Teepee Description

Considerations

• The tepee was an ideal home for the nomadic Plains Indians. It was highly mobile and could withstand wide variations of temperature and weather. Perhaps most importantly in the largely treeless Plains, it could be built with a minimum of wood.

Features

• Historically, tepees consisted of eight to twenty bison hides tightly wrapped around a conical frame of three or four wooden tent poles. The owners could let out smoke or retain heat by adjusting a hole near the top. When the tribe was on the move, it was packed on a wooden frame called a travois, which was pulled by a dog or a horse.

Famous Ties

• The tepee was the inspiration for the conical tent invented by General Henry Hopkins Sibley just before the Civil War. The 12 foot tall Sibley tent could comfortably house 12 men and was extensively used by the Federal Army during the war. However, Sibley sided with the Confederacy during the War and was never paid promised royalties of five dollars a tent.