Historic Accounts of Iroquois Indian Villages and Long Houses
Onondaga Long-House, in 1743.]
During the greater part of the year the Iroquois resided in villages. The size of the village was estimated by the number of the houses, and the size of the house by the number of fires it contained. One of the largest of the Seneca-Iroquois villages, situated at Mendon, near Rochester, N. Y. is thus described by Mr. Greenbalgh, who visited it in 1677: "Tiotohatton is on the brink or edge of a hill, has not much cleared ground, is near the river Tiotohatton [outlet of Honeoye Lake], which signifies bending. It lies to the westward of Canagora (Canandaigua) about thirty miles, contains about 120 houses, being the largest of all the houses we saw, the ordinary being fifty to sixty feet long, with twelve and thirteen fires in one house. They have a good store of corn growing to the northward of the town". [Footnote: Documentary History of New York, vol i. p 13.]
The "long-house" of the Iroquois, from which they called themselves, as one confederated people, Ho-de'-no-sau-nee (People of the Long-House), was from fifty to eighty and sometimes one hundred feet long. It consisted of a strong frame of upright poles set in the ground, which were strengthened with horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted with a triangular, and in some cases with a round roof. It was covered over, both sides and roof, with large strips of elm bark tied to the frame with strings or splints. An external frame of poles for the sides and of rafters for the roof were then adjusted to hold the bark shingles between them, the two frames being tied together.
Ground-plan of Seneca-Iroquois Long-House.]
The interior of the house was comparted at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each chamber entirely open like a stall upon the passage way which passed through the center of the house from end to end. At each end was a doorway cohered with suspended skins. Between each four apartments, two on a side, was a fire-pit in the center of the hall, used in common by their occupants. Thus a house with five fires would contain twenty apartments and accommodate twenty families, unless some apartments were reserved for storage. They were warm, roomy, and tidily-kept habitations. Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each apartment for beds. From the roof-poles were suspended their strings of corn in the ear, braided by the husks, also strings of dried squashes and pumpkins. Spaces were contrived here and there to store away their accumulations of provisions. Each house, as a rule was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same gens, while their husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other gentes; consequently the gens or clan of the mother largely predominated in the household. Whatever was taken in the hunt or raised by cultivation by any member of the household, as has elsewhere been stated, was for the common benefit. Provisions were made a common stock within the household.
Here was communism in living carried out in practical life, but limited to the household, and an expression of the principle in the plan of the house itself. Having found it in one stock as well developed as the Iroquois, a presumption of its universality in the Indian family at once arises, because it was a law of their condition. Evidence of its general prevalence has elsewhere been presented.
In a previous chapter the usages of the Iroquois in regard to eating have been given. It came practically to one cooked meal each day. The separate fires in each house were for convenience in cooking, all the stores in the house being common. The plan of life within them was studied and economical. This is shown by the presence of a matron in each household, who made a division of the food from the kettle to each family according to their needs, and reserved what remained for future disposal. It shows system and organization in their long-houses, with a careful supervision of their stores, and forethought as well as equity in the management and distribution of their food. In these households, formed on the principle of kin, was laid the foundation for that "mother power" which was even more conspicuous in the tribes of the Old World, and which Professor Bachofen was the first to discuss under the name of gyneocracy and mother-right. [Footnote: Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861.]
Since the mothers who dwelt together were usually sisters, own or collateral, and of the same gens, and since their children were also of the gens of their mother, the preponderating number in the household would be of gentile kin. The right and the influence of the mother were protected and strengthened through the maternal as well as the gentile bond. The husbands were in the minority as to kindred. In case of separation it was the husband and not the wife who left the house. But this influence of the woman did not reach outward to the affairs of the gens phratry, or tribe, but seems to have commenced and ended with the household. This view is quite consistent with the life of patient drudgery and of general subordination to the husband which the Iroquois wife cheerfully accepted as the portion of her sex. Among the Grecian tribes descent had been changed to the male line at the commencement of the historical period. It thus reversed the position of the wife and mother in the household: she was of a different gens from her children, as well as her husband; and under monogamy was now isolated from her gentile kindred, living in the separate and exclusive house of her husband. Her new condition tended to subvert and destroy that power and influence which descent in the female line and the joint-tenement houses had created. It is, therefore, the more surprising that so many traces of this anterior condition should have remained in the Grecian and other tribes which Professor Bachofen has pointed out, since gyneocracy and mother-right, as discussed by him, must have originated among these tribes when under the gentile organization, and with descent in the female line.
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.
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.
