Historic Description of a Seneca Iroquois Indian House
To us the Indian's home would not have been a place of comfort. Its single room, noxious with smoke, and the members of the household lounging here and there upon the ground, admitted neither of neatness or privacy, nor of delicacy. On poles, well varnished with soot, in the upper portion of the hut, (if indeed the dusky atmosphere had permitted that part to be seen) might be noticed a motley collection of clothing, corn, skins of animals, and dried pumpkins and squashes, intermingled with weapons and ornaments. The huts were without windows, for the Indian knew little of the thousand nameless comforts which make our homes so graceful but, being unknown, were unmissed by him. The Seneca here passed his winters in contentment. His wants were few, his food was ample in quantity and, to him, palatable in kind ; and, if his hut was uncleanly, it may yet have been preferable to the abodes of squalor in which many of the vicious and wretched of our great cities pass their lives. The squaw, who had planted, hoed and harvested the corn, prepared it for the winter's meal and cheerfully served it to her not exacting husband. And he was a happy man. Though taci turn in public, he was not unsocial within his own domicil, where his neighbors often met to smoke his tobacco, laugh at his jest, not the most refined, and listen to his stories of war and the chase.
To us the Indian's home would not have been a place of comfort. Its single room, noxious with smoke, and the members of the household lounging here and there upon the ground, admitted neither of neatness or privacy, nor of delicacy. On poles, well varnished with soot, in the upper portion of the hut, (if indeed the dusky atmosphere had permitted that part to be seen) might be noticed a motley collection of clothing, corn, skins of animals, and dried pumpkins and squashes, intermingled with weapons and ornaments. The huts were without windows, for the Indian knew little of the thousand nameless comforts which make our homes so graceful but, being unknown, were unmissed by him. The Seneca here passed his winters in contentment. His wants were few, his food was ample in quantity and, to him, palatable in kind ; and, if his hut was uncleanly, it may yet have been preferable to the abodes of squalor in which many of the vicious and wretched of our great cities pass their lives. The squaw, who had planted, hoed and harvested the corn, prepared it for the winter's meal and cheerfully served it to her not exacting husband. And he was a happy man. Though taci turn in public, he was not unsocial within his own domicil, where his neighbors often met to smoke his tobacco, laugh at his jest, not the most refined, and listen to his stories of war and the chase.
