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Anearth lodge is a semi-subterranean building covered partially or completely with earth, best known from theNative American cultures of theGreat Plains andEastern Woodlands. Earth lodges are circular, dome-shaped dwellings with heavy timber superstructures covered by thick layers of earth, typically with a central or slightly offset smoke hole at the apex and a tunnel-like entryway.[1] The type emerged in the early 1500s and persisted into the reservation era of the late 19th century.[1] Tribes most frequently associated with earth-lodge architecture include theMandan,Hidatsa,Arikara,Pawnee,Otoe,Kansa,Omaha, andPonca, although several other groups also adopted the style.[1] Earth lodges have also been identifiedarchaeologically atMississippian culture sites in the southeastern United States.[1]
With diameters of up to 60 feet (18 m), historic-period earth lodges were the largest and most complex structures built on the Plains until the 20th century.[2]
The origins of the earth lodge are not entirely clear, though it was a Northern Plains innovation.[1] Between AD 1000 and 1400, horticultural villagers in the Central Plains built square houses, while Northern Plains villagers constructed rectangular structures. Although these earlier buildings are frequently called earth lodges, they were not true earth lodges; they were vertical-walled structures with thin coverings ofwattle and daub orthatch.[1] A few oval to circular structures appeared in northernNebraska and centralSouth Dakota in the 1400s, but their floor plans do not reflect the fully developed earth-lodge style.[1]
The earliest true earth lodges were built in centralNorth Dakota and northern South DakotaMissouri River villages in the early 1500s by the ancestors of the Mandans and Arikaras. These structures were thicker and more heavily insulated than the earlier dwellings and are thought to have been a response to the cooling temperatures of theNeoboreal ("Little Ice Age") climatic regime.[1] The architectural style subsequently diffused from the upper Missouri as additional sedentary tribes migrated onto the Plains and adopted the form. The Pawnees were established in central Nebraska by 1600 and living in earth-lodge villages; archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence places the Otoes, Omahas, and Poncas in earth-lodge villages on the eastern margins of the Central Plains by 1700.[1] TheCheyenne briefly adopted earth-lodge architecture in the mid-18th century during their occupancy of eastern North Dakota.[1]
Earth-lodge construction began with the excavation of a shallow circular floor pit, typically less than one foot deep, with a diameter varying between 20 and 60 feet (6.1 and 18.3 m).[1] Heavy vertical timbers served as central roof supports: Northern Plains earth lodges almost always had four center posts, while the Pawnees, Omahas, Otoes, and other Central Plains tribes used four, six, eight, ten, or even twelve.[1] The center posts were forked at the top and connected by horizontal beams.[1] A secondary row of shorter posts was set around the perimeter of the floor pit, several feet inside the wall, connected at the top by horizontal cross-stringers.[1] Closely spaced sloping posts then spanned from the top of these stringers to the ground outside the house pit, and rafters extended in spoke-like fashion from the wall stringers to the horizontal beams connecting the center posts, leaving an opening at the center for a smoke hole.[1]Thatching and then layers of thicksod and grass covered the superstructure.[1]
A sloping or vertical-walled entry passage extended from one side of the lodge, typically facing south or east, and could be 6 to 15 feet (1.8 to 4.6 m) in length.[1][3] The earth covering and partially subterranean foundation providedthermal insulation against the extreme temperature swings of the Plains.[4] The most common construction wood wascottonwood, a soft wood that meant lodges typically required rebuilding every seven to ten years.[5]
Interior features included a central fire basin, one or more deep bell-shaped food storage chambers (narrow at the lodge floor and expanding to three to five feet at their bases, and five to eight feet deep), and altars or sacred areas, typically on the back wall opposite the entrance.[1] The Hidatsa called the space between the outer vertical posts and the exterior leaning posts theatuti; this area was used for beds, firewood, tools, and other personal items.[1] One or more extended families occupied an earth lodge, which could house up to sixty people.[1]
InHidatsa culture, men raised the large structural logs, but the rest of the construction work was done by women; a lodge was therefore considered to be the property of the woman who built it.[5] Building an earth lodge was considered a sacred task.[3]
The earth lodge was central to many aspects of Plains horticultural village life, holding important symbolic, religious, astronomical, and social significance.[1]
InPawnee cosmology, the earth lodge symbolically represented the heavens. The circular floor represented the earth and the domed ceiling the sky; the entrance faced east, toward theMorning Star, so that people entered the lodge as stars enter the sky, and the altar on the western side represented the domain of theEvening Star and symbolized creation and renewal.[6] The four center posts represented the fourcardinal directions and four primary stars. Pawnee earth lodges also functioned as astronomical observatories: the smoke hole and east-facing doorway were designed to permit observation of celestial bodies, and at thevernal equinox the first rays of the sun would strike the altar within the lodge.[6]
Mandan and Hidatsa lodges also carried sacred symbolism, and special earth lodges were reserved for ceremonial activities such as the MandanOkipa, a four-day ceremony of renewal.[1]
Villages consisted of at least a dozen earth lodges and in many cases more than a hundred, and it was not uncommon for villages to be home to several thousand people.[1] Earth lodges were often closely spaced, and during times of conflict an earth or timber fortification wall surrounded the community.[1] Earth lodges were typically built alongside tribal farm fields near river and stream floodplains, where cultivation was easier;tipis were used as temporary shelters during the seasonalbison hunts on the open plains.[3]
Several reconstructed earth lodges are open to the public. TheNational Park Service built a replica at theKnife River Indian Villages National Historic Site nearStanton, North Dakota, and several replica lodges are located atFort Abraham Lincoln State Park south ofMandan, North Dakota.[3] A reconstructed earth lodge can also be seen atGlenwood Lake Park inGlenwood, Iowa. AtNew Town, North Dakota, a village of six family-sized earth lodges (roughly 40 feet (12 m) in diameter) and one large ceremonial lodge (more than 90 feet (27 m) in diameter) was constructed by theMandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation of theFort Berthold Indian Reservation, the first village of its kind built by the three affiliated tribes in over 100 years.[3]
A number of majorMississippian culturemound centers have yielded earth lodge-type ceremonial structures, either beneath (i.e. preceding) mound construction or as mound-top buildings. The most fully documented examples are atOcmulgee National Monument in Georgia.[1] The relationship, if any, between these southeastern structures and the Plains dwellings is unclear.[1] Sequential construction, collapse, and rebuilding of earth lodges appears to have been part of the mechanism of mound construction at sites includingTown Creek Indian Mound and some of the mounds at Ocmulgee.[1]
InKanabec County, Minnesota, theGroundhouse River was named for the earth lodges of the Hidatsa, who lived in the area before being driven westward to the Missouri River by theSioux.[7]
