Lodge

“ Traversing this dim, sweet spot, where no sound is heard but the waving of boughs and the softened notes of birds, one reaches the porter's lodge, a low, brick building, on each side of which extends the high brick-wall that separates the inner from the outer world. ”

“ Right and left in an Indian lodge are reckoned as one stands at the fireplace, looking toward the door. We thought an earth lodge was alive and had a spirit like a human body, and that its front was like a face, with the door for mouth. ”

“ You have entered my lodge and you bring a strange light. Why have you forced my lodge door? You are young, and youth has no need of my fire. When I enter my lodge, all the earth sleeps. You are strong, with the glow of sunshine on your face. Long ago I buried the sunshine beneath the snowdrifts. Go! you have no place here.
“Your eyes bear the gleam of the summer stars. North Wind blew out the summer star-lights moons ago. Your eyes dazzle my lodge, your breath does not smoke in chill vapour, but [Pg 334] comes from your lips soft and warm; it will melt my lodge. You have no place here. ”

“ From a lodge so neat and trim that it is a pleasure to look upon it, a well-kept road winds through a well-wooded and beautiful park, in the centre of which, on the brink of a lake, stands a large and handsome country house. All is ship-shape, from the gravel on the path to the knocker on the door, which is promptly opened, without grating of bolt or rattle of chain, by a clean, well-dressed, civil servitor. ”

“ Early in the morning, they heard, all about them, sounds as if a camp of people were there. They heard a young man shouting a sort of war cry, as young men do; women chopping wood; a man calling for a feast, asking people to come to his lodge and smoke,—all the different sounds of the camp. ”

“ The little scaffold with its mystic burden is removed from the centre of the great medicine lodge, the hide ropes are passed through apertures in the roof to men who stand outside, and the master of the ceremonies, and his assistants, together with the chiefs and braves of the tribe, re-enter the lodge, and take up their positions. ”

“ Somewhere out beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on, and the old men build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the young men ride to the hunt or go out to battle, and build lodges for the daughters of the tribe; and each man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast the honour of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like a pocket of deerskin is every house, warm and small and full of good things. ”

“ The lodge, utensils and fixtures of every kind, are borne upon the women’s backs, sustained by a strap of leather around the forehead. On reaching the intended place of encampment, the snow is cleared away, cedar branches brought and spread for a flooring, the lodge set up, the moveables stowed away, wood collected, and a fire built, and then, and not until then, can the females sit down and warm their feet and dry their moccasins. If there be any provisions, a supper is cooked. ”

“ One servant ran down to the lodge, only to bring back word that the young ladies had never been there.
Others scattered themselves over the gardens, seeking in the conservatories and graperies, in the plantations, in every imaginable place. ”

“ A lodge at the entrance to the estate supplied a medieval sense of challenge to the outside world, and the beautifully kept hedges at the side of the mile-long carriage-drive gave that feeling of retirement and emancipation from the world so much desired by tranquil minds. ”

“ In the morning you will proceed on your way, and toward evening you will come to this magician's lodge. You will know it by the groans which you will hear far over the prairie as you approach. He will ask you in. You will see no one but himself. ”

“ He is represented as of a temper and manners affectionate and forbearing. He evinced thoughtfulness and diligence in the management of his affairs, and the order and disposition of his lodge. When the hunting season was over, he employed his leisure moments in adding to the comforts of his lodge. His lodge was of an oblong shape, ten fathoms long, and made by setting two rows of posts firmly in the ground, and sheathing the sides and roof with the smooth bark of the birch. ”

“ The Three Principal Officers of a lodge are, it is needless to say, situated in the east, the west, and the south. Now, bearing in mind that the lodge is a symbol of the world, or the universe, the reference of these three officers to the sun at its rising, its setting, and its meridian height, must at once suggest itself. ”

“ It is true that I am getting old, but I am not yet prepared for a lodge in the wilderness. My present house has a wall on the village street. The post-office is a matter of crossing the road; the church is at the bottom of a meadow. I like all that, because I like all my neighbours and the sound of their voices. ”

“ In the evening, while the -feast goes on and the father s lodge is full of guests, the women and children come to the lodge with a great number of pitch torches, and two women enter and take the bride away between them : the men all the time taking no heed of what goes on. They take her to the lodge, chanting as they go, and making a great flourish with their torches. Late at night the men rise up, and the father and mother, or those standing in their stead, take the groom between them to the lodge, while the same flourish of torches and chant goes on as before. ”

“ Every lodge in an Indian village contains what is called its Medicine Bag, which is hung up in the most conspicuous place, and regarded with the greatest veneration, not only by the inhabitants of that individual lodge, but by the whole tribe. ”

“ We understood that children who came from this babes’ lodge had light skin and yellowish hair, like yellow sand.
A very old man once said to me: “I remember my former life. I lived in a babes’ lodge. It was like a small earth lodge inside. There was a pit before the door, crossed by a log. Many of the babes, trying to cross the pit, fell in. But I walked the whole length of the log; hence I have lived to be an old man.” I have heard this story from other old men. ”

“ When the time for the marriage has come,—in other words, when the girl's parents are ready,—the girl, her mother assisting her, packs the new lodge and her own things on the horses, and moves out into the middle of the circle—about which all the lodges of the tribe are arranged—and there the new lodge is unpacked and set up. ”

“ They cut the lodge covers to pieces, burnt the saddles and blankets, cut open sacks of beans, corn, and dried pumpkin, and strewed their contents on the ground, and went away, taking with them a skin lodge-covering, beaver-skins, buffalo-robes, blankets, guns, and all the small articles. The Indians' ponies were hid in the willows. ”

“ It was of earth lodges, like those of our summer village, but smaller and more rudely put together. We made camp this winter not very far from Like-a-Fishhook Point.
My father’s lodge, or, better, my mothers’ lodge,—for an earth lodge belonged to the women who built it—was more carefully constructed than most winter lodges were. Earth was heaped thick on the roof to keep in the warmth; and against the sloping walls without were leaned thorny rosebushes, to keep the dogs from climbing up and digging holes in the roof. The fireplace was a round, shallow pit, with edges plastered smooth with mud. ”

“ The elk took him to this island. Under the center of this island was the lodge. The messenger bird was with him and went into the lodge and asked the Nahu ́rac to help him. The white beaver made a speech, and said, “My friend, I have heard the condition that you are in. Of all these lodges that you have visited, that lodge at Pa-huk ́ is the head. I want you to go back there, and tell the leaders there that they are the rulers, and that whatever they shall do will be right, and will [Pg 113] be agreed to by the other lodges. They must help you if they can. If they cannot do it, no one can.” ”

“ May all who shall be lawfully appointed to rule herein according to our Constitutions, be under thy special guidance and protection, and faithfully observe and fulfill all their obligations to thee and to the Lodge.
May all who come within these consecrated walls, have but one heart and one mind, to love, to honor, to fear, and to obey thee, as thy majesty and unbounded goodness claim; and to love one another, as thou hast loved us. May every discordant passion be here banished from our bosom. ”

“ The lodge, where we were to remain, was the medicine lodge of the village, and just as we entered it we found a company of about a hundred men engaged in dancing a medicine dance, in order to propitiate the Great Spirit, to grant them prosperity in the approaching buffalo-hunting season, and protection from their enemies. ”

“ FIG. 192.—The ghost lodge.
The Indians always have observed the custom of smoking pipes and eating while sitting in the ghost lodge. At the back of the lodge they prepare a seat and in the middle they set up two poles similar to those erected outside the entrance to the tents. Before they eat in the lodge, they sacrifice part of the food. Whenever they move the camp or single tent from one place to another all these sacred objects are packed and carried on a horse kept for this special purpose. ”

“ This arrangement of beds, of arms, &c., combining the most vivid display and arrangement of colours, of furs, of trinkets—of barbed and glistening points and steel—of mysteries and hocus pocus, together with the sombre and smoked colour of the roof and sides of the lodge; and the wild, and rude and red—the graceful (though uncivil) conversational, garrulous, story-telling and happy, though ignorant and untutored groups, that are smoking their pipes—wooing their sweethearts, and embracing their little ones about their peaceful and endeared fire-sides ”

“ Presents are still a ready way for a young hunter to render himself acceptable in a lodge. There are some instances, where considerable ceremony, and the invitation of friends, have attended the first reception of the bridegroom, at the lodge; but these are in most [Pg 73] cases, what we should denominate matches of state, or expediency, in which the bravery, or other public services of a chief or leader, has inclined his village to think, that his merits deserve the reward of a wife. ”

“ And when you are talking with your Indian friend, as you sit beside him and smoke with him on the bare prairie during a halt in the day's march, or at night lie at length about your lonely camp fire in the mountains, or form one of a circle of feasters in his home lodge, you get very near to nature. ”

“ The squareness of its surface, emblematic of morality—its cubical form, emblematic of firmness and stability of character—and the peculiar finish and fineness of the material, emblematic of virtue and holiness—show that the ceremony of the northeast corner of the Lodge was undoubtedly intended to portray, in the consecrated language of symbolism, the necessity of integrity and stability of conduct, of truthfulness and uprightness of character, and of purity and holiness of life, which just at that time and in that place the candidate is most impressively charged to maintain. ”

“ A structure erected by Indians for any purpose whatever, is now generally designated a lodge, in which sense the term is applied in connection with the word dzhibai ́—ghost, or more appropriately shadow—in the above caption. This lodge is constructed in a form similar to that of the Midē ́wigân, but its greatest diameter extends north and south instead of east and west. ”

“ "Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine—
'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine; ”

“ A Lodge is a place where Masons assemble and work; hence that assembly, or duly organized society of Masons, is called a Lodge, and every brother ought to belong to one, and to be subject to its by-laws and the General Regulations. ”

“ The lodge in which we reside is larger than any other in the town, and being that of a grand chief, it serves as a council-house for the nation. The roof is supported by two series of pillars, or rough vertical posts, forked at top for the reception of the transverse connecting pieces of each series ”

“ The sun being now very hot, the chief of the Chayennes invited us to his lodge, which was at no great distance from the river. We followed him, and found a very large lodge, made of twenty buffaloe skins, surrounded by eighteen or twenty lodges, nearly equal in size. The rest of the nation are expected to-morrow, and will make the number of one hundred and thirty or fifty lodges, containing from three hundred and fifty to four hundred men, at which the men of the nation may be computed. ”

“ A Lodge.
A Lodge is an assemblage of Masons, duly congregated, having Holy Bible, Square and Compasses, and a dispensation or charter, authorizing them to work.
Ancient Lodges—Where Held.
Our ancient brethren held their Lodges on high hills or in low vales, the better to observe the approach of cowans and eavesdroppers, ascending or descending.
Lodge meetings at the present day are usually held in upper chambers—probably for [Pg 25] the security which such places afford. ”

“ One day they climbed a high ridge, and when they had reached the top, they saw, far off by a stream, a single lodge.
"What kind of a person can it be," said the young man, "who camps there all alone, far from friends?"
"That," said Old Man, "is the one who has hidden all the buffalo and deer from the people. He has a wife and a little son." ”

“ Every one in camp who sees the girl carrying the food in a covered dish to the young man's lodge, knows that a marriage is to take place; and the girl is watched by idle persons as she passes to and fro, so that the task is quite a trying one for people as shy and bashful as Indians are. ”

“ The idea that the Lodge is a symbol of the world, is still carried out. It was the belief of the ancients that the heavens, on the roof of the world, was supported by pillars. By these pillars, some suppose that the mountains are alluded ”