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 Institutions, 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 class of Indians who are curious about their ancient customs. It has passed 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.
[Illustration: 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 principal village and retired. "The cabins of the Indians," says the relator, "and the triple palisade which encircled their fort were found entirely burnt." [Footnote: Documentary 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 grass, bushes and shrubs, some of peas, corn, and squashes…. We alighted at the council-house, where the chiefs were already assembled 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 passage six feet wide, and the apartments on each side five 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 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 Documentary History of New York (vol. iii, p. 14) there is a remarkable picture of the principal 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 passed it on the right. The space 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 space, 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 space 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 space 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 space 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.