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.

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medicine lodge British  

noun

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

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Etymology

Origin of medicine lodge

First recorded in 1800–10

Example Sentences

Later his tribe set up a medicine lodge, and the hull story's mighty natural.

From A Man in the Open by Pocock, Roger

The smudge place in the medicine lodge on the first day and for the first sweathouse is a square marked in the soft earth with a crescent in the middle of it.

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

Reaching the heart of Saukenuk, he saw that all the people were gathered in the central clearing around Owl Carver's medicine lodge.

From Shaman by Shea, Robert

Another man is to get the creeping juniper to use in the smudge place in the medicine lodge, and still another is to cut out the smudge place.

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

At the close of the dance it was stuck, forks up, in the ground in the center of the medicine lodge, and left until the next year.

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