Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines Part 13

These explorers found the houses of the Indian tribes throughout the Columbia Valley occupied by several families, the smallest of them containing from twenty to forty persons, and the largest five hundred.

The presence of large households is fully shown as the rule in their house-life. The practice of communism by the household, as stated by these authors, has already (supra, p. 71) been presented. This tendency to aggregation in groups, for subsistence and for mutual protection, reveals the weakness of the single family in the presence of the hardships of life. Communism in living was very plainly a necessity of their condition.

In a recent description (1869) of the modern houses of the Makah Indians of Cape Flattery, Washington Territory, by Mr. James G. Swan, the old usage which led to joint-tenement houses still a.s.serts itself.

Speaking of the manner of building these houses in detail, he remarks that "they are designed to accommodate several families, and are of various dimensions; some of them being sixty feet long by thirty wide, and from ten to fifteen feet high." The houses were made of split boards on a frame of timber. [Footnote: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, No. 220, p. 5.]

COMMUNAL HOUSES OF TRIBES IN LOWER STATUS OF BARBARISM.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7--Frame of Ojibwa Wig-e-wam.]

Among the Indian tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism some diversity existed in the plans of the lodge and house. Fig. 7, which is taken from Schoolcraft's work on the Indian tribes, shows the frame of an Ojibwa cabin or lodge of the best cla.s.s, as it may still be seen on the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior. Its mechanism is sufficiently shown by the frame of elastic poles exhibited by the figure. It is covered with bark, usually canoe birch, taken off in large pieces and attached with splints. Its size on the ground varied from ten to sixteen feet, and its height from six to ten.

Twigs of spruce or hemlock were strewn around the border of the lodge on the ground floor, upon which blankets and skins were spread for beds. The fire-pit was in the center of the floor, over which, in the center of the roof, was an opening for the exit of the smoke.

Such a lodge would accommodate, in the aboriginal plan of living, two and sometimes three married pairs with their children. Several such lodges were usually found in a cl.u.s.ter, and the several households consisted of related families, the princ.i.p.al portion being of the same gens or clan. I am not able to state whether or not the households thus united by the bond of kin practiced communism in living in ancient times, but it seems probable. Carver, who visited an Ojibwa village in Wisconsin in 1767, makes it appear that each house was occupied by several families. "This town," he remarks, "contains about forty houses, and can send out upwards of a hundred warriors, many of whom are fine young men." This would give, by the usual rule of computation, five hundred persons, and an average of twelve persons to a house. [Footnote: Travels, etc., p. 65.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8--Dakota wii-ka-yo, or Skin Tent.]

When first discovered the Dakotas lived in houses constructed with a frame of poles and covered with bark, each of which was large enough for several families. They dwelt princ.i.p.ally in villages in their original area on the head-waters of the Mississippi, the present State of Minnesota. Forced upon the plains by an advancing white population, but after they had become possessed of horses, they invented a skin tent eminently adapted to their present nomadic condition. It is superior to any other in use among the American aborigines from its roominess, its portable character, and the facility with which it can be erected and struck. The frame consists of thirteen poles from fifteen to eighteen feet in length, which, after being tied together at the small ends, are raised upright with a twist so as to cross the poles above the fastening. They are then drawn apart at the large ends and adjusted upon the ground in the rim of a circle usually ten feet in diameter. A number of untanned and tanned buffalo skins, st.i.tched together in a form adjustable to the frame, are drawn around it and lashed together, as shown in the figure. The lower edges are secured to the ground with tent-pins. At the top there is an extra skin adjusted as a collar, so as to be open on the windward side to facilitate the exit of the smoke. A low opening is left for a doorway, which is covered with an extra skin used as a drop. The fire-pit and arrangements for beds are the same as in the Ojibwa lodge, gra.s.s being used in the place of spruce or hemlock twigs. When the tent is struck, the poles are attached to a horse, half on each side, like thills, secured to the horse's neck at one end, and the other dragging on the ground. The skin-covering and other camp-equipage are packed upon other horses and even upon their dogs, and are thus transported from place to place on the plains. This tent is so well adapted to their mode of life that it has spread far and wide among the Indian tribes of the prairie region.

I have seen it in use among seven or eight Dakota sub-tribes, among the Iowas, Otoes, and p.a.w.nees, and among the Black-feet, Crows, a.s.siniboines, and Crees. In 1878 I saw it in use among the Utes of Colorado. A collection of fifty of these tents, which would accommodate five hundred persons, make a picturesque appearance.

Under the name of the "Sibley tent" it is now in use, with some modifications of plan, in the United States Army, for service on the plains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9--Village of Pomeiock.]

Sir Richard Grenville's expedition in 1585 visited the south part of the original colony of Virginia, now included in North Carolina.

They landed at Roanoke Island, and also ascended a section of Albemarle Sound as far as the villages of Pomeiock and Secotan. An artist, John Wyth, before mentioned, was a member of this expedition, and we are indebted to him for a number of valuable sketches--the two villages named among the number, of which copies are given, together with representations of the people and of their industrial arts. The description of Pomeiock is as follows: "The towns in Virginia are very like those of Florida, not, however, so well and firmly built, and are enclosed by a circular palisade with a narrow entrance. In the town of Pomeiock, the buildings are mostly those of the chiefs and men of rank. On one side is the Temple (council-house) (A) of a circular shape, apart from the rest, and covered with mats on every side, without windows, and receiving no light except through the entrance. The residence of their chief (B) is constructed of poles fixed in the ground, bound together and covered with mats, which are thrown off at pleasure, to admit as much light and air as they may require. Some are covered with the boughs of trees. The natives, as represented in the plate, are indulging in their sports. When the spring or pond is at a distance from the town, they dig a ditch from it that supplies them with water." [Footnote: Wyth's Sketches of Virginia, first published by De Bry, 1690, Langly's ed., 1841, Plate 21.]

The village consisted of seventeen joint-tenement houses and a council-house, arranged around a central open s.p.a.ce, and surrounded with a palisade. Here the Algonkin lodge, unlike that of the Ojibwas, is a long, round-roofed house, apparently from fifty to eighty feet in length, covered with movable matting in the place of bark, and large enough to accommodate several families. The suggestion of this author, that "the buildings were mostly those of chiefs and men of rank," embodies the precise error which has repeated itself from first to last with respect to the houses of American aborigines.

Because the houses at Pomeiock were large, they were the residences of chiefs; and because the House of the Nuns at Uxmal was of palatial extent, it was the exclusive residence of an Indian potentate--conclusions opposed to the whole theory of Indian life and inst.i.tutions. Indian chiefs, the continent over, were housed with the people, and no better, as a rule, than the poorest of them.

"Some of their towns," says the same author, "are not enclosed with a palisade and are much more pleasant; Secotan, for example, here drawn from nature. The houses are more scattered and a greater degree of comfort and cultivation is observable, with gardens in which tobacco (E) is cultivated, woods filled with deer, and fields of corn. In the fields they erect a stage (F), in which a sentry is stationed to guard against the depredations of birds and thieves.

Their corn they plant in rows (H), for it grows so large, with thick stalk and broad leaves, that one plant would stint the other and it would never arrive at maturity. They have also a curious place (C) where they convene with their neighbors at their feasts, as more fully shown on Plate 20, and from which they go to the feast (D). On the opposite side is their place of prayer (B), and near to it the sepulchre of their chiefs (A).... They have gardens for melons (I), and a place (K) where they build their sacred fires. At a little distance from the town is the pond (L) from which they obtain their water." [Footnote: Sketches, etc., of Virginia, description of Plate 22.]

The houses of the Powhatan Indians of Virginia proper, as described by Captain John Smith, were precisely like those of Pomeiock and Secotan. A part of the interior of the house in which Smith was received by Powhatan as a prisoner is engraved upon his map of Virginia, of which the following is a copy:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.--Interior of House of Virginia Indians.

With caption: POWHATAN Held this state & fashion when Capt. Smith was delivered to him prisoner 1607]

"Their houses are built," Smith remarks, "like our arbors, of small young sprigs, bowed and tied, and so close covered with mats, or the bark of trees, very handsomely, that notwithstanding either wind, rain, or weather, they are as warm as stoves, but very smoky; yet, at the top of the house there is a hole made for the smoke to go into right over the fire. Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foot or more by a hurdle of wood. On these, round about the house, they lie, heads and points, one by the other against the fire, some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from six to twenty in a house."

[Footnote: History of Virginia, i, 130.]

The engraving is probably an improvement upon the original house in the symmetry of the structure, but it is doubtless a truthful representation of its mechanism. It seems likely that a double set of upright poles were used, one upon the outside and one on the inside, between which the mattings of canes or willows were secured, as the houses at Pomeiock and Secotan are ribbed externally at internals of about eight feet, showing four, five, and six sections.

Each house, on this hypothesis, would be from twenty-four to forty-eight feet long. A reference (supra, p. 67) has been made to the size of the houses of the Virginia Indians, from which their communistic character may be inferred.

In the "Journal of a Voyage to New York," in 1679-1680, by Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, edited and translated by Hon. Henry C.

Murphy, there is a careful description of a house of the Nyack Indians of Long Island, an Algonkin tribe, affiliated linguistically with the Virginia Indians. The Nyack house corresponds very closely with those last named. "We went from hence to her habitation," these authors remark, "where we found the whole troop together, consisting of seven or eight families, and twenty or twenty-two persons, I should think. Their house was low and long, about sixty feet long and fourteen or fifteen feet wide. The bottom was earth; the sides and roof were made of reed and the bark of chestnut trees; the posts or columns were limbs of trees stuck in the ground, and all fastened together. The top or ridge of the roof was open about half a foot wide, from one end to the other, in order to let the smoke escape, in the place of a chimney. On the sides or walls of the house, the roof was so low that you could hardly stand under it. The entrance, or doors, which were at both ends, were so small and low that they had to stoop down and squeeze themselves to get through them. The doors were made of reed or flat bark. In the whole building there was no lime, stone, iron, or lead. They build their fires in the middle of the floor, according to the number of families which live in it, so that from one end to the other each of them boils its own pot, and eats when it likes, not only the families by themselves, but each Indian alone, according as he is hungry, at all hours, morning, noon, and night. By each fire are the cooking utensils, consisting of a pot, a bowl or calabash, and a spoon, also made of a calabash. These are all that relate to cooking. They lie upon mats with their feet towards the fire, on each side of it. They do not sit much upon anything raised up, but, for the most part, sit on the ground or squat on their ankles. Their other household articles consist of a calabash of water, out of which they drink, a small basket in which to carry and keep their maize and small beans, and a knife.... All who live in one house are generally of one stock or descent, as father and mother with their offspring. Their bread is maize pounded on a block by a stone, but not fine. This is mixed with water and made into a cake, which they bake under the hot ashes.

They gave us a small piece when we entered, and although the grains were not ripe, and it was half baked and coa.r.s.e grains, we nevertheless had to eat it, or, at least, not throw it away before them, which they would have regarded as a great sin or a great affront." [Footnote: Journal, etc., p. 124.]

There is nothing in these statements forbidding the supposition that the household described practiced communism in living. The composition of the household shows that it was formed on the principle of gentle kin, while the several families cooked at the different fires, which was the usual practice in the different tribes; the stores were probably common, and the household under a matron.

It will be noticed also that they gave him maize bread when he first entered the house. He little supposed that it was in obedience to a law or usage universal in the Indian family.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.--Ho-de'-no-sote of the Seneca-Iroquois.]

During the greater part of the year the Iroquois resided in villages.

The size of the village was estimated by the number of the houses, and the size of the house by the number of fires it contained. One of the largest of the Seneca-Iroquois villages, situated at Mendon, near Rochester, N. Y. is thus described by Mr. Greenbalgh, who visited it in 1677: "Tiotohatton is on the brink or edge of a hill, has not much cleared ground, is near the river Tiotohatton [outlet of Honeoye Lake], which signifies bending. It lies to the westward of Canagora (Canandaigua) about thirty miles, contains about 120 houses, being the largest of all the houses we saw, the ordinary being fifty to sixty feet long, with twelve and thirteen fires in one house. They have a good store of corn growing to the northward of the town". [Footnote: Doc.u.mentary History of New York, vol i. p 13.]

The "long-house" of the Iroquois, from which they called themselves, as one confederated people, Ho-de'-no-sau-nee (People of the Long-House), was from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which were strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered over, both sides and roof, with large strips of elm bark tied to the frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the sides and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark shingles between them, the two frames being tied together.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.--Ground-plan of Seneca-Iroquois Long-House.]

The interior of the house was comparted at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each chamber entirely open like a stall upon the pa.s.sage way which pa.s.sed through the center of the house from end to end. At each end was a doorway cohered with suspended skins. Between each four apartments, two on a side, was a fire-pit in the center of the hall, used in common by their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would contain twenty apartments and accommodate twenty families, unless some apartments were reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy, and tidily-kept habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended their strings of corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of dried squashes and pumpkins. s.p.a.ces were contrived here and there to store away their acc.u.mulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely predominated in the household.

Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised by cultivation by any member of the household, as has elsewhere been stated, was for the common benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household.

Here was communism in living carried out in practical life, but limited to the household, and an expression of the principle in the plan of the house itself. Having found it in one stock as well developed as the Iroquois, a presumption of its universality in the Indian family at once arises, because it was a law of their condition.

Evidence of its general prevalence has elsewhere been presented.

In a previous chapter the usages of the Iroquois in regard to eating have been given. It came practically to one cooked meal each day.

The separate fires in each house were for convenience in cooking, all the stores in the house being common. The plan of life within them was studied and economical. This is shown by the presence of a matron in each household, who made a division of the food from the kettle to each family according to their needs, and reserved what remained for future disposal. It shows system and organization in their long-houses, with a careful supervision of their stores, and forethought as well as equity in the management and distribution of their food. In these households, formed on the principle of kin, was laid the foundation for that "mother power" which was even more conspicuous in the tribes of the Old World, and which Professor Bachofen was the first to discuss under the name of gyneocracy and mother-right. [Footnote: Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861.]

Since the mothers who dwelt together were usually sisters, own or collateral, and of the same gens, and since their children were also of the gens of their mother, the preponderating number in the household would be of gentile kin. The right and the influence of the mother were protected and strengthened through the maternal as well as the gentile bond. The husbands were in the minority as to kindred. In case of separation it was the husband and not the wife who left the house. But this influence of the woman did not reach outward to the affairs of the gens phratry, or tribe, but seems to have commenced and ended with the household. This view is quite consistent with the life of patient drudgery and of general subordination to the husband which the Iroquois wife cheerfully accepted as the portion of her s.e.x. Among the Grecian tribes descent had been changed to the male line at the commencement of the historical period. It thus reversed the position of the wife and mother in the household: she was of a different gens from her children, as well as her husband; and under monogamy was now isolated from her gentile kindred, living in the separate and exclusive house of her husband. Her new condition tended to subvert and destroy that power and influence which descent in the female line and the joint-tenement houses had created. It is, therefore, the more surprising that so many traces of this anterior condition should have remained in the Grecian and other tribes which Professor Bachofen has pointed out, since gyneocracy and mother-right, as discussed by him, must have originated among these tribes when under the gentile organization, and with descent in the female line.

The "Joint Undivided Family" of the Hindus at the present time, "joint in food, worship, and estate," brought to our notice by Sir Henry Maine, [Footnote: Early History of Inst.i.tutions, Holt's ed., pp.

100 and 106.] is a similar but probably more numerous household than that of the Iroquois. As soon as special investigation is made, joint-tenement houses and communism in living are found to be persistent features of barbarous life in the Old World as well as the New, but limited to the household. Strabo informs us that the Gauls lived in great houses, constructed of planks and wicker, with dome roofs covered with heavy thatch. [Footnote: Lib. iv, c. 4, s. 3.]

Wherever such houses existed there is at least a presumption that they were occupied by several families, who formed a single household and practiced communism.

The Iroquois long-houses disappeared before the commencement of the present century. Very little is now remembered by the Indians themselves of their form and mechanism, or of the plan of life within them. Some knowledge of these houses remains among that cla.s.s of Indians who are curious about their ancient customs. It has pa.s.sed into the traditionary form, and is limited to a few particulars. A complete understanding of the mode of life in these long-houses will not, probably, ever be recovered. In 1743 Mr. John Bartram attended a council at Onondaga, and kept a journal, afterwards published, in which he inserted a ground plan of the long-house in which they were quartered. It is the first ground plan of one of these houses ever published, so far as the author is aware, and the only one prior to the appearance of Johnson's Cyclopaedia in 1875.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14--Bartram's ground-plan and cross-section of Onondaga Long-House, in 1743.]

It should be noted that in 1696 Count Frontenac invaded Onondaga with a large French and Indian force, and that the Onondagas destroyed their princ.i.p.al village and retired. "The cabins of the Indians," says the relator, "and the triple palisade which encircled their fort were found entirely burnt." [Footnote: Doc.u.mentary History of New York, p. 332.]

The new village visited by Mr. Bartram was probably quite near the site of the old. He says, "The town in its present state is about two or three miles long, yet the scattered cabins on both sides of the water are not above forty in number; many of them hold two families, but all stand single, so that the whole town is a strange mixture of cabins, interspersed with great patches of high gra.s.s, bushes and shrubs, some of peas, corn, and squashes.... We alighted at the council-house, where the chiefs were already a.s.sembled to receive us, which they did with a grave, cheerful complaisance according to their custom. They showed us where to lay our luggage, and repose ourselves during our stay with them, which was in the two end apartments of this large house. The Indians that came with us were placed over against us. This cabin is about eighty feet long and seventeen broad, the common pa.s.sage six feet wide, and the apartments on each side five feet, raised a foot above the pa.s.sage by a long sapling hewed square, and fitted with joists that go from it to the back of the house. On these joists they lay large pieces of bark, and on extraordinary occasions spread mats made of rushes, which favor we had. On these floors they set or lye down every one as he will. The apartments are divided from each other by boards or bark six or seven feet long from the lower floor to the upper, on which they put their lumber. When they have eaten their hominy, as they set in each apartment before the fire, they can put the bowl over head, having not above five foot to reach. They set on the floor sometimes at each end, but mostly at one. They have a shed to put their wood into in the winter, or in the summer to set, converse or play, that has a door to the south. All the sides and roof of the cabin is made of bark, bound fast to poles set in the ground, and bent round on the top, or set aflat for the roof as we set our rafters; over each fire-place they leave a hole to let out the smoke, which in rainy weather they cover with a piece of bark, and this they can easily reach with a pole to push it on one side or quite over the hole. After this manner are most of their cabins built."

[Footnote: Observations, etc.; Travels to Onondaga, Lond. ed., 1751, pp. 40, 41]

The end section shows a round roof, as in the houses of the Virginia Indians, and the ground plan agrees in all respects with the old long-houses of the Seneca-Iroquois as described by them to the author before he had seen Mr. Bartram's plan.

In the Doc.u.mentary History of New York (vol. iii, p. 14) there is a remarkable picture of the princ.i.p.al village of the Onondagas which was visited or rather attacked by Champlain in 1615. The location of this village was not established until 1877, when General John S.

Clarke, of Auburn, by means of Champlain's map and sketch of the village, and his relation of the particulars of the expedition, found the site of the village in the town of Fenner, some miles northeast of the Onondaga Valley.

It was situated upon the edge of a natural pond, covering ten acres of land, and between a small brook which emptied into the pond on the left and the outlet of the pond which pa.s.sed it on the right.

The s.p.a.ce covered by the village site was about six acres of land, strongly fortified by a series of palisades. Champlain states in his relation that "their village was enclosed with strong quadruple palisades of large timber, thirty feet high, interlocked the one with the other, with an interval of not more than half a foot between them, with galleries in the form of parapets, defended with double pieces of timber, proof against our arquebuses, and on one side they had a pond with a never-failing supply of water, from which proceeded a number of gutters which they had laid along the intermediate s.p.a.ce, throwing the water without, and rendering it effectual inside for the purpose of extinguishing the fire. Such was their mode of fortification and defence, which was much stronger than the villages of the Attigouatuans (Hurons) and others."

[Footnote: Doc. Hist. New York, iii, 14.]

Although Champlain attacked this place with fire-arms, then first heard by the Onondagas, and by means of a rude tower of his invention, and with a considerable force of French and Indians, he was unable to capture it, and retired. The use of water, with gutters to flood the ground upon an outer palisade when attacked with fire, as imperfectly shown in the engraving, was certainly ingenious. General Clarke has investigated the defensive works of the Iroquois, and it is to be hoped that he will soon give the results to the public.

Knowing, as we now do, that the s.p.a.ce inclosed within the palisades was about six acres of land, the houses are not only seen to be log houses, but arranged or constructed side by side in blocks, and the whole thrown together in the form of a square, with an open s.p.a.ce in the center. The houses seem to be in threes and fours, and even sixes, side by side, and from sixty to one hundred feet in length; but if this conclusion is fairly warranted by the engraving, it might well be that each house was separated from its neighbor by a narrow open s.p.a.ce or lane. It is the only representation I have ever seen of a palisaded village of the Iroquois of the period of their discovery.

It covered about fifty-four acres of land.

The Mandans and Minnetarees of the Upper Missouri constructed a timber-framed house, superior in design and in mechanical execution to those of the Indians north of New Mexico. In 1862 I saw the remains of the old Mandan village shortly after its abandonment by the Arickarees, its last occupants. The houses, nearly all of which were of the same model, were falling into decay--for the village was then deserted of inhabitants, but some of them were still perfect, and the plan of their structure easily made out. The above ground-plan of the village was taken from the work of Prince Maximilian, and the remaining ill.u.s.trations are from sketches and measurements of the author. It was situated upon a bluff on the west side of the Missouri, and at a bend in the river which formed an obtuse angle, and covered about six acres of land. The village was surrounded with a stockade made of timbers set vertically in the ground, and about ten feet high, but then in a dilapidated state.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 16.--Mandan Village Plot.]