Tipi
type of Native American tent
A tipi or tepee ( TEE-pee) is a conical lodge tent that is distinguished from other conical tents by the smoke flaps at the top of the structure, and historically made of animal hides or pelts or, in more recent generations, of canvas stretched on a framework of wooden poles. The loanword came into English usage from the Dakota and Lakota languages.
Historically, the tipi has been used by certain Indigenous peoples of the Plains in the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies of North America, notably the seven tribes of the Sioux, as well as among the Iowa people, the Otoe and Pawnee, and among the Blackfeet, Crow, Assiniboines, Arapaho, and Plains Cree. They are also used west of the Rocky Mountains by Indigenous peoples of the Plateau such as the Yakama and the Cayuse. They are still in use in many of these communities, though now primarily for ceremonial purposes rather than daily living. Modern tipis usually have a canvas covering.
Non-Native people have often stereotypically associated all Native Americans in the United States and Indigenous peoples in Canada with tipis. This is inaccurate, as many Native American cultures and civilizations and First Nations from other regions have used other types of dwellings, such as pueblos, wigwams, hogans, chickees, and longhouses.
Terminology and etymology
Tipi is a loanword from the Dakota and Lakota language. Stephen Return Riggs' 1852 Dakota-English dictionary, which was sponsored by the Minnesota Historical Society spells it as tipi.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tipi” as type of Native American tent. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as type of Native American tent. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q134932. The Library of Congress control number is sh2018002644. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1852.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tipi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.