The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-05-14
SODHOUSE JEWELLERS.

How Pioneers of the Plains Made
 Their Homes.-Few of the Old-Time
 Relics Left
 Houses built of chunks of sod, cut from the prairie, still abound in remote parts of the western plains, but are nowhere nearly so numerous as they were generation ago. The exten- sion of the railroads, with the lessen- ing of transportation rates for lumber and building materials, and the gradu- al effacement of the border lines of civilization have bettered the condi- tion of the western pioneers nowadays. Thirty years ago, when families went with OK teams and prairie schooners out upon the vast lonely plains, to settle upon Uncle Sam's free farms in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, the only material for home building was the buffalo grass sod, and Of that there was always an enor- nous abundance. The winning of the West was accomplished by dwelling in sodhouses. Many white haired men and women in the West point with on a hillside as the scene of their first bdlIC lOI liIdhiHS tiIS pldlliS plOopSIOuo
 On a fenceless plains farm a sodhouse is an inconspicuous object The eye wanders over great level stretches of corn and wheat fields, across a sparse collection of cottonwood trees, rude corral sof horses and cattle, and few squat outbuildings with sod roofs; but there appears no farm dwelling in sight. However, if one looks longer, he will see,away off at the base of low hill, spiral of smoke emerging above an earthly protuberance. More careful gazing will reveal little square window in the clump of earth, and a primitive wooden door close be- side the window. This is the sodhouse of the plainsman. There are several styles of sodhouses. Some are wholly dugouts-that is a chamber scooped in hillside and fronted with a wall of sod in which window and door of rudest construction have been let. Some are half dugouts-that is, low sodhouse built about a chamber dug in low hill. Then there is the sodhouse proper. It is close to a hill, and is con- structed with square chunks of hard dry prairie sod piled one upon another. The framework is of wood and the walls are composed of cakes of turf with mud smeared in the interstices. The roof is made of logs 9f cottonwood, upon which sods ore heaped a foot or more thick. A stove pipe is pushed through the sods for a chimney, and window and door, each cased with wood, are cut in the dirt walls.
 The habitation is the most primi- tive occupied by white people in Amer ica,. but 1t serves the purpose. The floor is hardened with earth, and in wet, weather there may be pools of wa ter and mud on the floor, but the place is a domicile, nevertheless. If wind blows through chink between the sods, handful of mud will stop it. Of course the interior of the house, with it's walls of cakes of sod and dry buf- falo grass, just as the turf has been cut with the shovel, may look sombre, but a pioneer family has too serious e fight for self-preservation to give heed to looks The habitation has prob- ably cost about $15 for the wooden frame, roof, window and door, and all the rest of the work on it has been done done in a few days time by the tal- wart plainsman and his wife and chil- dren. Most sodhouses are about eight feet high from foundation to upper most part of the earth banked roof The rooms inside are economical in saV- ing space. Sometimes a more prosper ous and ambitious pioneer on the plains will have a sodhouse of three tiny rooms, and, nlayhap, a dugout in the hillside at the rear, for the storage Of supplies for the family and cattle.s
 Life in "a sodhouse away out on the plains. where for months at a time there is not a thing in nature to cheer the eve or vary the silent monotony, is certaiiy close to first principles. When the6corn waves on thousands of acres, or when the plain is green with growing wheat, there is something to interest the sodnouse dwellers. but from Octo- Der to May no class of intelligent Amer jeans live more dreary lives than these One wonders what livlihood, what fu- ture prosperity or pleasure can repay a man and wife for living in such same ness. The shifting clouds by day and a sky of fine stars at night are for weeks at a time the only sights to be seen. Yet some Of the most contented and aspir- ing people ever seen are men and wom- en who live amid such surroundings and in dead solitude for years.
 To realize how primitive and solitary fashion people can live and be hap py one has only to imagine a man and wife in a, sodhouse. fifteen miles from the nearest village, in one of the sparse ly settled districts of Western Nebras- ka or Kansas. For days, and in some seasons for weeks, they see no human beings outside their own household
 Even begging Indians and tramps are almost unknown in that country Prairie dogs cast up their mounds and found towns in the unmolested spots about the place: gophers and field mice burrow through the sod walls of the house; not infrequently snakes swing themselves down from the raft CTS inside or crawl in at the door to get at any milk pans standing about At night coyotes and gray wolves come up through the canyons and skulk about the poultry yard or howl close to the windows. Through the day, while the man is in the fields, the herding usually falls to the woman's lot Probably each carries a luncheon, to save coming back to the house until night. W
 The x,,o,,oap ottapds to tar nacassor,