Longhouses A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often re ...

were a style of residential dwelling built by Native American First Nation peoples in various parts of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

. Sometimes separate longhouses were built for community meetings.

Iroquois and the other East Coast longhouses

The

Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

(

Haudenosaunee The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...

or "People of the Longhouses") who resided in the

Northeastern United States The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...

as well as

Eastern Canada Eastern Canada (also the Eastern provinces or the East) is generally considered to be the region of Canada south of the Hudson Bay/ Strait and east of Manitoba, consisting of the following provinces (from east to west): Newfoundland and Labra ...

(

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

and

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirte ...

) built and inhabited longhouses. These were sometimes more than in length but generally around wide. Scholars believe walls were made of sharpened and fire-hardened poles (up to 1,000 saplings for a house) driven close together into the ground. Strips of bark were woven horizontally through the lines of poles to form more or less weatherproof walls. Poles were set in the ground and braced by horizontal poles along the walls. The roof is made by bending a series of poles, resulting in an arc-shaped roof. This was covered with leaves and grasses. The frame is covered by bark that is sewn in place and layered as shingles, and reinforced by light swag. Iroquois longhouse

Doors were constructed at both ends and were covered with an animal hide to preserve interior warmth. Especially long longhouses had doors in the sidewalls as well. Longhouses featured fireplaces in the center for warmth. Holes were made above the hearth to let out smoke, but such smoke holes also let in rain and snow. Ventilation openings, later singly dubbed as a smoke pipe, were positioned at intervals, possibly totalling five to six along the roofing of the longhouse.

Missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

who visited these longhouses often wrote about their dark interiors. On average a typical longhouse was about and was meant to house up to twenty or more families, most of whom were matrilineally related. The people had a

matrilineal Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance ...

kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...

system, with property and inheritance passed through the maternal line. Children were born into the mother's clan. Protective

palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes, or tree trunks, and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymology ''Palisade ...

s were built around the dwellings; these stood high, keeping the longhouse village safe. Tribes or ethnic groups in northeast North America, south and east of

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...

and

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also ha ...

, which had traditions of building longhouses include the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee): Seneca,

Cayuga Cayuga often refers to: * Cayuga people, a native tribe to North America, part of the Iroquois Confederacy * Cayuga language, the language of the Cayuga Cayuga may also refer to: Places Canada * Cayuga, Ontario United States * Cayuga, Illinoi ...

, Onondaga,

Oneida Oneida may refer to: Native American/First Nations * Oneida people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy * Oneida language * Oneida Indian Nation, based in New York * Oneida ...

and Mohawk. The

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoia ...

Wyandot (also called Huron) and Erie also built longhouses, as did the Algonquian Lenni Lenape, who lived from western New England in Connecticut, along the lower

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

, and along the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for along the borders of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, before ...

and both sides of the

Delaware Bay Delaware Bay is the estuary outlet of the Delaware River on the northeast seaboard of the United States. It is approximately in area, the bay's freshwater mixes for many miles with the saltwater of the Atlantic Ocean. The bay is bordered inland ...

. The

Pamunkey The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is one of 11 Virginia Indian tribal governments recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the state's first federally recognized tribe, receiving its status in January 2016. Six other Virginia tribal governments ...

of the Algonquian-speaking Powhatan Confederacy in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

also built longhouses. Although the

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

were not known to build longhouses, colonist Christopher Gist describes how, during his visit to Lower Shawneetown in January 1751, he and Andrew Montour addressed a meeting of village leaders in a "Kind of State-House of about 90 Feet long, with a light Cover of Bark in which they hold their Councils."

Northwest Coast longhouses

Interior of a Salish Longhouse, British Columbia, 1864

The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America also built a form of longhouse. Theirs were built with logs or split-log frame, and covered with split log planks, and sometimes an additional bark cover. Cedar is the preferred lumber. The wealthy built extraordinarily large longhouses. The Suquamish Old Man House, at what became the Port Madison Squamish Reservation, was , c. 1850.Suttle & Lane (1990), p. 491Old Man House is occasionally found (incorrectly or from Chinook Jargon) as Ole Man House or Oleman House. Usually one doorway faces the shore. Each longhouse contains a number of booths along both sides of the central hallway, separated by wooden containers (akin to modern drawers). Each booth has its own individual hearth and fire. Usually an extended family occupied one longhouse, and cooperated in obtaining food, building canoes, and other daily tasks. The gambrel roof was unique to

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected m ...

Coast Salish. The front is often very elaborately decorated with an integrated mural of numerous drawings of faces and heraldic crest icons of raven, bear, whale, etc. A

totem pole Totem poles ( hai, gyáaʼaang) are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually ...

often was erected outside the longhouse. The style varies greatly, and sometimes it became part of the entrance way. Tribes or ethnic groups along the North American Pacific coast with some sort of longhouse building traditions include the

Haida Haida may refer to: Places * Haida, an old name for Nový Bor * Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands * Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia Ships * , a ...

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace and Prince Rupert, and Metlakatla, Alaska on Annette Island, the only r ...

, Tlingit, Makah, Clatsop, Coast Salish and Multnomah.

Excavations at Ozette, Washington

From beneath mud flows dating back to about 1700,

archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes ...

have recovered timbers and planks. In the part of one house where a woodworker lived, tools were found and also tools in all stages of manufacture. There were even wood chips. Where a whaler lived, there lay harpoons and also a wall screen carved with a whale. Benches and looms were inlaid with shell, and there were other indications of wealth. A single house had five separate living areas centered on cooking hearths; each had artifacts that revealed aspects of the former occupants' lives. More bows and arrows were found at one living area than any of the others, an indication that hunters lived there. Another had more fishing gear than other subsistence equipment, and at another, more harpoon equipment. Some had everyday work gear, and few elaborately ornamented things. The whaler's corner was just the opposite. The houses were built so that planks on the walls and roofs could be taken off and used at other places, as the people moved seasonally. Paired uprights supported rafters, which, in turn, held roof planks that overlapped like tiles. Wall planks were lashed between sets of poles. The position of these poles depended on the lengths of the boards they held, and they were evidently set and reset through the years the houses were occupied. Walls met at the corners by simply butting together. They stayed structurally independent, allowing for easy dismantling. There were no windows. Light and ventilation came by shifting the position of roof planks, which were simply weighted with rocks, not fastened in position. Benches raised above the floor on stakes provided the main furniture of the houses. They were set near the walls. Cuts and puncture marks indicated they served as work platforms; mats rolled out onto them tie with elders' memories of such benches used as beds. Storage was concentrated behind the benches, along the walls and in corners between benches. These locations within the houses have yielded the most artifacts. The rafters must have also provided storage, but the mudflow carried away this part of the houses.

Bibliography

* Cappel, Constance. ''The Smallpox Genocide of the Odawa Tribe at L'Arbre Croche, 1763: The History of a Native American People,'' The Edwin Mellon Press, 2007. *

References

External links

*Virtual Museum of Canada
The St. Lawrence Iroquoians
— Virtual exhibit that includes information on Iroquoian longhouse layout and architecture