Wikibooks: Indian Tipi/Tipi History

• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Indian; caribou; Alaska
• Online Access: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Indian_Tipi/Tipi_History

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States including parts of Alaska. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes states and ethnic groups many of which still endure as political communities. There is a wide range of terms used and some controversy surrounding their use they are variously known as American Indians Indians Amerindians Amerinds or Indigenous Aboriginal or Original Americans. A tipi is a conical tent originally made of animal skins or birch bark and wood found in the northwest called lodge pole pine. It is a skill and hard work to make so many long poles of the same length with a gentle taper that end in a point. It was popularized by the Native Americans of the Great Plains. The European form of the term is teepee or tepee. The word tipi comes into English from the Lakota language the word thipi consists of two elements the verb thí meaning to dwell and a pluralizing enclitic (a suffix like ending that marks the subject of the verb as plural) pi and means they dwell. In Lakota formal verbs can be used as nouns and this is the case with thípi which in practice just means house. Tipis are stereotypically associated with Native Americans in general but Native Americans from places other than the Great Plains used different types of dwellings. Long before the Sioux Cheyenne and other Plains tribes came to the grasslands this type of shelter had been developed by the Indians of the northern forests. They used a pole frame to create the conical shape and then covered the skeleton with birchbark caribou hides or other materials. The term wigwam is sometimes used to refer to a dwelling of this type. The Plains Indians adapted this basic structure to their own environment and their own pattern of living. The Great Plains are the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lie east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado Kansas ...