Earth Lodge

The earth lodge is a semi-subterranean, dome-shaped dwelling built by Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and parts of the Eastern Woodlands of North America. It is most closely associated with the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara of the upper Missouri River, and with the Pawnee, Otoe, Kansa, Omaha and Ponca further south. A heavy timber frame carried thick layers of plant material and earth, producing a mound-like roof with a smoke hole at the top and a covered entrance passage.

History

True earth lodges appear in the early 1500s in Missouri River villages of central North Dakota and northern South Dakota, built by ancestors of the Mandan and Arikara. The Pawnee were building them in central Nebraska by 1600, and the Otoe, Omaha and Ponca by 1700. The Cheyenne briefly adopted the form in the mid-18th century. Earth lodges remained in use into the reservation era of the late 19th century. Earlier rectangular and square houses of the Plains (about 1000-1400 CE) are not considered true earth lodges.

Construction

1. Floor: a shallow circular pit, typically less than 30 cm (1 ft) deep, with floor diameters of 6-18 m (20-60 ft).
2. Central frame: forked posts joined by horizontal beams. Northern Plains lodges almost always had four; Central Plains lodges used four to twelve. Cottonwood was the usual timber.
3. Outer frame: a ring of shorter posts linked by stringers, with split logs leaned from the stringers to the ground to form the walls.
4. Rafters: laid from the outer stringers up to the central beams, leaving an opening for smoke.
5. Covering: willow branches, then dried prairie grass or thatch, then thick sod and earth.

Among the Hidatsa, men helped raise the heavy central posts, while women built the rest of the structure under the direction of an experienced older woman; women owned and maintained the lodge. A lodge took about 7 to 10 days to build.

Size and use

Finished lodges at the Knife River villages in North Dakota were 9-18 m (30-60 ft) across and 3-4.5 m (10-15 ft) high, and a lodge could house up to about 60 people. The entrance passage was 1.8-4.6 m (6-15 ft) long and usually faced south or east. In heavy rain or snow, an old bull boat could be turned over the smoke hole and propped up so smoke could still escape. Because cottonwood rots, lodges were rebuilt about every 7 to 10 years.

Meaning

Building a lodge was a sacred task. In Pawnee cosmology the circular floor represented the earth and the dome the sky, and lodges were aligned so that the first light at the spring equinox struck the altar opposite the east-facing entrance.

Reconstructions

Replica earth lodges can be seen at Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site near Stanton, North Dakota, at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park near Mandan, North Dakota, and at New Town on the Fort Berthold Reservation, where a ceremonial lodge over 27 m (90 ft) in diameter has been built.

Roofing significance

The earth lodge shows the trade-off typical of sod and earth roofs: a thick, insulating cover that also places a very heavy load on timber posts, which eventually rot and force rebuilding.