n
the manner of lodge poles. When the fire was lighted, the windshields
formed a perfect draught to carry the smoke up through the permanently
open flue in the apex of the structure, and one soon realized that of
all tents or dwellings, no healthier abode was ever contrived by man.
Indeed, if the stupid, meddlesome agents of civilization had been wise
enough to have left the Indians in their tepees, instead of forcing
them to live in houses--the ventilation of which was never
understood--they would have been spared at least one of civilization's
diseases--tuberculosis--and many more tribesmen would have been alive
to-day.

On entering an Indian tepee one usually finds the first space, on the
right of the doorway, occupied by the woodpile; the next, by the wife;
the third, by the baby; and the fourth, by the husband. Opposite
these, on the other side of the fire, the older children are ranged.
To the visitor is allotted the warmest place in the lodge, the place of
honour, farthest from and directly opposite the doorway. When the dogs
are allowed in the tepee, they know their place to be the first space
on the left, between the entrance and the children.

While the two leather lodges of the Indians stood close together with
stages near at hand upon which to store food and implements out of
reach of the dogs and wild animals, my tepee, the canvas one, stood by
itself a little farther up the creek. Taking particular pains in
making my bed, and settling everything for service and comfort, I
turned in that night in a happy mood and fell asleep contemplating the
season of adventure before me and the great charm of living in such
simplicity. "In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good
as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants," says
Thoreau, "but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that,
though birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes,
and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more
than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and
cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who
own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an
annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer
and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams but now helps
to keep them poor as long as they live. . . . But how happens it that
he who is said to enjoy these things is so c