Such stages we did not value as we did our drying stages, nor did we use so much care in building them. If the posts were of green wood, we did not trouble to peel off the bark; at least, I never saw such posts with the bark peeled off. The beams in the forks of the posts often lay with the bark on. The puncheons that made the floor of the stage were free of bark, because they were commonly split from old, dead, floating logs, that we got down at the Missouri River; if the whole stage was built of these dead logs, as was often done, the bark would be wanting on every beam.
A watchers’ stage, indeed, was usually of rather rough construction; wood was plentiful and easy to get, and the stage was rebuilt each year.
As I have said, it was our custom to locate our gardens on the timbered, bottom lands, and when we cleared off the timber and brush, we often left a tree, usually of cottonwood, standing in the field, to shade the watchers’ stage. The stage stood on the north, or shady, side of the tree.
Cottonwood seedlings were apt to spring up in newly cleared ground. If there was no tree in the field, one of these seedlings might be let grow into a small tree. Cottonwoods grew very rapidly.
The tree that shaded the watchers’ stage in our family field, and which I have indicated on the map, was about as high as my son Goodbird’s cabin, and had a trunk about four inches in diameter. The cottonwood tree standing in Wolf Chief’s corn field this present summer, is perhaps about the height of the trees that used to stand in our fields at Like-a-fishhook village.
_Explanation of Sketch of Watchers’ Stage_
My son Goodbird has made a sketch, under my direction, of a watchers’ stage (figure 9).
The stage was placed close to the tree shading it, about a foot from the trunk. Holes for the posts were dug with a long digging stick; and the posts were set firm, like fence posts.
The stage was made nearly square, so that the watchers could sit facing any side with equal ease. The beams supporting the floor might be laid east and west, or north and south; but as the tree stood always on the south side of the stage, the floor beams lay always in one of these two ways.
In the sketch a skin[10] is seen lying on the stage floor. This is a buffalo calf skin, folded fur out, to make a seat for the watcher. The skin might be folded tail to head, or side to side; and sometimes it was folded flesh side out. It never hung down over the edges of the stage floor, but was folded up neatly to make a kind of cushion. The puncheon floor, at best never very smooth, was rather hard to sit upon; and letting a part of the skin hang down over the side would have been waste of good cushion material.