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

See Examples For:

medicine lodge

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

At the north end of this circular space is the medicine lodge, in which festivals are celebrated, and certain customs practised, which are connected with the religious notions of this people....

From Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi by Bushnell, David Ives

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

As night approached an old woman entered the medicine lodge and said: “I will send my grandson as an akáninili.”

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

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

From A Man in the Open by Pocock, Roger