The Blackfoot War Lodge: Its Construction and Use

Abstract

N THE late spring and early summer of 1805, members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition moved up the Missouri River across the present Montana plains on their way westward to the Pacific. They passed through the country of the powerful Blackfoot without meeting a single member of those tribes. Nevertheless, they frequently encountered Indian habitations, some of which appeared to them to have been occupied recently. Their Journals for the period May 26 to June 13, 1805, covering the portion of their outward journey from the vicinity of the mouth of the Musselshell River to the Great Falls, contain several references to Indian lodges of sticks erected in timbered localities, or to lodges of sticks and bark seen by the leaders of the party.' Reuben Gold Thwaites, editor of the Centennial Edition of the Journals, assumes that these structures were abandoned tipis, the everyday homes of the nomadic plains tribes.2 Yet several factors suggest to us that these were no ordinary lodges. The nomadic plains tribes did not abandon their tipi poles as a rule when they moved camp; they did not pitch their camps in small, isolated groups of lodges (the number 2 is most frequently mentioned in the Journals) in heavy timber; nor did they cover them with bark. It seems to us much more likely that the explorers described another type of structure, much used by the tribes of the northwestern plains in later years, which was especially designed for the use of war parties-the war lodge. If our identification is correct, this is the earliest reference to the use of the war lodge in or near the country of the Blackfoot. The war lodge of the Blackfoot was a most ingenious example of Indian architecture. Its simplicity of design, ease in construction, ruggedness and relative permanence made it a shelter admirably adapted to the peculiar needs of the many war parties, small mobile forces of footmen, that travelled the war trails at all seasons of the year to capture horses from enemy camps. This structure was used by the Blackfoot until lack of wild gaine for subsistence on the trail, combined with the strong pressure brought to bear by both the Canadian and United States governments, put an end to their intertribal warfare in 1885. There are several brief references to the war lodges of the Blackfoot in the earlier literature.3 However, none of them furnish many details of either their