e after the other, was painted around the
circumference of the lodge. The painting might show the tracks of
animals, or a number of water animals, apparently chasing each other
around the lodge. On either side of the smoke hole at the top were
two flaps, or wings, each one supported by a single pole. These were
to regulate the draught of the fire in case of a change of wind, and
the poles were moved from side to side, changing as the direction of
the wind changed. On such wings were often painted groups of white
disks which represented some group of stars. At the back of the
lodge, high up, just below the place where the lodge poles cross,
was often a large round disk representing the sun, and above that a
cross, which was the sign of the butterfly, the power that they
believe brings sleep. From the ends of the wings, or tied to the
tips of the poles which supported them, hung buffalo tails, and
sometimes running down from one of these poles to the ground near
the door was a string of the sheaths of buffalo hooflets, which
rattled as it swung to and fro in the breeze.

Their arms were the bow and arrow, a short spear or lance, with a
head of sharpened stone or bone, stone hammers with wooden handles,
and knives made of bone or stone, and if of stone, lashed by rawhide
or sinew to a split wooden handle.

The hammers were of two sorts: one quite heavy, almost like a
sledge-hammer or maul, and with a short handle; the other much
lighter, and with a longer, more limber handle. This last was used
by men in war as a mace or war club, while the heavier hammer was
used by women as an axe to break up fallen trees for firewood; as a
hammer to drive tent-pins into the ground, to kill disabled animals,
or to break up heavy bones for the marrow they contained. These
mauls and hammers were usually made by choosing an oval stone and
pecking a groove about its shortest diameter. The handles were made
by green sticks fitted as closely as possible into the groove,
brought together and lashed in position by sinew, the whole being
then covered with wet rawhide tightly fitted and sewed. As the
rawhide dried, it shrunk and strongly bound together the parts of
the weapon.

The Blackfeet bow was about four feet long. Its string was of
twisted sinew and it was backed with sinew. This gave the bow great
power, so that the arrow went with much force. The arrows were
straight shoots of the service berry or cherry, and the manufacture
of arrow