Also teepee, tepie, teepe. [Sioux or Dakota Indian tī·pī tent, house, dwelling, abode (Rigg, Dakota–Eng. Dict., 1890).] A tent or wigwam of the American Indians, formed of bark, mats, skins, or canvas stretched over a frame of poles converging to and fastened together at the top. Also attrib.
1872. W. F. Butler, Gt. Lone Land, ix. 125. One has to travel for … before the smoke of your wigwam or of your tepie blurs the evening air.
1877. Black, Green Past., xlv. At length we descried … three teepees—tall, narrow, conical tents with the tips of the poles on which the canvas is stretched appearing at the top.
1899. Stutfield, in Blackw. Mag., March, 546. That evening we dispensed with the teepee and camped in the open air. Ibid., 542. Now and then we saw the teepee poles of old Indian camping-grounds.
1917. F. S. Gordon, The Tom-Tom, in Poetry, IX. Feb., 222.
| Where are the herds of buffalo and the hides, | |
| The meat, the tepees? |
