Long before the stupid touch screens of today, the car had analog buttons!
In 1852, the Massachusetts born U. S. Army officer Randolph B. Marcy oversaw an expedition to find the source of the Red River. Marcy's group of seventy men traveled over unexplored parts of the vast Southern Great Plains. Observations on the trip were documented and Marcy was "to collect and report everything that may be useful or interesting."
Of the Comanche lodges, he shared the following remarks:
"The covering, made of buffalo hides, dressed without the hair, and cut and sewed together to fit the conical shape, is raised with a pole, spread out around the structure, and united at the edges with sharpened wood pegs, leaving sufficient space open at the bottom for a doorway, which may be closed with a blanket spread out with two small sticks, and suspended over the opening." He further added "the lower edge of the lodge is made fast to the ground with wood pins. The apex is left open, with a triangular wing or flap on each side, and the windward flap constantly stretched out by means of a pole inserted into a pocket in the end of it, which causes it to draw like a sail, and thus occasions a draught from the fire, built upon the ground in the centre of the lodge, and makes it warm and comfortable in the coldest winter weather."
Remarkable picture of the Kotsoteka Principal Chief Mow Way's camp, ca. 1867-75. Photograph taken by William Stinson Soule who was the post photographer at Fort Sill. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.