ABSTRACT
This question about tipis was included in an interview about shelter as a cultural universal that was administered to students in Grades K-3. A previous question established that the vast majority of the students could supply the name “tipi” when shown a drawing of a tipi and asked what it was. Most of them also were able to generate one or more reasons why some Indians lived in tipis, as the examples indicate. Despite this familiarity with tipis and ability to reason about them, however, very few students understood that the main reason that the tribes who constructed tipis used this form of housing was its portability. These were plains tribes who followed the buffalo on which they were dependent for meeting most of their basic needs, so they had to pack up and move periodically, taking everything that they owned with them, including their shelter. The students’ interview responses imply a need for instruction about tipis to include emphasis on
the tipis’ portability, as well as a need for teaching about the nature of and reasons for nomadic societies (a concept unfamiliar to most K-3 students).
