The Iroquois tribes also adopted this method of defense. In 1615 Champlain, with Indian allies, invaded the territory of the Iroquois. He left a sketch of his attack on one of their villages. This sketch we reproduce in this illustration, which is a very important one, because it shows us a regularly palisaded village among a tribe of Indians where the common impression in reference to them is that they were a wandering people with no fixed habitations. The sketch is worthy of careful study. The buildings within are the long houses which we have just described. They are located near together, three or four in a group. The arrangement of the groups is in the form of a square, inclosing a court in the center. This tendency to inclose a court is a very common feature of Indian architecture. Such, as we have seen, is the arrangement of the pueblos. Such was also the arrangement of the communal buildings in Mexico, Central America, and Peru. In this case the village covered about six acres also. The defense was by means of palisades. There seem to be two rows of them. They seem to have been well made, since Champlain was unsuccessful in his attack. In earlier times these fortified villages were numerous.
Further south, this method of inclosing a village was also in use. In 1585 the English sent an expedition to the coast of North Carolina. An artist attached to this expedition left some cuts, one of which represents a village near Roanoke. It is surrounded, as we see, by a row of palisades, and contains seventeen joint tenement houses, besides the council house. The historians of De Soto’s expedition make frequent mention of walled and fortified towns. “The village of Mavilla,” from which comes our name Mobile, says Biedman, “stood on a plain surrounded by strong walls.” Herrera, in his General History, states that the walls were formed by piles, interwoven with other timber, and the spaces packed with straw and earth so that it looked like a wall smoothed with a trowel.
Speaking of the region west of the Mississippi, Biedman says: “We journeyed two days, and reached a village in the midst of a plain, surrounded by walls and a ditch filled by water, which had been made by Indians.” This town is supposed to have been situated in the north-eastern part of Arkansas, and it is interesting to note that recent investigators find what are probably the remains of these walled towns, in the shape of inclosures with ditches and mounds, in North-eastern Arkansas and South-eastern Missouri.21 The tribes throughout the entire extent of the Mississippi Valley were accustomed to palisade their villages—at least, occasionally.22
On the Missouri River we find some Indian tribes that have excited a great deal of interest among archæologists. It has been surmised that, if their history could be recovered, it would clear up a great many difficult questions. They were accustomed to fortify their village’s with ditches, embankments, and palisades. This gives us a cut of one of their villages. It is to be observed that it has a great likeness to some of the inclosures ascribed to the Mound Builders.
This has been noted by many writers. Says Brackenridge: “In my voyage up the Missouri I observed the ruins of several villages which had been abandoned twenty or thirty years, which in every respect resembled the vestiges on the Ohio and Mississippi.”23 Lewis and Clark, in their travels, describe the sites of several of these abandoned villages, the only remains of which were the walls which had formerly inclosed the villages, then three or four feet high. The opinion has been advanced that the inclosures of the Mound Builders were formerly surmounted by palisades. Mr. Atwater asserts that the round fort which was joined to a square inclosure at Circleville showed distinctly evidence of having supported a line of pickets or palisades.24
Should it be accepted that the inclosures of the Mound Builders represent village sites, and that they were probably further protected by palisades, it would seem, after what we have just observed of the customs of the Indians in fortifying their villages, to be a simple and natural explanation of these remains.