The Good Life

According to legend, all of the designs that appeared on tepees were given to their first human owners in dreams or visions. In these, the original animal owner of the lodge appeared to the sleeper and promised to give him his own painted lodge which was the source of his supernatural powers.
The painted area around the bottom of the tepee cover is referred to as the Bottom Skirt. Bottom skirt designs utilized motifs that symbolized the earth's surface. This paid spiritual tribute to the importance of Mother Earth as the source of all physical life. Conversely, the painted tops of tepees represented the upper limit of the physical world and therefore symbolized Father Sky. All human events were contained between these two boundaries - Mother Earth below and Father Sky above. Thus the events of humans, animals, birds, etc. were depicted around the sides or middle of the tepee between these upper and lower boundaries.