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Hilger on the bark lodge

Originally published in 1951 by the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology as Bulletin 146.
The bark lodge used by the Chippewa gave the appearance of a one-room, low, gable-roof cottage. The entire framework consisted of saplings of ironwood or elm. The coverings of walls and roof were bark of the birch, cedar, Norway pine, elm, or tamarack. A 96-year-old White Earth man recalled that previous to sawmill days, nearly all of the Indians in their vicinity lived in bark houses. The framework of several was seen in wild-rice camps on the same reservation in 1938. An old Lac Courte Orielle informant as a child lived in an elm bark house with a gabled roof at Jump River near Chippewa Falls, Wisc.
from
Sister M. Inez Hilger, Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992) 140.