Self-Sufficient Living » Blog Archive » How to Construct A Plains Indian Tipi (Part 1)

Self-Sufficient Living » Blog Archive » How to Construct A Plains Indian Tipi (Part 1)

There were 50 tents made of tanned hides, very bright red and white in color and bell-shaped, with flaps and openings, and built as skillfully as those of Italy, and so large that in the most ordinary ones four different mattresses and beds were easily accommodated. The Indians . . . are as well sheltered in their tents as they could be in any house. ”
From Don Juan de Oñate’s account of a 1599 Great Plains expedition
“Tazhebute came to join us with a good Indian tent . . . Those tents have no equal for camping purposes. They shed the rain well, and in cold weather one can build afire right in the center of them, with the smoke rising cleanly up out of the top, where the flaps are set to suit the way of the wind.
“Thomas Henry Tibbles, describing an 1881 trip among the Ponca Indians in his book, BUCKSKIN AND BLANKET DAYS
“Ye kin live in it forty below zero and fifty ‘bove suffocation an’ still be happy. It’s the changeablest kind of a layout for livin’ in. ”Caleb Clark, The Old Trapper, in Ernest Thompson Seton’s TWO LITTLESAVAGES, 1903