Blackfoot Tipi: Four Poles Locked in a Tie, Cover Raised on the Back Pole, Pinned over an East Door, Ears on Poles (Wissler, 1910)

"This completes the process, a task which the average woman will perform in thirty minutes or less."

Cut long, slender, straight pine or spruce poles (his museum set: about 7 m long and 7 cm thick at the butt), peel them and sharpen the butts. Set them up as a frame and leave them to season. Wissler counted 13 to 23 poles a tipi.

Make a cover that is close to a half circle (his radii 4.2-5.7 m). Formerly twelve to fourteen buffalo skins, dressed soft without hair, fitted together and sewn with sinew; now canvas strips sewn to a vertical centre strip. Add the two 'ears' with holes in their tips, a flap with cords at the top, lap strips with paired pin holes, a long oval door about 1.2 m long, and loops or holes round the curved edge for the stakes.

Make stakes about 42 x 2 cm and pins about 28 x 1 cm of birch or chokecherry: six to sixteen pins above the door and two to five below.

Unroll the folded cover: its folded length is the distance from base to smoke hole. Lay two poles side by side on it, cross the other two over them at that distance from the butts, and tie the crossing with a thong about 4.5 m long and a simple knot. Raise them: a and b to the east, c and d to the west; swapping b and c locks the tie. The four feet stand at the corners of a rectangle, short side east. Then lay the other poles in on the north and south sides in about equal numbers, then the west side except its middle, and last the east side, the two door poles resting in a second crotch; keep three poles back.

Tie the cover's top cords to a pole so the bottom edge just touches the ground, stand it up in the middle of the west side through the crotch of the door poles, carry the cover round both ways and pin it above and below the door (door to the east; the right-hand edge, as you face it, on the outside; pins from right to left). A small ladder reaches the top pins.

Go inside and move the poles out or in until the cover is tight and evenly conical, then finish from outside. Poke the small ends of the last two poles through the holes in the ears' tips; moving these poles opens, closes or turns the smoke hole away from the wind. Stake the edge down all round.

From Clark Wissler, *Material Culture of the Blackfoot Indians*, **Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History** vol. V (1910), pp. 99-105 and Figs. 60-63 (checked on the archive.org scan materialcultureo00wiss; pp. 101-102 and 105 read from its text layer). The tipi was made and owned by the woman. The floor averaged about 4.3 m across, the fire a little toward the door. Wissler admits he was unsure how the cover's shape was laid out: he thought the skins were pieced roughly, trimmed against a pole and the bottom trimmed in place. Seam layout and canvas widths are ours.