The home into which he gradually came to consciousness was the winter house of his family. The framework was of hickory poles, set in a circle of perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter, with their slender ends gathered together at the top and supported by a central element of four wooden columns. Interwoven with this were thin, flexible pieces of wood plastered thickly with mud mixed with dry grass, and the whole covered inside and out with mats. The floor was excavated a couple of feet below the general level of the ground, and a shallow trench dug about it a little farther back, so that water would be carried off without entering. The doorway which had so early attracted Tokulki’s attention was to the east where the first rays of the sun could steal into it, but it was seldom that it found any one but very young babies to awaken, for the duties of the day were assumed early and ended soon, except in times of merry-making or the great ceremonials. There was no vent for the escape of smoke which sometimes accumulated to an extent which would render the inside unendurable to a white man; but this was partly provided against by the judicious selection of wood,—old sticks of oak and hickory which would fall apart with little smoke, and leave a glowing bed of coals to radiate heat during much of the night. Around the walls of the house was a continuous seat made of matting, raised a foot and a half to two feet from the floor and covered with bearskins upon which most of the household slept.