Holley - Tipis, Tepees, Teepees: History and Design of the Cloth Tipi

My interest in tipis began about 1971 when my husband and I saw a neighbor working on a set of tipi poles and we just had to dive in and help. That was it. Tipi fever hit us and we just had to have one. During the Christmas holidays of 1972, we ordered our first tipi, an 18-footer from Darry Wood. It arrived one night in the back of Darrys truck. I wanted to start painting it right away, but someone wisely advised me to wait a year, do some research, and then decorate. So, we began our research, finally settling on a beaded Cheyenne-style cover with a painted lining. We took that tipi everywhereto rendezvous, powwows, and campouts.

When my husband and I split the blanket in 1977, I kept the tipi and continued to travel to events. In 1978, I accepted the challenge to make a tipi. With David Clayton, I headed down to south Florida to buy an industrial sewing machine. From 1978 to 1995, I sewed over three hundred lodges, sometimes with the assistance of tipi slaves (those foolish enough to volunteer to help me). During all of these years of making tipis, going to various gatherings, doing beadwork, and making tipi accoutrements, I was studyingdoing research and listening to those knowledgeable about tipi life.

Like virtually all tipi lovers of my generation, I learned a lot from the classic work on tipis, The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction, and Use, by Reginald and Gladys Laubin. This book, published in 1957 and still in print, proved to be a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration; it spread the lore of the tipi literally all over the world. In Europe, however, the tipi was already in use before the publication of the Laubins book. In the early twentieth century, there were already American Indian hobbyists in Europe, especially in Germany, inspired by the works of novelist Karl May and the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill Cody. Even so, it is fair to say that the Laubin book, as it is affectionately called by tipi lovers, stimulated newcomers to the tipi worldwide. Today tipis are made and camped in on every continent but Antarctica (but it might be possible to use them there as well!). The modern tipi lovers debt to the Laubins is enormous.

It is time, however, to reassess. The Laubins wrote about the tipis they knew best, the tipis of the 1940s and 1950s. The tipis of that era represented a particular stage in the evolution of tipi design and construction. The cloth tipis, still popular at the time the Laubins book was written, had replaced the early buffalo-hide tipis. Since then, tipi construction has evolved due to amazing developments in technology. So, focusing on the progress the tipi has undergone, this book will address three areas: first, the history and evolution of the tipi; second, a step-by-step process of acquiring or making your own tipi; and third, current uses of tipis, drawing on the experiences of tipi lovers all over the world.

The nomadic dwelling structure of the American Indian is called several names by many different tribes. The Apsaroka, Apsalooke, or Crow Native Americans call the tipi ash (home) or ashtale (real home). The Blackfoot call it ] In the last 175 years, the tipi has evolved in materials used, construction techniques, and usage. It has gone from buffalo and elk hides to cloth and now to the synthetic materials of the twenty-first century. The two important innovations in tipis were first the use of horses for transporting bigger poles and larger hide lodges. Then in the early nineteenth century came the introduction of cloth covers.

The information about the historic tipi and tipi camp of the early to late nineteenth century in this chapter is taken from historic ledger drawings, daguerreotypes (tin types), glass slides, photographs, and handwritten documentation. Many pieces of information come from diaries, observations of clergy and the military, trappers and rendezvous people, visitors to tribal camps, and trading post lists of materials. Secondhand material, not directly observed or experienced, was avoided in collecting this information. One main exception is the quoted material from the late James H. Creighton that follows in the next section. Since many books written in the mid-1800s were not published until later in the twentieth century, the bibliography in the back of the book lists the sources by the date they were originally written or when the major firsthand information was observed.