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Thank you for your submission Our team will be reviewing your submission and get back to you with any further questions. Thanks for contributing to The Canadian Encyclopedia. A longhouse was the basic house type of pre-contact northern Iroquoian-speaking peoples, such as the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, Petun and Neutral. Men would often leave the village during the summer for extended hunting, fishing, and warring expeditions.
Women and children would move to small cabins closer to the fields so that they could tend the crops. While the Iroquois lived in permanent villages, meaning that these villages were occupied year-round, villages tended to move on a regular basis.
After about ten years the farmlands adjacent to the village would begin to become exhausted and crop yields would fall. In addition, it was difficult to keep bark-covered homes up for long periods of time. After about a decade, it was harder to clean and repair the house. Among the Huron, village size rarely exceeded 1, to 2, inhabitants. One of the limiting factors was the rapidity with which local resources-firewood being a major concern-were used up.
Disputes within a village would sometimes result in a fissioning of the village. Between the longhouses and around the perimeters of the Iroquois villages were refuse dumps which contained large amounts of organic waste. These conditions would attract blood-feeding insects, like ticks and mosquitoes.
It addition, the waste was attractive to scavenging dogs and rodents. When the villages were moved, not everyone moved at the same time nor to the same location. People were free to move when they wanted and where they wanted. Some people would move to different communities and some to a new location. It would take several years for a village to be completely abandoned.
Iroquois villages were often stockaded and located in easily defensible high places near water. He says that the longhouses are about four fathoms brasses in width, and archaeological evidence indicates that his fathom must be about 5.
It seems unlikely that a house having a width of 21 feet 6. Perhaps Brebeuf intended to write "twelve" douze rather than "two" deux. Whatever the case, his range of fathoms is not problematic, for it suggests lengths ranging from l6m to 64m, lengths that correspond well with archaeologically known cases. They do not hesitate to inconvenience themselves for each other on these occasions.
The matter is esteemed of such importance that, when a village is built, they purposely put up one cabin much larger than the others, sometimes making it as much as twenty-five or thirty brasses [fathoms] in length" [JR]. They crossed four or five poles in a ring, making a sort of little arbor, which they surrounded with the bark of a tree.
They crowded within this, twelve or thirteen of them, almost upon one another. In the middle there were five or six large red-hot stones" [JR]. Their cabins are made of large sheets of bark in the shape of an arbor, long, wide, and high in proportion; some of them are 70 feet long" [JR].
It is placed upon poles laid and suspended the whole length of the cabin" [JR]. But neither of them [Algonquin or Huron] have any other bed than either some branches of trees, used by the former, or some bark or matting, used by the latter, --without tables, benches, or anything of the kind, the earth or some bark serving them for every purpose" [JR].
They are five or six fathoms wide, high in proportion and long according to the number of fires. Each fire has twenty or twenty-five more feet in length than those with only one [fire], none ever exceeding thirty or forty feet.
Each of these lodges rests on four posts for each fire. These posts are the base and support of the entire structure. Poles are planted all around, that is to say all along the two sides and on the two gable ends, to hold the sheets of elm bark which form the walls and are bound to them with strips made of the inner bast or second bark of white wood [basswood Tilia americana L. The square frame being raised, the Iroquois make the roof framing with long poles bent in an arc which they cover also with bark sheets a fathom long and from one foot to fifteen inches wide.
These bark sheets overlap like slates. They are secured outside with new poles like those which form the arch inside and strengthened again by long pieces of split saplings which run the entire length of the lodge from end to end and are fastened at the ends of the roof on the sides, or on the wings, by pieces of wood cut with crooked ends which are spaced at regular intervals for this purpose.
The trees are stripped, after girdling, when the sap is running because that is the best time to peel them. After the outer surface which is too rough is taken off, the sheets are piled compactly on top of each other so that they; do not get badly warped and are allowed to dry in this way.
The poles and wood necessary for the construction of the building are prepared in the same way. When the time has come to commence work, the youth of the village are invited and, to encourage them, a feast is given. In less than one or two days, all the work is under way and is being accomplished rather by the number of hands working at it than by the workers' diligence.
The open space in the middle is always the fireplace from which the rising smoke escapes through an opening cut in the top of the lodge directly above, which serves also to admit daylight. These buildings, having no windows at all, are lighted only from above in the same way as the famous Temple of the Rotunda built by Agrippa which is still seen intact in Rome. This opening is closed by one or two movable bark sheets drawn together or back, as is judged suitable, at the times of the heavy rains or certain winds which would cause the smoke to back draught into the lodges and make them very uncomfortable.
I am speaking here only of the lodges constructed in the Iroquois form, for those built round and like icehouses have not even openings in the top so that they are much darker and the people in them are always at the mercy of the smoke. These platforms [cubicles], shut in on all sides, except that of the fire, serve them as beds [to sleep on] and benches to sit on. Reed mats and fur pelts cover the bark which forms the floor of the berths.
On this bed, scarcely suited to encourage softness or laziness, the Indians, wrapped in the same clothing which they wore during the day, stretch out without other preparation. For the most part they do not know what it is to use a pillow. Some of them, nevertheless, since they have seen the French way, make one of a piece of wood or a rolled up mat.
The most delicate use those made of deer or moose skin but, in a short time, they are so greasy, dirty and disgusting to look at, that only people as dirty as the Indians can make themselves comfortable on them. They elevate it this much to avoid dampness. They do not make it any higher because they want to avoid the smoke which is unendurable in the houses when one is standing erect, or is raised a little too high. There, visible to all, they put their dishes and all their little household utensils.
Between the berths are placed great bark casks in tun shape, five to six feet high, where they put their maize when it is shelled. At each end there is a kind of lobby or separate small apartment and an outer vestibule. These cabinets are raised three to four feet high to keep them free of fleas.
Underneath, they put their supply of kindling wood. In summer, however, they open it on all sides to get fresh air. During the hot season, they put their mats on the flat roof of these vestibules which is not raised as high as their lodges. They lie thus in the open air without minding the dew. In the past, nothing was closed in Indian houses. When they were gone a long time on a campaign, they contented themselves with fastening their doors with wooden bars to protect them from the village dogs.
During all the centuries before our arrival, they lived in great security and without much distrust of each other. The most suspicious took their most precious possessions to their friends' homes or buried them in holes made for the purpose under their beds or in some part of their lodge where no one knew they were hidden.
Now some of them have trunks or little boxes. Others strengthen their lodges at the gables with grossly made planks and install in them wooden doors with bolts bought from the Europeans whose proximity has taught them, often at their own expense, that their property was not always safe. In the usual spells of cold weather their lodges are warm enough, but, when the northeast wind blows and one of those rigorous spells of Canadian weather lasting from seven to eight days on end comes, cold enough to split stones, when the cold has penetrated the lodges, I do not know how they can survive there as little covered as they are, especially those who sleep far from the fires.
During the summer, they [the lodges] are cool enough, but full of fleas and bedbugs, and stink very badly when they [the Indians] dry their fish in the smoke" [Lafitau ]. Lafitau depends upon earlier sources, but organizes and expands upon the information.
It is unfortunate that the word "platform" is used in the translation quoted here, because it makes his description seem garbled. If the word "cubicle" is substituted where I have indicated in brackets, the confusion disappears. The cubicles are clearly elongated boxes walled on five sides, open only towards the fire.
Each is feet long, leaving space totaling 8 feet at one end or both ends within the compartment for cabinets and casks for storing corn. If main hearths were spaced an average of 21 feet or 6. This makes all the documentary sources and archaeological cases I have seen entirely consistent with one another. The cubicles were ' long and ' deep, with ceilings ' high and bottoms raised 1' above the earthen floor of the compartment.
Few of these dimensions make sense if a two-dimensional platform is envisaged. We know from various sources that the Indians kept firewood under the cubicles and household belongings on top of them. The cubicles did not abut one another end to end because they were shorter than the distances between the fires that warmed them. Thus there were open spaces between the cubicle ends and the partition walls separating compartments, and in these were located storage casks and perhaps other items.
Highly detailed archaeological research on an undisturbed site is needed to determine where cubicles were located within compartments and what other uses and activities went on in the spaces between cubicles occupying the same side of a longhouse. Lafitau and his translator distinguish very usefully between the "lobby", which is an extension of the longhouse beyond the end compartment [used] for storage, and the "vestibule," which is a flat-roofed porch extending beyond the lobby.
The lobbies were apparently less heavily built than the main compartments, and served as storage areas, particularly in the winter. The vestibules were still more flimsy, and had light walls that could be removed in summer. The progressively less substantial nature of the structures at the ends of the longhouses explains why archaeologists typically have trouble defining them. They shew'd us where to lay our baggage 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 80 feet long and 17 broad, the common passage 6 feet wide; and the apartments on each side 5 feet, raised a foot above the passage 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 matts made of rushes; this favour 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, 6 or 7 foot long, from the lower floor to the upper, on which they put their lumber.
When they have eaten their homony, as they set in each apartment before the fire, they can put the bowel over head, having not above 5 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 get to converse or play, that has a door to the south.
All the sides of the 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 smoak, 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 model are most of their cabins built. The river that divides this charming vale is 2, 3 or 4 foot deep, very full of trees fallen across or drove on heaps by the torrents. The town in its present state is about 2 or 3 miles long, yet the scattered cabins on both sides the water are not above 40 in number; many of them hold 2 families, but all stand single and rarely above 4 or 5 near one another; so that the whole town is a strange mixture of cabins interspersed with great patches of high grass, bushes and shrubs, some of pease, corn and squashes, limestone bottom composed of fossils and sea shells" [Bartram ; cf.
Bartram ]. About noon I heard that the Messenger I had sent from Oswego had missed his Way and did not arrive there. They used beads or dyed porcupine quills as decorations. When it was warm out, the men wore only breechcloths. In colder weather, they added leggings and shirts. The Iroquois made tools and utensils from materials in their environment, such as animal bones, stones, and plant fibers. Garden hoes were made from large deer bones.
The handles were tree branches. Sewing needles and hooks for fishing were made from small bird bones. Cooking pots were made from clay or tree bark. Pouches to carry and store items were made from animal skins. First they used axes to cut around the bases of trees to kill them. Once the trees were dead, the men burned them and the nearby brush.
On the cleared land, the women planted corn, and when it was tall enough, they planted beans, which grew up the cornstalks. Squash growing near the corn and beans shaded their roots and kept them moist. Beans, corn, and squash were called the three sisters, because together, they grew strong. A deerskin ball was caught and passed using a net attached to the end of a stick. All the members of a clan played on the same team, but several clans might make up a team.
The focus was on the team winning, not on individual performance. The Cherokee were Iroquois who lived in a more southern climate.
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