Tipi Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
]] A tipi, or tepee, is a conical tent originally made of skins and popularised by the American Indians of the Great Plains. Today, they are usually covered in canvas and lived in by hippies in the world's rich countries. Fields full of tepees are a signature vista of the rainbow family of living light.
Tepees consist of four elements: a set of ten to fifteen sapling poles, a canvas or skin cover (the outer shape familiar from photographs), an inner canvas or skin lining, and a canvas or skin door. Ropes and pegs are required to bind the poles, close the cover, attach the lining and door, and anchor the resulting structure to the ground.
Tepees are distinguished from other tents by two crucial innovations: the opening at the top and the smoke flaps, which allow dweller to cook and heat themselves with a normal wood fire, and the lining, which supplies a steady, controlled flow of fresh air to fire and dwellers in almost any weather.
Tepee covers are made by sewing together strips of canvas and cutting out a semicircular shape from the resulting surface. Trimming this shape yields a door and the smoke flaps that allow the dwellers to control their fires.
The lining is the most difficult element to measaure, since it consists of lozenge-shaped strips of canvas assembled to form the shape of a truncated cone.
The poles, made of peeled, polished and dried saplings, are cut to measure about six feet more than the radius of the cover.
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| University of Washington Digital Collections |
The first step in setting up a tepee is to tightly tie together three long wooden poles (made from saplings with their branches removed). This fastening is done close to the ends of the three poles. Next, those poles are stood upright, with their unfastened ends spaced apart on the ground to form a triangle with sides about 3 m (10') long. Then, perhaps a dozen more long poles are laid onto the three primary poles. Their upper ends rest on the lashing of the first three, and the lower ends are evenly spaced to form a circle on the ground which includes the original three poles. Then the canvas tipi itself is lifted up, using a couple more long poles, and draped over the pole framework. The overlap seam is cleverly closed with wooden pins which somewhat resemble short, stubby drumsticks. The tipi was designed to enable building a fire (for heat and for cooking) in the center of the bare floor, and there is a smoke flap at the top which could be opened or closed, again with the long poles.
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