Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines

by Lewis Henry Morgan

If, then, a tribe of Village Indians, with such habits and experience, emigrated centuries ago in search of new homes, and in course of time they, or their descendants, reached the Scioto Valley, in Ohio, they would find it impossible to construct houses of adobe bricks able to resist the rains and frosts of that climate, even if they found adobe soil. Some modification of their house architecture would be forced upon them through climatic reasons. They might have used stone, if possessed of sufficient skill to quarry it and construct walls of stone; but they did not produce such houses. Or they might have fallen back upon a house of inferior grade, located upon the level ground, such as the timber-framed houses of the Minnitarees and Mandans, in which case there would have been no necessity for the embankments in question. Or, they might have raised these embankments of earth, inclosing rectangles or squares, and constructed long houses upon them, which, it is submitted, is precisely what they did. Such houses would agree in general character and in plan, and in the uses to which they were adapted, with those of the aborigines found in all parts of America.

The elevated platform of earth as a house-site is an element in Indian architecture which reappears in a conspicuous manner in the solid pyramidal platforms upon which the great stone structures in Yucatan and Central America were erected, and which sprang from the defensive and the communal principles in living. This latter principle required large houses for the accommodation of a number of families in the Lower Status of barbarism, and large enough in some cases, when the people were in the Middle Status, to accommodate an entire tribe. When adobe bricks were used the house was usually a single structure, three or four rooms deep and three or four stories high, constructed in a block, and in the nature of a fortress. The ground story was little used, except for storage, and they lived, practically, upon the roof terraces. When the use of stone came in, the structure often consisted of a main building four or five hundred feet long, and two wings two and three hundred feet in length, inclosing three sides of an open court, the fourth side being protected by a low stone wall. Such were the pueblos now in ruins upon the Rio Chaco in New Mexico.

In the highest form of this architecture in Yucatan and Chiapas, the pyramidal elevation appears faced with dry stone walls. The buildings upon its summit were often in the form of a quadrangle, with an open court in the center; but the buildings were generally disconnected at the four angles, as in the House of the Nuns at Uxmal. All of these forms are parts of one system of indigenous architecture; and the several parts are susceptible of articulation in a series representing a progressive development of a common thought, that of joint residence, with the practice of communism in living in large groups in the same house, or in one group consisting of the entire household.

Let us, then, inquire whether the principal embankments of the Mound-Builders were adapted, as raised platforms of earth, for the sites of long houses constructed on the communistic principle, and in the general style of the houses of the American aborigines.

In the valley of the Scioto, in Ohio, and within an extent of twelve miles, were found the remains of seven villages of the Mound-Builders, four upon the east and three upon the west side of the river. They are among the best of their works, and furnish fair examples of the whole. One of the number, the High Bank Pueblo, is shown in ground-plan in the engraving, Fig. 46. It is the only one in which the inclosure is octagonal instead of square. The remains of each of the seven consist principally of embankments like railway grades several feet high and correspondingly broad at the base, inclosing a square or slightly irregular area, the embankment on each of the four sides being about a thousand feet long, with an opening or gateway in the middle and at the four angles of the square. Attached to or quite near to five of the seven are large circular inclosures, each formed by a similar though lower embankment of earth and inclosing a space somewhat larger than the squares. The respective heights of the embankments, forming four of the rectangles, are given at four, six, ten, and twelve feet; and of three of the circular embankments, at five and six feet, respectively.

The embankments inclosing the squares were probably the site of their houses; since, as the highest, and because they are straight, they were best adapted to the purpose. The situations of these pueblos at short distances from each other on the same stream accords with the usages of the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central America in locating their villages. These pueblos were probably occupied by Mound-Builders of the same tribe, and were not unlikely under a common government, consisting of a council of chiefs. It is probable, also, that they were constructed, one after the other, by colonists from an original village.

In the engraving, Fig. 46, the form and relations of the embankments are shown, with cross-sections indicating their elevation and present ground-dimensions. It was taken from the work of Squier and Davis. [Footnote: Smith Con., vol. i, p1. xvi.]

These authors remark that "the principal work consists of an octagon and circle, the former measuring nine hundred and fifty feet, the latter ten hundred and fifty feet in diameter…. The walls of the octagon are very bold, and, where they have been least subject to cultivation, are now between eleven and twelve feet in height by about fifty feet base. The wall of the circle is much less, nowhere measuring over four or five feet in altitude. In all these respects, as in the absence of a ditch and the presence of the two small circles, this work resembles the Hopeton Works." [Footnote: ib., p. 50.]

Of the latter, which is nine miles above on the Scioto, they remark that "the walls of the rectangular work are composed of a clayey loam twelve feet high by fifty feet base…. They resemble the heavy grading of a railway, and are broad enough on the top to admit of the passage of a coach." [Footnote: ib., p. 51.]

It will be noticed that the octagonal work shown in the engraving consists of seven distinct embankments. Six of these are about four hundred and fifty feet long, and the remaining one, which once consisted of two equal sections, as shown by the mound to face an original opening in the center, now forms one continuous embankment facing one side of the inclosed area. If these embankments were reformed, with the materials washed down and now spread over a base of fifty feet, with sloping sides and a level summit, they would form new embankments thirty-seven feet wide at base, ten feet high, and with a summit platform twenty-two feet wide. If a surface coating of clay were used, the sides could be made steeper and the summit platform broader. On embankments thus reformed out of their original materials respectable as well as sufficient sites would be provided for long joint-tenement houses, comparted into chambers like stalls opening upon a central passage way through the structure from end to end, as in the long-houses of the Iroquois. Such embankments were strikingly adapted to houses of the aboriginal American model, the characteristic feature of which was sufficient length to afford a number of apartments. This feature became more marked in the houses of the Village Indians, among whom houses three hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred feet in length have been found, as elsewhere stated.