THE Amerind of North America has generally been considered a shiftless and indolent being, but the preceding pages have shown, I think, that this estimate is an error, and the following chapters, together with the present one, will even more conclusively demolish that false assumption. The Amerind to be sure was not a white man, but it must not be forgotten that the constant holding of the white man’s nose to the grindstone is not so commendable as it is often said to be, for it is not choice with him but necessity born of his ways of living and his great numbers. Put him in comparatively small numbers on a vast continent rich and fertile and abounding in game, and it is not likely that he would shut himself up in a factory or in an office, where he is only a counting machine. The Amerind was as industrious as his environment demanded. Doubtless had his development not been interfered with by the Discovery, he might have arrived in time at the same condition of pressure that compels us to labour incessantly.

Almost everywhere on this continent are discovered numerous evidences of Amerind industry and toil. From the brush shelter of the Pai Ute of Arizona to the vast stone structures, richly ornamented, of Yucatan, is an immense range, and within these limits are to be found about every kind of a refuge from the elements that mankind has been able to devise. Mud, boughs caves, wood, adobe, stone, ice, snow, wicker-work, wattling, skins, in fact, every material and every possible hole, existing in nature, have been utilised by the Amerind, and the materials have been given every variety of shape. In nothing, perhaps, has his struggle with environment, and the moulding effects of the environment, been more clearly exhibited than in the forms and materials of the dwellings he has been compelled to invent. Other evidences of his perseverance and exertion are discerned in great aqueducts, in long irrigating canals, in reservoirs, in huge earthworks, and enormous mounds that sometimes rival in magnitude the giant constructions of Egypt.

The Amerind dwellings may be divided into three general classes,—temporary, portable, and fixed. The two classes, temporary and fixed, only are usually recognised by ethnologists, but it has seemed to me proper to add the third class, because of the wide use of the portable tipi, and other forms of tent. The temporary houses, those abandoned on moving camp and seldom occupied again, may be represented by the Pai Ute wikiup; the portable, carried from place to place for years, by the tipi of the Dakotas; the fixed, or those which are occupied either for an extended period or periodically, by the stone or adobe house of the Pueblos, or the wood house of the Iroquois, or the wood and earth house of the Eskimo.[170]

Outside of a natural cave or rock shelter, the wikiup of the Pai Ute exhibits about the lowest type of house used by man. It is said the chimpanzee makes a rude hut of boughs and branches, but even that could scarcely be less simple than the Arizona wikiup. This is composed merely of several branches arranged in a semi-circle, or rather more than a semi-circle, eight or ten feet in height, their tops together, and covered with boughs of cedar or pine or any other convenient brush. About one third of the circumference is open to the south, and opposite this side the fire is built a few feet away. The Pai Ute is surrounded by remains of excellent stone dwellings constructed long ago by Amerinds who are believed to be of the same general stock, but he has never tried to improve his wikiup of his own accord. The Utes, his kindred on the north, live in good tipis, but the Pai Ute appears never to have noticed the fact. The Mokis, also allied to him, live not far to southward in excellent houses, yet he has never attempted to emulate them.

In the kisi construction of the Mokis we may perhaps see the beginning of even the wikiup. The kisi is a sort of windbreak and sun-shelter lightly constructed of boughs and made in two ways, one called kishoni, being simply poles stuck in the ground in the arc of a circle with the concave side towards the north, and interlaced with twigs and branches to form a shade. The other kind is built by planting several posts with crotches at their tops in the ground in the form of a parallelogram and laying other posts or poles across from crotch to crotch and covering these with poles to form a platform or roof. Against the whole, on the south side, poles and branches are erected to form a shade. These affairs are put up in the fields to protect the crop tenders when there is no convenient cliff or ledge whereon to erect a better structure of stone. Doubtless out of these shelters, now seen in the field structures, originally grew the firm adobe and stone house, by one step or improvement after another, and probably all house construction had some such simple beginning. In a forested area, however, the easy construction of a comfortable house out of poles and bark would delay any development of a durable stone or adobe structure; the adobe, indeed, would not be durable in a humid climate. Protection and subsistence dictated the region a tribe or a stock should occupy, and the region usually determined the character of the house or shelter. House building, in its beginnings, is largely a result of environment, and was developed or modified accordingly. The tribes that were compelled to live in a sterile, dry country, where game and wood were both scarce, were forced to provide themselves with different food and different shelter from those which occupied a well-wooded country abounding in game. A few skins and poles, in the latter case, would quickly produce a house. In the arid region, however, man was not provided with such convenient material. His shelter from the sun cost him much labour and he was obliged to transport his necessary wood long distances. Additions to the shade to make it more comfortable were therefore obtained by piling up stones or scraping together the mud after a rain, and these operations being repeated, a development of skill was the inevitable result; skill which eventually produced a wall all round the sun-shelter, with the beams of the latter resting upon them instead of upon posts.

It seems, therefore, altogether probable that stone and mud house building originated in arid regions; but in a region treeless, like our great plains, the inevitable outcome in the line of a shelter was the portable tipi (teepee), because there bison hides were at hand for covering, but poles of the proper sort were difficult to secure and were carried along. In the forest, neither portable tents nor stone houses were necessary. It would only be when population was dense enough to destroy the game and timber, or when a people were forced to an arid region, that the stone house would develop. The Iroquois was a forest Amerind, and he built a house of wood that was excellent in construction and answered his purpose admirably. The Navajo occupying an arid region has been content with a rude shelter of boughs and branches or with boughs or poles covered with mud. They have never profited by the example of their Moki neighbours, and built substantial houses,—one reason, and the chief one, being that their habit of never occupying again any shelter where death has occurred has precluded it, for they do not care to bestow great labour on a structure that they may be called upon any time to abandon. There are then other causes besides ability, or inability, to build substantially that determine the character of the Amerind house.

Bandelier states that the Pimas “dwelt in scattered hamlets, the houses of which combine to-day the mud roof of a typical New Mexican pueblo with the temporary framework of frail branches characteristic of the roaming savage.”[171] The roof is dome-shaped, but it is similar in material to the Pueblo mud roof, so that there we have a sort of a cross between the Moki field shelter, already mentioned, and the Navajo hut or hogan. The stock from which the present Pimas descended are supposed to have built the remarkable structure in Arizona known as Casa Grande, found in ruins by the first explorers. Tribes alter their methods of building, either from summer to winter or at different epochs. The Omahas at one time made lodges of wood, at another of earth, and at still another time they dwelt in tipis of skin. If a stone-house-building tribe should migrate to a region where neither loose flat stones nor adobe clay could be readily obtained, they would be forced to use timber.[172] The Zuñi languages and traditions point to the occupancy by the Pueblos in early times of brush houses like those of the Pai Utes. The Mohaves live in low huts of branches covered with mud.

The communal principle of living pervaded America and largely determined the size and character of the dwellings. A number of families usually lived together, in the same house, or in a group of rooms or houses. The “long-house” of the Iroquois, called by them hodénosote, and the clustered fortress-houses of the Pueblos, are good examples of the results of the practice of the communal principles adhered to by most of the Amerinds. It is also believed by some of the best authorities, like Bandelier and Morgan, that the Mexican and Mayan houses were largely due to the same cause.

Among the Omahas the tipis were usually grouped according to gentes.[173] Tipi and wigwam are frequently used by us as synonymous, and in some dictionaries a picture of a tipi is made to represent a wigwam.[174] This is an error due to unfamiliarity with different forms of Amerind dwellings. The tipi is generally a portable structure while the wigwam is always fixed, and the latter is also of a different shape. Tipi is a Dakota term and wigwam is Algonquin. Tipi is really the plural for “house,” the singular being “ti,” and “pi” a termination indicating plurality.[175] It is constructed by arranging a number, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty, long poles, previously tied together near their tops, in a circle of about ten or fifteen feet diameter. This conical frame is then covered with bison hides sewed together in one sheet, or in modern days with canvas, shaped properly and laced or pinned together along the middle third of the junction of the covering mantle. The upper third is left loose, and its pointed ends are extended up and out by means of outside poles stuck into pockets in their extreme upper corners, according to the direction of the wind, to let the smoke escape from the fire built in the middle of the interior. If the wind blows straight at these flaps they are brought close together. Sometimes an extra skin is adjusted at the top so that it can be placed on any side to accomplish this object. The lower third is left open for a doorway, another skin being adjusted before it with a stick to spread it near its upper end, which end is attached to the tent. The bottom of the tent cover is held down by stakes or pins driven into the ground. In case of high winds, stones or other weights are placed on the bottom edge of the skins to keep them down. In summer the Omahas, and other tribes of the Dakotas, erected, when convenient, an elliptical lodge covered with bark, the roof being rounded and the construction being generally similar to the Algonquin elliptical wigwam. It was not more than seven feet high, while the tipi is twelve to twenty or more. These tribes also sometimes built earth lodges, chiefly for summer use, the roofs of which resembled in construction those of the Pueblo houses, though they were conical. A number of posts were set up in the ground to support in their crotches the transverse beams upon which numerous slender poles, about two inches in diameter, were laid to reach almost to the top where a hole for the exit of smoke was left. Against the outer series of posts all around slabs of wood were set up and the whole was then covered with earth a foot or two thick after matting and a layer of grass, or grass alone, was placed on the rafters or roof poles. This lodge was circular, the roof being conical, and it was entered through a covered way about ten feet long and five feet wide, the outer opening of which was protected by hanging bison hides. The supporting poles or posts were arranged in two concentric circles, in large lodges, the inner set being higher than the outer. Compartments within opening toward the fire were formed of willow matting, or skins.

The regular tipi was decorated in accordance with tribal customs. Dorsey has published some careful notes on this as on other matters connected with the tribes of the Dakota stock, and Catlin has also given descriptions. The decorations were often the result of a vision. If a man had a vision of the aurora he depicted it on his robes and tent, the latter having a band of paint around the bottom, above which was a zigzag border from which, on one side, three stripes were drawn to the top of the tent, four on the other, and one in the rear. If he had a vision of the night or of some other “superterrestrial object, he blackened the upper part of his tent and a small portion on each side of the entrance.” Sometimes a star was also indicated, and night was represented by a black band above the middle or at the bottom. A tent similar to the Dakota tipi is in wide use among the Amerinds. Morgan states that the Dakotas were living in bark-covered houses when first discovered, in villages, in the present state of Minnesota, and that when they were driven “upon the plains by an advancing white population, but after they had become possessed of horses, they invented a skin tent eminently adapted to their present nomadic condition. It is superior to any other in use among the American aborigines from its roominess, its portable character, and the facility with which it can be erected and struck.”[176] While this is probably accurate as concerns the Dakotas, it is likely that other tribes invented a similar tent for themselves, before the appearance of the Dakotas on the plains.[177] Three tipis among the Omahas were sacred, and sheltered three sacred objects, the Sacred Pole, the Sacred White Buffalo-Cow Skin, and the Sacred Bag. These are all now in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. They were built like the common tipi.

The wigwam of the Algonquins was built in two general ways, using bark or mats for covering. One form is made by planting elastic poles in the ground and bringing their tops together, and binding the whole with horizontal poles. It is unlike the tipi, because it is not portable, because the poles are flexible, and because the sides curve out from bottom to top instead of being straight lines. It is covered with birchbark. It is from ten to sixteen feet in diameter on the ground, and from six to ten feet high. The fire was built, as in the tipi, in the middle of the floor in a slight depression, and the usual outlet for smoke was left at the top. “Such a lodge,” says Morgan, “would accommodate, in the aboriginal plan of living, two and sometimes three married pairs with their children.”[178] The Menominee-Algonquin form of wigwam was made by planting in the ground about three feet apart, approximating the form of an ellipse, strong saplings some two inches in diameter, leaving at each end an opening for a doorway. The poles are then bent over toward each other and tied in an arch with strips of bark. Horizontal poles are tied on to the upright ones for stiffening, and the frame is then covered with bark or mats overlapping each other like shingles. The usual smoke outlet is left in the top. A mat curtain takes the place of a door. There were seldom, or never, regular doors in any Amerind houses on the continent before the Discovery, the opening being closed by curtains or mats. Another Menominee shelter, described by Hoffman, was made by “putting five or six saplings on each side of a parallelogram; the ends are left open, and the top of each sapling on a given side is then bound down over its opposite fellow to form a roof somewhat resembling a wagon-top. Horizontal saplings are then bound around the framework to make the structure secure, and over all are laid, longitudinally, a series of long strips of pine bark the upper pieces overlapping those below, while a large piece is placed over the highest part of the roof, which thus sheds the rain or melting snow.... The bedding is spread on the ground and usually covers the entire floor.”[179]

The eastern portion of the continent below Labrador, being well-forested, the Amerind houses there appear to have been entirely of wood, or sometimes of wood and mud combined. For this reason nothing of any of them, except occasional earth rings, is to be found and, so far as remains of houses are concerned, our wonderful, surpassing Moundbuilders appear to have had no houses. Turning to other Amerinds, however, who occupied the country when the whites arrived, we glean a fair idea of what the houses of the Mississippi valley may have been at their best. They varied in design in the same locality, of course, according to the tribe, in the same way that I have mentioned that in the South-west we find to-day Amerinds living in the most primitive form of dwelling not many miles away from others living in high types.

Some of the Mississippi valley houses were doubtless excellent structures though built of wood, or of wattling plastered with mud. Many of the mounds, squares, and circles were connected with buildings, generally forming the foundations for dwellings or other structures as in other parts of the continent.[180] In other words, they were often platforms for houses. The reasons for building a house on a platform raised above the surrounding lands might be many; one simple one was a desire to keep the floor dry in wet weather. The floor was earth, and earth on a level during long rains got uncomfortably damp if not wet. It would be natural in building, after such lessons, to elevate the floor of the house, which was done by rearing a platform of earth. This gave good drainage, and besides in a malarial region would be more healthful, and furthermore added to the defensive qualities. The habitations being built upon platforms, it would not do to build sacred structures on low ground. Man seldom looks down upon his spiritual constructions. Hence the higher the sacred building could be placed, the more sacred it seemed, and the huge flat-topped mounds of the Mississippi valley and Mexico were the result. Some of the Florida Amerinds were still living in dwellings reared on platforms of this kind, and so were others in the Southern United States, at the time of the first visits of the whites. The mounds, as a rule, are on the bottom lands along river courses, though in places where there are higher terraces these have frequently been chosen. Thomas quotes the following passage from Garcilasso: “The town and the houses of the cacique Ossachile are like those of other caciques in Florida.... The Indians try to place their villages on elevated sites; but inasmuch as in Florida there are not many sites of this kind where they can conveniently build, they erect elevations themselves in the following manner: They select the spot and carry there a quantity of earth, which they form into a kind of platform two or three pikes in height, the summit of which is large enough to give room for twelve, fifteen, or twenty houses, to lodge the cacique and his attendants. At the foot of this elevation they mark out a square place, according to the size of the village, around which the leading men have their houses.... To ascend the elevation they have a straight passageway from bottom to top, fifteen or twenty feet wide. Here steps are made by massive beams, and others are planted firmly in the ground to serve as walls. On all other sides of the platform the sides are cut steep.”[181] Thomas quotes further from Garcilasso: “The chief, whose name was also Guaxule, came out with five hundred men to meet him and took him in the village (pueblo) in which were three hundred houses, and lodged him in his own. This house stood on a high mound (cerro) similar to others we have already mentioned. Round about was a roadway sufficiently broad for six men to walk abreast.”[182] Again he quotes Le Page Du Pratz, who visited the Natchez in 1720: “As I was an intimate friend of the sovereign of the Natchez he showed me their temple, which is about thirty feet square, and stands on an artificial mount about eight feet high, by the side of a small river.”[183] There was also still another reason for building on mounds or elevated platforms; the reason, or at least one great reason, why the Mayas and Mexicans built on them, namely the desire to protect the foundations. In Louisiana the Taensas, in the time of La Salle, built of “sun-baked mud mixed with straw, arched over with a dome-shaped roof.”[184] Now a structure of this kind if reared on ordinary ground would soon be destroyed by the rains and moisture sapping its foundations, but by placing it on an elevated platform, where its footing would be comparatively dry, it would endure a long time. A sacred house would be likely to be so placed, if not others.

Every tribe had some kind of a sacred structure, the Omahas carrying from place to place the three sacred tents referred to. The sacred structures, too, were generally of the same style as the house of the chief. Each village of the Natchez had a house devoted to the dead, besides others dedicated to different sacred objects. The death-house was oval, “having a circumference of one hundred feet—a simple hut without a window, and with a low and narrow opening on the side for the only door.”[185] Here were “garnered the choicest fetiches of the tribe, of which some were moulded from clay and baked in the sun. There, too, were gathered the bones of the dead; there an undying fire was kept burning by appointed guardians as if to warm and light and cheer the departed.”[185] “Hard by the temple, on an artificial mound of earth, stood the hut of the Great Sun; around it were grouped the cabins of the tribe.”[185]

It seems unnecessary to give any further space to show that the mounds that have aroused so much discussion and romantic writing were, many of them, the foundations for various structures reared by Amerinds as we know them.

Morgan advanced a theory that the hollow square earthworks were the foundations for long buildings, at one and the same time dwellings and a part of the defences, the interior area being used for a work place, children’s playground, etc. Many Algonquin houses were made of a parallelogram shape, with straight sides about eight feet high and a rounded roof. These houses were fifty or more feet long, and the matting with which they were covered could be readily removed to let in the sun and air. As a rule the villages were surrounded by palisades. The Iroquois, as well as most other Amerinds, lived in permanent villages, which were at first stockaded. They used three kinds of houses; a triangular lodge made of poles with bark for a covering, used in hunting, and the ganosote or smaller bark house constructed in the same way as the third kind, the hodénosote or “long-house,” which was built to accommodate a number of families. This was sometimes a hundred feet long, and from it came the name Hodenosaunee by which the great League of the Five (Six) Nations was known to the world and to themselves. It was made by planting poles in the ground and binding others across them to make a strong frame of the shape of a parallelogram, upon which a roof of triangular pattern was built out of poles covered with bark. Sometimes the roof was round like that of many Algonquin tribes, and that of the ganosote was very frequently round. The height of the sides was about ten feet. The ganosote was about fifteen by twenty feet and fifteen feet high, with inside a kind of double berth built against the longer walls like the berths in a ship. It would accommodate eight persons. The entrance was closed by skins or by bark hung on wooden hinges. The covering was bark held in place by an outer set of poles tied through to the inside ones. The long-house was divided into a number of chambers six or eight feet wide with a passageway through all from end to end where the doors were. “Between each four apartments, two on a side, was a fire-pit in the center of the hall, used in common by their occupants.... Raised bunks were constructed around the walls of each apartment for beds.”[186] These structures constituted the village which was surrounded by a palisade, sometimes a double or triple row. The houses were placed without arrangement; and when the league grew powerful the palisade was dispensed with. The Lenapé “constructed small wattled huts with rounded tops thatched with the leaves of the Indian corn or with sweetflags.... In summer light brush tents took the place of these.”[187]

On the North-west coast the native houses are usually built of cedar slabs. These slabs are split out of the wide trees[188] and the walls are obtained by securing them in an upright position to a frame about ten feet high. On this rests the roof of split shakes, bark, or boards, laid on rafters which are supported in the middle by two long, heavy beams, running the entire length of the house, and themselves borne up by four huge posts, often carved with totemic emblems. The general outward appearance of these houses is much like an ordinary low one-story house or barn of our own, except that in the middle of the roof there is a large square hole for a smoke outlet, the fire being made on a patch of sand or earth that forms a square about nine by ten feet in the middle of the room, the size depending on the dimensions of the house. They are usually about thirty or forty feet square,[189] the interior forming one large room, sometimes having a platform on one or two sides or all the way round about six feet wide and two feet high. This is divided by thin partitions into small compartments, which are covered about six feet above the floor with a ceiling of thin boards. A curtain in front makes a room of it. These houses vary somewhat in the different localities, but the type is about the same from the Puget Sound region to Yakutat Bay. Some of the Sound Amerinds give but one pitch to the roof. Many of the natives now build a house of sawed materials and roof it with shingles so that their modern villages, like the one at Sitka, present outwardly few Amerind signs, as they usually have chimneys, too, instead of smoke holes. Where they have the latter, boards are stuck up above the ridge to form a windbreak, or a more perfect arrangement for preventing back draught is applied in the shape of a large solid shutter so pivoted in the middle line that it can be tilted from one side of the ridge to the other. Among some tribes there are several smoke holes with adjustable boards that can be worked from below with a pole. The entire front gable of a chief’s house or an assembly house is often ornamented with a huge totemic design, painted on smooth boards that fill the whole space. In front of the house stood the tall pole bearing the totems of the inmates carved, one above another, with a full relief totem adorning the top. Small houses were built to hold the boxes containing the ashes of the dead, and the roof was sometimes surmounted with a totem carved in wood, or the totem was erected on a small pole nearby, or placed under the roof.

In all the constructions of the Amerinds of the North-west coast we perceive the powerful influence of surroundings on a primitive people. The region abounds in superb cedars with a grain so fine and straight that the logs can be readily split into slabs a couple of inches thick, that are admirable material for building purposes. Then there are plenty of young straight hemlocks, firs, and cedars for rafters and framework, so that these Amerinds, like those of the cliff region of the South-west, had their building material almost ready made. Being largely fishermen, they were not well supplied with skins, so that it was not easy to make pole lodges covered with them, as was the case with many Amerinds of the interior, where trees were absent or hard to split and where skins were plenty.

In California a variety of houses was built, as there are many different stocks and conditions. The Yokuts made them of tule mats in the shape of an “A” tent with a door at the front. A half dozen or more of these were placed in a row and above them a flat sun-shelter of branches laid on a platform of poles supported by crotched posts set in the ground. Others build a hut of slabs or bark brought to a point and open on one side, like a tipi cut in two. Others again live in wikiups made by covering a square framework with boughs, leaving one side open. When the side of an Amerind hut is left open in this way, the opening always faces the south, except in hot weather, when it generally faces the other way. Another California tribe lives in earth lodges entered from the top through a hole or hatch with steps on the outside. This lodge was made by excavating a couple of feet and putting this earth on the covering framework, for a roof. In the mountains where wood was plenty they frequently used no earth at all, showing how quickly they adapted themselves to circumstances. The Modoc “excavates a circular space from two to four feet deep, then erects over it a rounded structure of poles and puncheons, strongly braced up with timbers, sometimes hewn and squared. The whole is warmly covered with earth, and an aperture left atop, reached by a centre pole. Before the coming of the whites secured them against the constant assaults and incursions of their enemies, their dwellings were slighter, consisting generally of a frame of willow poles, with tule matting overspread.”[190] Another tribe of the Pacific Slope, the Makhelchel, build cabins “of slender willow poles set upright in the ground, with others crossing them horizontally, forming a square lattice-work.”[191] The Yokaya have a lodge or dwelling composed of a “huge framework of willow poles covered with thatch, and resembling a large flattish haystack.” The Karok “excavate a round cellar, four or five feet deep and twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Over this they build a square cabin of split poles or puncheons, planted erect in the ground and covered with a flattish puncheon roof. They eat and sleep in the cellar ... and store their supplies on the bank above next to the walls of the cabin.”[192] The Maidu make a hut of slabs placed together in something the shape of a tipi, with a low, square projection for an entrance.

Passing northward to the Aleuts, we find “houses built with the floor somewhat below the level of the outside soil, the walls of whale-ribs, sticks of wood, or upright stone walls, covered outside with mats, straw and finally turf.... The roof was formed by arching whale-ribs, or long sticks of driftwood, matted, thatched, and turfed like the sides, with a central aperture. A platform, somewhat raised, around the sides of the house afforded a place for sitting and sleeping. Later each village had a large house or kashim, which served as a common work-shop, and a lodging for strangers, as well as for a town-hall for their discussions and festivals.... Still later, in a period not greatly antedating the historic, the Aleuts began to build large communistic dwellings with features peculiar to themselves, without doors, and entered by the hole in the roof, the inmates descending on a notched log placed upright. These large yourts were divided, by partitions of wood, stone, or matting, into small rooms like the state-rooms of a steamer, but without doors; open toward the center of the yourt, and each accommodating one family.”[193]

It will be noted that we have again changed materials of construction; and why? Because the Aleutian Islands are devoid of timber, devoid of good building stone that an Amerind could get at, and he resorted therefore to what there was—driftwood, whale-ribs, turf, etc.[194] The house called by the Russians barabára seems to have been originally made of turf even to the roof, and I saw examples in the summer of 1899 at Unalaska and on St. Paul Island. The turf or sod was cut into slabs and laid up like stones.

Continuing northward we reach the vast treeless arctic regions, where cold is the great enemy, and the reader wonders what man can do here in the way of architecture. He has done considerable; amongst other things he devised the only true arch found on the continent, and constructed one of the most admirable and unique dwellings in the world. This he built out of the snow which fell about him and prevented him from securing other material. The invention of the snow house by the Eskimo, or Innuit, as they call themselves, was one of the greatest triumphs over environment man has ever accomplished. I refer, of course, to the perfected snow house, the dome-shaped iglugeak, commonly called by us igloo or iglu. Iglu is the Innuit generic term for “house,” the distinctive name for snow house being iglugeak. This snow house is begun by selecting a suitable deep drift that is compact enough to permit homogeneous blocks to be taken from it, with the snow-knife, which is a bone tool shaped like a short sword. Latterly steel saws are employed when they have them. In the pit formed by removal of blocks of snow the builder works at his walls, the bottom of the excavation finally forming the floor of the house. The first block is bevelled down to a wedge shape with the point toward the beginning, and the worker goes on round his circle, and when he comes again to the wedge his wall rises upon the first portion and continues thus in a spiral fashion to the top, constantly narrowing till at last one block fills the opening. It takes two to adjust this, though one may build a small house successfully to that last point. By building spirally and therefore continuously, there is always support on two sides for the last block laid. The edges are slanted at the same time to bring the tiers gradually toward the centre. Joints and holes are filled with snow, though a small hole is left at the top for ventilation. As the heating of this house is done with lamps there is little smoke. For camping purposes a small snow house is built, seven feet diameter and five feet high, in about two hours. When made for permanent use the house is about twelve feet high and fifteen feet diameter. Plenty of light comes through the snow, but a window of ice or seal intestine is often placed over the entrance, which is reached by a more or less extended passage, with vaults for storage, by the way.

But though this house is so cleverly built, and is warm, and proof against everything but mild weather, the Innuit, if he can, will build a permanent winter house of drift wood, stones, earth, and sod and whale-ribs. These from the outside look like mounds of earth, and as soon as warm weather comes are nothing but wet cellars, which the inhabitants quickly abandon for the time, erecting with their walrus and seal skins a summer tent, called a tupek or topek. The Point Barrow tupek is something like a tipi, without a smoke hole, as the fire is built outside when they can secure wood to build one. All the Alaska Innuit now use canvas tents of the “wall” pattern, when they can procure them.

The Amerind of the interior of the northland, where timber grows, utilises it and the skins of the animals he kills. The Nenenot about Hudson Bay occupy, all the year round, a tent almost identical with the Dakota tipi.

No construction on the continent shows more skill than the Innuit snow iglu. The winter houses, of snow or other material, are usually occupied by two or more families. Many interiors of snow houses are lined with the summer tent covering to prevent the drip of the walls from falling on the occupants.

As the polar regions developed the snow-house; forest regions, bark and mat houses; barren plains, portable tents; so arid regions, where disintegrating cliffs furnished an abundance of flat slabs of stone, evolved stone houses, and broad dry valleys or plains lacking cliffs, timber, or large game, but yielding good clay soil, produced houses of mud or adobe; or, according to conditions, such combinations of these materials as were easiest and most practicable. It is next in order to review the houses of the arid regions constructed of stone, adobe, jacal, cajon, pisé,[195] etc., and the cavate lodges. To do full justice to the subject of houses would require a separate volume, but enough may be given here to present a general view. The occupied villages of the South-western United States are similar to the ruins found throughout that region, and the cliff-dwellings, which some writers would clothe with mystery, as has been mentioned, were no more mysterious than the occupied dwellings of the Moki; or any other Pueblo village, which, fortunately, remains inhabited by the builders.[196] The cliff-dwellings were constructed in cliffs simply because it was expedient to build them there and not because the builders were a race apart from other Amerinds. The canyons where the cliff-dwellings occur have bottom lands that are fertile and easily irrigated, both by stream water, and after the Pueblo fashion, by guiding shower waters with hoes amongst the corn. This in itself was a sufficient object for building in the canyons, and the huge, natural conchoidal alcoves that occur in the faces of the prevailing formation were attractive places to build in for several reasons, one of which may have been protection from assault and the weather, and another the frequent presence of springs at the back of these cavities. These springs have almost vanished, in many cases have entirely disappeared, owing to slightly drier conditions now prevailing. But I have frequently noticed at the back part of many of the cavities that had no ruins, or few ruins, to cover it up, a moisture that might at times increase to a dripping, or even flowing, that would furnish enough water for the daily supply of a considerable Amerind village. The construction is the same as other Pueblo houses of stone.