At least forty Coeur d'Alene Indians lived permanently at the Mission site in a village made up of a mixture of log cabins, Native American mat lodges, and an occasional tipi. In his 1875 diary, E.S. Glover wrote that the huts were nearly all square pens roofed with shakes, with a door mat nearly two feet above the ground to prevent pigs from coming in and a stone fireplace at the other end. The village stood on the north slope facing upward toward the church.