the door to the
opposite side. The Avhole space is first dug out about 1%
feet below the surface of the earth. In the center is the
square fireplace, about five feet on each side, dug out about
two feet below the surface of the ground flat. The lower
part of the hut is constructed by erecting strong posts about
six feet out of the ground, at equal distances from each
other, according to the proposed size of the hut, as they
are not all of the same dimensions. Upon these are laid
logs as large as the posts, reaching from post to post
to form the circle. On the outer side are placed pieces
of split wood seven feet long, in a slanting direction, one
end resting on the ground, the other leaning against the
cross-logs or beams. Upon these beams rest rafters about