"Our homes and their surroundings are so familiar to us that it is hard for us to realize that our country was not always as it is now. Let us think about it. Have you seen any changes near where you live since you can remember? Have any new houses been built? Do you know of any old buildings that have been torn down in order that larger or better ones might take their places? Have you watched men making a new street or road, or, perhaps, working upon an old road to make it better? If you have, then you can think back to a time when some house that you can see to-day was not there; a time when there were not so many roads nor such good streets as now. Can you think back still further to a time when the house in which you live had not been built? when the street in front of your house had not been made? Can you imagine a time, still further back, when none of the houses in your city or village were standing? when there were no streets at all within sight of the place where you live? Then it will not be so very hard to think of the time, four hundred years ago, when there were no houses of wood, brick, or stone, such as we now see, anywhere in this country; when there was not a carriage road nor a street of any kind in the whole United States. We will try to imagine how this country looked before any white people lived in it, and before the cities and towns and villages and farms and ranches, that are so familiar to us, had been begun.
Four hundred years ago John Cabot sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and saw this country for the first time. As his little vessel moved along the coast, he looked upon bays and mouths of rivers which were very much as they are to-day. The peninsulas, the capes, and the islands were in the same places that they now are. They were, however, almost entirely covered with woods. Here and there were fields of grass, through which blue streams were flowing; but the larger part of what is now New England and the other Atlantic States was covered with thick forests. The trees were large and close together; their branches had never been cut off, and grew close to the ground. Shrubs and bushes filled all the space that was left between the larger trees, and made it almost impossible for any one to pass through. Wild animals had made paths for themselves, but if people had attempted to use these paths they would have been obliged to get down on their hands and knees and crawl through them. The rivers and the smaller streams of water were the best roads in those days; for unless they were shallow or flowed too swiftly down the rapids, boats could quite easily be pushed up stream as well as be carried down by the current.
In this country, covered with forests, were there only wild animals? Were there no human beings: no men, nor women, nor children? No white men lived in New England; the city of New York had not even been thought of; Baltimore and Savannah were impassable forests; and the great West was only a hunting ground. But the red men or American Indians did live in this country and were its only owners.
The Indians did not live in many roomed houses of wood or brick or stone; they never built roads or streets; nor did they ride in carriages. If they wished to go from one place to another they used canoes on the rivers as far as they could; if they wished to cross the land from one stream to another they made a foot path, called a trail. Sometimes a trail was broad enough to permit a canoe to be carried. Thus the Indians could travel long distances without growing tired from much walking.
The Indians must have had dwelling places to protect them from the cold and the storms which were as common then as now. Many tribes of Indians were in the habit of moving frequently from place to place, and for this reason their homes were not built for permanent use, but were made of materials that could be quickly put together. The Indians that lived in Canada and New England were more roving than those of New York; therefore their houses were very simple. They were long and narrow, with rounded roofs, and covered on the tops and sides with matting that could be readily removed.
The Iroquois, dwelling south of Lake Ontario, were a little more civilized than their neighbors, and built more permanent houses. Their dwellings were very long, from one to two hundred feet in length, and usually about thirty feet wide. The frames were made of long sticks or poles, set firmly in the ground; other poles formed the roof, with two sloping sides, over which were laid large strips of elm bark. These houses had a door at each end, with no windows, and light entered only through the doors and the large openings in the roof. The openings were made at frequent intervals to allow the escape of the smoke from the fires directly beneath.
Although the Indian dwellings varied greatly among the different tribes, in none of them did a family live by itself Usually twenty or more families dwelt together in each of the Iroquois "long houses." A building planned for twenty families had ten stalls or open closets as they might be called, arranged along each side. An open passageway ran the entire length of the house from door to door, in which were built five fires at equal distances. Each fire belonged to the four families whose stalls—two on each side—opened directly toward it.
IROQUOIS LONG HOUSE