Lewis and Clark Memories: Catfish Dinners and Earth Lodges on the Missouri River
 We ate catfish dinners last night at the Surfside Club Restaurant on the banks of the Missouri River north of Omaha, Nebraska. For perhaps thousands of years local residents have eaten catfish dinners. When Lewis and Clark came through in 1804, they called their camp “White Catfish” in honor of all the catfish they ate in this area. They camped at White Catfish from July 22-27, while messengers were sent to the Otoe Indian earth lodge village at the junction of the Platte and Elkhorn Rivers inviting the Otoe to come in for a council.
The Surfside Club is one of three famous catfish restaurants in the Omaha area. The others are Joe Tess Place in South Omaha, and Catfish Lake Restaurant & Lounge near Offutt Air Force Base out in the country near Bellevue. Catfish Lake is a designated Lewis and Clark site with a marker commemorating their July 21st camp at Papillion Creek; it is one of the destinations in Lewis and Clark Road Trips.
Surfside Club is located in the loess hills north of Omaha on River Drive Road. River Drive was the original “Council Bluffs,”where fur traders settled after Lewis and Clark held their council with the Otoe Indians. The council was held about ten miles north of the Surfside Club in today’s Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, the site of Fort Atkinson State Park. The reconstructed Fort Atkinson (1820-27) is fortunate to have re-enactors present on the first weekend of every month during the summer months.
We were at the Surfside Club as part of a field trip held by the Omaha Corral of Westerners International. Archeology buff Walt Duda led a tour of prehistoric earth lodge sites in nearby hills. You may visit such sites at the Krimlofski Tract Addition of Neale Woods Nature Center, right next door to the Surfside Club, or south of Omaha at the Fontenelle Forest Nature Center in Bellevue.
Archeologists in the early 1900’s estimated that there were about 10,000 earth lodge sites in the Omaha area, scattered among the loess hills on both sides of the river, from the junction of the Platte and Missouri Rivers to the area of north River Drive. William Clark toured 200-300 acres of “Indian mounds” in today’s downtown Omaha area on July 28th. He wrote the mounds were formed from the collapsed large earth lodges of an old Otoe earth lodge village. Later investigations by Omaha’s first surveyor, A. D. Jones, confirmed that they were not burial mounds.
Duda showed us earth lodge sites, which look like big depressions in the ground. The Otoes built earth lodges 40 feet in diameter, but prehistoric Nebraska Culture earth lodges were generally around 15 feet in diameter. Nebraska Culture Indians would often have one large earth lodge, where Duda suggested they all lived together when they prepared fields for planting before building their own individual lodges. A large lodge would serve as a community center also, and perhaps winter quarters.
The Nebraska Culture flourished from about 1100 AD to 1450 AD, when suddenly the people vanished. Duda suggested the most likely explanation is that a long lasting drought forced them to move north. He believes they became the historic Arikara Indians of South Dakota, who spoke a Caddoan language, unlike their neighbors. The Pawnee Indians of Nebraska also spoke a Caddoan language.
Earth lodges generally lasted about 10-15 years before the wooden posts that hold up the central earthen roof structure rotted away. The lodges were built over square shaped pits in the ground, several feet deep. A long entryway on the south side (facing away from the cold north winds) led into the lodge, which was always aligned on a true north south axis. The walls were about 18 inches thick, keeping the lodge cool in summer and warm in winter.
You may visit a modern day, large earth lodge on the grounds of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Nebraska City. For all of these attractions, see Region Five in the Trip Planner on this website, which has links to websites and MapQuest maps.
Posted by on 05/04/2007 at 08:10 PM
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