with a common passageway running through them. Fires were lighted in this passageway, one for each family, and the smoke allowed to escape through openings in the roof. One of these bark houses is described by an early traveller as being 80 feet long, 17 feet wide, and with a common passageway 6 feet wide running through its length, on each side of which were apartments 5 feet square. Smaller houses, usually for the use of a few families, were also built. The larger ones, as was common in many Indian villages, were occupied both as dwellings and for general assemblies. These houses were grouped in villages, about which palisades, consisting of poles planted in the ground, were frequently built, and in at least one instance a ditch filled with water was used on the outside of the palisade to increase their security against attack.
The feature of special interest concerning the houses of the American aborigines, inclusive of the Eskimos, is that they were usually occupied by a number of families. This communal idea runs through all the indigenous American architecture. As remarked by Lewis H. Morgan, one of the most judicious students of American ethnology, "the house for a single family was exceptional throughout aboriginal America, while the house large enough to accommodate several families was the rule. Moreover, they were occupied as joint tenement-houses. There was also a tendency to form these households on the principle of gentile kin, the mothers with their children being of the same gens or clan."
The idea of the joint tenement-house, as has been clearly shown by Morgan, illustrated by the bark cabins of the Iroquois, finds its most striking expression in the communal houses, or pueblos, of the village Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, and in the abandoned stone houses of Central America. In the arid southwestern portion of the continent certain tribes, termed the Pueblo Indians, are still living in the villages they occupied when first visited by Spanish explorers (1640). On account of their exclusiveness and the isolation of their villages in an immense desert region they have been but slightly modified, so far as their home life is
concerned, even at the present day, by contact with white men. The hot desert has shielded these people in much the same manner that the frozen tundra has served to preserve the purity of the Eskimo.
The homes of Pueblo Indians, as described by Morgan, are immense tenement-houses, built of stone and adobe, frequently occupying several acres of ground, and from 1 to 6 or 7 stories high. The number of inhabitants at Zuñi, one of the most typical of these pueblo towns, is stated to have been 1,500 in 1851, but to have previously included some 5,000 souls. The adobe, of which the houses are largely constructed, is the soil of the region, which when mixed with water and allowed to dry becomes sufficiently hard to retain indefinitely in an arid climate the form given to it. The soil is formed into bricks, and also used as a mortar to unite rough stones. Although much stone was used in the construction of the pueblos, it was roughly dressed by hammering, or not changed at all from its natural condition, and regularly cut and carved stones do not occur in the buildings. The pueblos were built in successive terraces, usually either in a semicircle or on three sides of a rectangle, the open side being protected by a wall. Irregular forms are also known, the general plan being adapted to the natural condition of the site chosen. In certain instances the structures were placed on elevations where a high degree of safety was insured, but others are on the open plain and even at the base of a commanding eminence, and near enough to be reached by arrows shot from a bow. Protection against enemies was increased by an absence of openings in the exterior walls, except at a considerable height above the ground; ingress and communication from terrace to terrace being by means of ladders, which were drawn up or their steps removed in times of danger. The roofs of the pueblos, as may be seen at Zuñi at the present day, are flat and consist of poles covered with adobe.
The controlling ideas in the construction of the pueblos seems to have been communal residence and defence. The houses are at the same time tenements and fortresses. A characteristic feature of these, as of practically all Indian
villages, is the presence of one or more assembly rooms, and of open courts or plazas, where the people gathered for council, worship, amusement, etc.
When white men first visited the Pueblo Indians they cultivated gardens with the aid of irrigation in which maize, mostly of a blue colour, was the principal crop, and had domesticated the turkey; earthen vessels of large size, frequently elaborately and pleasingly decorated, were manufactured; cotton fabrics were woven of spun threads, and the men were armed with bows and arrows and shields; clothing was made of dressed deerskins, buffalo-robes, and cotton cloth usually dyed dark blue. The descriptions of the Pueblo Indians given by the first visitors from civilized peoples would, to a great extent, apply to them at the present day, although in reality their lives have been profoundly modified and their indigenous development checked.
Throughout a wide extent of the arid southwest the ruins of ancient pueblos, irrigation canals, remnants of pottery, the latter frequently marking village sites on isolated eminences, bear witness of a formerly widely spread people. This evidence shows also that the ancestors of the present tribes have inhabited the same territory for a great length of time. In this same general region are found the houses of the cliff-dwellers, who excavated rooms in the faces of precipices, frequently high above their bases and only accessible by means of holes, serving as steps, cut in the rock, or with the aid of ladders. In many instances these ancient cliff-dwellers, of which no certain descendants remain, took advantage of natural caverns, or of overhanging ledges, which were closed by means of walls of rough stone and adobe.