This is a story about my first sweat lodge ceremony with some Native American friends who showed up at my door during the summer of 2007.  We had met a few times when they called and invited me to attend a sweat lodge ceremony to be held on the coming weekend, starting at 8:00 am and going until that evening.   They invited me to a sweat at one of their homes. 

The first thing that struck my eye was that the lodge had a different shape than the one I have in my back yard.  It was made of tied willows like mine, but much bigger.  They commented on how big it was, so I guess that it is larger than normal.  It was approximately five feet tall, and twelve or so feet in diameter.  The shape was a little bit like a flattened pumpkin.  The ends of the willow sticks making the structure of the lodge came out of the ground angled away from the center and then bent back over the top.  This made the walls lean back when on the inside so you not only could sit up straight, but you could lean back on them in a semi-reclining fashion.  That was an improvement to comfort over my lodge which leans inward from the ground up, making it impossible to sit up straight next to the wall.   The main structure was round like ours, but had two sets of four main sticks going parallel in the east-west and north-south directions, forming a square made up of nine squares of about a foot on a side at the top, with one square right in the middle.  Then there were two circumferential sticks to hold it together, just as we do.  They tied it all together with a natural fiber twine, and had no special colors at the connections.  The lodge was made light tight and insulated by covering it using old blankets, with a final layer of old canvas on the outside.  The door consisted of an opening with a large flap that could be opened or closed as desired.  The door opening was pretty large; you could walk in and out stooped over rather than crawling like you do with ours.  The large door opening allowed the lodge to cool down quickly between rounds of sweating, which was a relief.  The door opening was on the east side of the lodge.

The fire was in a large pit dug about ten feet away, due east from the door.  The pit was over two to three feet deep, six to eight feet in diameter, with steep vertical walls.  Once the fire was going the line between the fire and the lodge became sacred and could only be crossed by the fire tender.  If you wanted to get to the other side, you had to go around the lodge.  The rocks were volcanic, from nearby Mt. Lassen.  They were much larger than ours, in fact about as large as you could pick up with a pitch fork.  They ranged from about seven inches to ten inches or so in diameter.  The pit in the center of the lodge was much larger than ours to accommodate the larger rocks.  There was an altar consisting of a little hill in front of the door, to the north side of the line between the pit and the fire.  It held sacred objects – feathers, special jewelry and other things.

While the rest of us were busy putting on the covering, setting up the altar, setting up the covering and stuff, the singer assembled a water drum.  He used a cast iron cooking kettle with three legs for the body of the drum.  The kettle was about nine inches in diameter.  He filled it about 1/3 full of water and soaked a round piece of tanned hide in it to wet and soften the hide.  He used seven white, one-inch diameter round pebbles to help tie the hide to the top of the kettle.  He wrapped the hide around a marble, wrapped the tie rope around the hide to hold the marble and then went to the next marble. When he was done he had seven hide wrapped marbles tied around the perimeter holding the stretched hide onto the top of the kettle.  He then took the long end of the tie rope and went from the center of section of rope between the marbles, pulled it under the kettle and around a leg, then back up to the next section of rope between marbles.  When he was all done he had pulled the hide taught with ropes (using a piece of antler as a handle) crossing around the legs and under the kettle.  He tied it very tight, using his foot on the rope to get enough tension.   The drum was played by hitting it with a stick that was about a half inch in diameter and a foot long.  Once in awhile while playing it he would tip the kettle so that water wet the hide again, making a really neat change in tone.  This drum works only when wet, perfect for use inside of the sweat lodge where it is too humid to keep a normal drum taut.  As the ceremony went along, the water would evaporate and during the breaks the drummer would pour more water into the kettle, right though the surface of the hide – it just poured in like it was through a piece of cloth.   The drum would also lose air.  The drummer periodically stopped and blew air through the hide into the drum to fill it up again.