Native American Architecture

B

The Longhouse

The Iroquois tribes lived in central New York state and along the St. Lawrence River and the northern shore of Lake Ontario. For centuries they had fought one another, but as early as the early 16th century five Iroquois tribes, or nations, formed a confederation with shared power, and the warfare ended. The Five Nations, listed in order of their location in New York state, from west to east, were the Seneca (called “Keepers of the Western Door”), the Cayuga (“Keepers of the Great Swamp”, the Onondaga (“Keepers of the Council Fire”), the Oneida (“Keepers of the Standing Rock”), and the Mohawk (“Keepers of the Eastern Door”). The Five Nations of the Iroquois confederation lived in large towns, many of which were surrounded by palisades, walls of strong, thick wooden posts, which protected the community from attack. Their society was matrilineal, meaning that it followed the female line. Sisters lived with their mother and their husbands and children in long rectangular houses. The name the Iroquois called themselves, Haudenosaunee, means in the Iroquois language, “People building an extended house” or “People of the longhouse.” Iroquois is the French version of a derogatory Algonquian word.

Although several related families lived in a longhouse, each family unit had its own section about 9 to 12 m (30 or 40 ft) long. A continuous passage ran through the center, linking the individual family units. Platforms along the side walls served for sleeping and storage. Each family maintained a small fire in the center of its section. A hole in the roof above permitted the smoke to escape. An Iroquois longhouse was described as a house of “five fires” or “seven fires” to indicate the number of families living together and the rough dimensions of the building. Over time longhouses could be extended as needed, with new family sections added at each end. Excavations of former Iroquoisan town sites have revealed traces of longhouses measuring as long as 120 m (400 ft).

Like other Native Americans in the Northeast, the Iroquois used saplings to build their dwellings. A longhouse was built of large saplings placed in the ground in four rows that ran the length and width of the building. Horizontal sapling beams linked these posts. Flexible green saplings formed a rounded roof, bent from the top of one row of posts to the opposite row and tied down. Large, overlapping slabs of elm bark typically covered the entire frame, but bark from other trees could be used as well. Individual slabs of elm bark might measure as much as 0.9 m (3 ft) wide by 1.8 m (6 ft) long. A door opened at each end of the structure. The end chambers were often used to store food supplies and other materials belonging to the house as a whole.

The Iroquois took not only their name from their distinctive longhouse, but also their image of themselves as a people. They thought of their confederacy as a huge longhouse that stretched 390 km (240 mi) from Lake Erie to the Hudson River and had five fires, or sections, representing the Five Nations. The tribal chiefs represented the posts supporting this great longhouse, and the clan leaders called sachems formed the roof braces. Like the sisters and their families in a longhouse, the Five Nations were bound together as a great family.

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VI

Great Plains Culture Area

The Great Plains Culture Area lay west of the Mississippi River and stretched to the Rocky Mountains. It consisted of tall-grass prairies and short-grass high plains. Native American settlements in this region were sparse before 1500. Although some peoples raised corn and beans, they also relied on migrating herds of buffalo as a vital source of meat. Siouan languages, spoken by the Crow, Sioux, and other groups, predominated on the plains. Some tribes, including the Caddo and Pawnee, spoke Caddoan languages; others, such as the Cheyenne and Ojibwa, spoke Algonquian languages.

It is commonly believed that all Native Americans who inhabited the Great Plains lived in cone-shaped tents called tipis (also spelled tepees). Many Americans think all Native Americans once lived in tipis. However, only some native peoples—and only on the Great Plains—lived in tipis. The word tipi in Sioux languages means “home place.” The term would have made no sense where people spoke other languages.

A

The Tipi

The tipi was a portable structure designed for nomadic living. Native peoples who followed migrating buffalo herds on the Great Plains could take it down, pack it up, and carry it with them. Tribes that lived farther from the major rivers relied more heavily on the buffalo than did those in settled agricultural communities. These buffalo-hunting tribes—the ancestors of the Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, Santee, and Yanktonai—lived in villages of relatively small tipis before 1500. They built these dwellings by stretching tanned buffalo hides around a cone-shaped frame, which was made of long, vertical poles that leaned inward and met at the top. When the buffalo migrated, they took down the tipis, and domesticated dogs dragged the tipi poles and skin-coverings to the next location. Moving the tipis was a difficult task.

After 1500 a major change occurred: Spanish explorers brought the horse to North America. Horses had died out in North America by the time the last Ice Age ended, about 10,000 years ago. Using the reintroduced horses, the tribes of the Great Plains could follow buffalo herds, moving household goods, including the tipi, with ease. Tipis increased in size as horses became more available. Before the horse, tipis had measured about 2.7 m (9 ft) in diameter and had covers made up of perhaps five buffalo hides. By the early 19th century tipis typically measured 5.5 to 6 m (18 to 20 ft) in diameter and required about 12 hides for their cover. Extremely large tipis used for special ceremonies could require more than 30 hides. The Blackfoot nation of the northern Plains made the largest tipis.

Despite their appearance tipis were not simple tents. Their pole frames, arranged in an oval plan, leaned toward the west. Thus, the shape and tilt of the tipi meant that it presented its narrowest dimension to the prevailing wind from the west. Because of the tipi’s westward lean, the harder the wind blew, the more the wind’s pressure tended to push the tipi into the earth. The tipi’s skin cover was pulled from the back (west) around to the front (east), where wooden pins connected the two edges, leaving an opening for entry at the bottom. The entrance faced east, toward the rising sun. At the top of the tipi, where the frame poles converged, the skin cover had smoke flaps, to be opened or closed depending on the wind’s direction. Although the men obtained the poles and buffalo hides, the women prepared the building materials and hides. The women also took down, packed, and then set up the tipis during relocation; ownership of the tipi resided with the women.

Although most tipi covers were plain, some groups, such as the Blackfoot, painted their tipis. The patterns or designs on Blackfoot tipis might tell a story, depict a battle scene, or show an image of nature given to the occupant in a dream. The decoration typically appeared in three bands. The lowest band depicted Earth, the middle band depicted dream visions, and the upper band corresponded to the sky. The sky band often contained white dots representing stars. Elk, otter, bison or other animal images often appeared in the middle band. Tipi decorations were unique and belonged to the individual living in the tipi. Some designs could be passed down through families.

The tipi’s shape and structure also carried symbolic meaning. The roughly circular shape of the tipi’s base represented the universe and the cycle of the seasons. The tipi was covered with buffalo skins, and the poles of the frame represented the buffalo’s ribs. To be inside the tipi was to become one with the buffalo whose life made the tipi possible and whose flesh made the life of the Plains peoples possible.

B

The Earth Lodge

A number of Great Plains tribes who spoke Caddoan or Siouan languages—such as the Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Pawnee—lived in fixed settlements and farmed. These tribes built large earth-covered lodges clustered in communities near the Missouri River and its tributaries. The river valleys were thickly wooded with cottonwood trees, which provided building materials. According to early-19th-century descriptions, each domed lodge measured 12 m (40 ft) or more in diameter and could accommodate two or three, or more, families. During the bitterly cold winters of the Great Plains, the thick earth covering of these lodges prevented heat loss and maintained a comfortable temperature inside. In the summer the thick mass of earth kept the interior relatively cool compared to the humid heat outside.

The Caddoan-speaking nations employed the same basic construction techniques. Construction began by digging out and leveling the floor, which lay slightly below the level of the surrounding ground. Next, a tall central structure was built of four or more stout cottonwood tree trunks. Trimmed of their bark, the trunks were put into holes dug in the floor in the corners of a square. Four or more massive cross beams spanned these central posts from top to top. Around this post-and-beam structure stood an outer ring of shorter posts, also spanned with beams. Walls were formed by leaning masses of slender poles against the outer ring, while many long poles spanned the top to form the roof. A smoke hole was left at the center. Additional posts and beams framed a tunnellike entry passageway. To seal the house, the roof poles were covered with mats or masses of woven grass. Earth was then packed over the entire structure, several feet thick at the base and diminishing in thickness toward the smoke hole at the top.

C

The Sweat Lodge

Most Native American nations use some form of sweat lodge for spiritual purification and preparation for important activities or events. The Finnish sauna is a European equivalent, but its purpose is almost entirely to produce physical well-being. The Native American sweat lodge focuses on spiritual and mental well-being as well. Known as onikare in the Sioux language, the sweat lodge is fundamental to the spiritual life of the Plains people.

Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux religious leader, provided a good description of the construction and symbolism of the Plains sweat lodge in The Sacred Pipe (1953). It is built of 12 to 16 willow saplings, each 2.5 to 3 m (8 to 10 ft) long and slightly less than 2.5 cm (1.0 in) in diameter. The saplings stand in the ground in a circle that measures about 2 m (about 7 ft) in diameter. Most sweat lodges have entrances facing east, the direction from which the light of wisdom comes, according to Black Elk. Construction begins by taking the pair of willow saplings flanking the door and bending them over the center toward the western end. The opposite pair of saplings on the west are bent to meet the eastern pair, and the ends are twisted together to form two parallel hoops running east to west. A north and south pair of saplings are similarly bent over to form north-south hoops. The remaining saplings, bent diagonally over the middle, complete a wigwam-like dome.

In the center of the floor, a pit is dug slightly larger than 0.3 m (1 ft) in diameter and 0.3 m deep. The soil from the pit is carried through the doorway and used to make the unchi, a small mound representing Earth, about 1.8 m (6 ft) in front of the lodge entrance. Some of the soil may make a path to the door, symbolizing the Good Road. Steam for the sweat lodge comes from rocks heated in a fire that burns east of the unchi, on the line of the Good Road. Native peoples once used layers of buffalo hides to cover the sweat lodge frame and create total darkness inside. Today buffalo are scarce, and they use old quilts, blankets, or canvas tarpaulins instead. The darkness represents human ignorance, while the glowing hot rocks, brought inside at the start of the ceremony, represent the light of wisdom that comes from Wakan Tanka (the Great Mystery), supreme divinity of the Sioux. The covers are stored between ceremonies, leaving the bare frame exposed.

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