The Wakoe wigwams
are well built, forming long streets, admirable for their cleanness and
regularity. They are made of long posts, neatly squared, firmly fixed
into the ground, and covered over with tanned buffalo-hides, the roof
being formed of white straw, plaited much finer than the common summer
hats of Boston manufacture. These dwellings are of a conical form,
thirty feet in height and fifteen in diameter. Above the partition-walls
of the principal room are two rows of beds, neatly arranged, as on board
of packet-ships. The whole of their establishment, in fact, proves that
they not only live at ease, but also enjoy a high degree of comfort
and luxury.
Attached to every wigwam is another dwelling of less dimensions, the
lower part of which is used as a provision-store. Here is always to be
found a great quantity of pumpkins, melons, dried peaches, grapes, and
plums, cured vension, and buffalo tongues. Round the store is a kind of
balcony, leading to a small room above it. What it contained I know not,
though I suspect it is consecrated to the rites of the Wakoe religion.
Kind and hospitable as they were, they refused three or four times to
let us penetrate in this sanctum sanctorum, and of course we would not
press them further.
The Wakoes, or, to say better, their villages, are unknown, except to a
few trappers and hunters, who will never betray the kind hospitality
they have received by showing the road to them.
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