medicine lodge

American  

noun

1. a structure used for various ceremonials of North American Indians.

2. (initial capital letters) the most important religious society among the central Algonquian tribes of North America.

---

medicine lodge British  

noun

1. a wooden structure used for magical and religious ceremonies among certain North American Indian peoples

---

Etymology

Origin of medicine lodge

First recorded in 1800–10

Example Sentences

None of the Kiowas dared to touch the apote, this time—or to stay near the medicine lodge.

From Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Heroic Indian Women by Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)

Yet frequently during the night, fearing I might have been deceived, I stealthily arose and visited the medicine lodge, only to find all slumbering soundly.

From The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 379-468 by Matthews, Washington

As she was not a wicked woman and only lived with Morningstar as her husband, she gave her digging-stick to the medicine lodge woman and the natoas was named for the turnip she dug up.

From The Sun Dance of the Blackfoot Indians by Wissler, Clark

In the medicine lodge they sing until a little before day-break.

From The Sun Dance of the Blackfoot Indians by Wissler, Clark

The four formed a semicircle, backs to the medicine lodge, faces toward the crowd of curious people.

From Shaman by Shea, Robert