The villages of the Wichita Indians were usually located near the banks of
a river, and sometimes contained as many as a thousand grass lodges. The
lodges were each fifteen to thirty feet across, and were made of heavy
poles and coarse grass. This lithogr aph shows a Wichita village as seen
in 1852. Planted fields can be seen in front of the house. Often,
illustrations such as this one were drawn by artists in the East, using
crude sketches and word-of-mouth descriptions. They would then use their
imaginat ions to fill in the details. In this lithograph, the artist has
drawn smoke holes in the top of the lodge homes; in fact, the actual
lodges had intersecting poles at the top and smoke simply filtered through
the structure's grass covering.