Unfortunately no sketch or picture of any sort of a Cheyenne earth lodge is known to exist, but the villages just mentioned must necessarily have resembled in appearance those of the Pawnee of a later generation, remarkable photographs of which have been preserved and which are shown in the present work. And as Dr. Grinnell has said in a recent communication (February 2, 1920) when referring to the places long ago occupied by the camps of the Cheyenne: "I have walked about on the sites of these old villages, and the grandmother of a woman of my acquaintance, and probably the father of that woman, lived in earth-lodge houses, presumably very similar to those occupied in my time by the Pawnees and the Mandans. I have never seen one, however, and do not know anyone who has seen one. Many years ago, I might have procured from old Elk River a description of such houses, though he was even then very old and growing feeble. It is too late to lament that now."
The conical skin lodge of the Cheyenne resembled that of other plains tribes, and they must in earlier times, when buffalo were so numerous and easily secured, have been rather large and commodious structures. When Lewis and Clark descended the Missouri, on their return from the far west, they reached on August 21, 1806, an encampment of the Cheyenne on the bank of the Missouri, opposite the upper village of the Arikara, not far below the old Cheyenne village mentioned in the journal of the expedition on October 15, 1804. To quote from the entry made August 21, 1806: "... arrived opposite to the upper Ricara villages. We saluted them with the discharge of four guns, which they answered in the same manner; and on our landing we were met by the greater part of the inhabitants of each village, and also by a band of Chayennes, who were encamped on a hill in the neighbourhood...." After conversing with all concerning the Mandans, "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. These Chayennes are a fine looking people, of a large stature, straight limbs, high cheek-bones and noses, and of a complexion similar to that of the Ricaras." (Lewis and Clark, (1), II, pp. 413-414.)