- 6 - Indian Dwellings

Thebes of the Seven Doors, who built it? asks Brecht in his Questions of a Worker Reader; in the books one can find kings' names: did these kings drag those stones? is one more question. The same questions can be asked for Teotihuacan, Cahokia and Mesa Verde. Even if a slave might be buried alive in the foundation of a Northwest Coast house and hundreds of people, some of them slaves, cut the stones of Tenochtitlàn and Cusco or carried baskets of dirt to build the mounds in the Eastern Woodlands, most native builders in North America were free men and women.

by Mario Sartor

The Nahuatl word "house" is part of many compound words; calli is house in general, while teocalli is the god's house and telpuchalli is the youth's house, the school. The simplest model of house found in numberless archaeological sites is originally a very simple, one room, oblong structure, whose floor plan is rectangular, sometimes rounded at the corners (absidal type). The absidal house seems to be more archaic. Usually the dirt floor was lined by roughly squared stones and the walls and roof were built with perishable materials, so that the house might last about fifteen years. The building of this house was easy and it did not require skilled labor force: clan or family members were the builders. The walls were almost always made of reeds, palmetto poles or boughs and covered with a plaster made of mud or lime and sand. These materials were connected with vegetal ties and the roof was covered by regular bundles of grass, solidly tied horizontally, which also had some aesthetic value. The only entrance was on the front and there were no windows or other openings for air or light. The roof was characterized by very steep watersheds and a peculiar binding on the top, which formed a sort of crowning. Often these houses grouped around little squares; this kind of house can be found everywhere, even if it became more and more complicated, transformed into a palace, though developed on the horizontal level. Most social life and daily tasks were performed outdoors and the house was fit to the requirements of the environment. The stone buildings of the Mayan aristocracy repeated the original Mayan hut, with their false vault crowning reminding its roof. The relation between the hut and the palace can be seen in some examples of Yucatec architecture in the Rio Bec and Puuc styles. In towns such as Labnà, Sayil and Uxmal sometimes little columns reproduce the bindings and the poles of the hut, sometimes the hut itself is carved in bas-relief. This architectural features can be also found beyond the Mayan area, in Oaxaca and the Highland of Mexico.

by Flavia Busatta

When the Southwestern peoples abandoned their temporary shelters and became sedentary, one of the first houses they built was the so-called pithouse. It was a semi-subterranean structure, approximately circular, lined with roughly squared limestone stones, which supported the walls of the pit. The coverage was formed by a kind of tholos roof made of beams and branches, reinforced with mud. From the beginning these houses constituted hamlets of ten-eleven units, such as that in Mummy Cave in Canyon de Chelly. Some houses also had storage pits and fireplaces. A new type of more complex pithouse appears in 400-600 A. D. among the Basketmakers. The circular shape of the floor plan becomes more or less rectangular and a storage room is added to the principal room. But the innovation is represented by four wooden pillars with fork-endings supporting four horizontal beams and the beam ceiling, covered with boughs and dirt. Externally the house looked like a mound. The entrance was from the top by means of a ladder in the smoke hole. Inside there was a firepit lined with stones and a deflector of warm air. This kind of pithouse was typical of the Mogollon and Hohokam cultures. Different climatic conditions and new agricultural techniques brought a new, improved pithouse among the Basketmalers (Pueblo I), who began to build also ground wattle-and-daub granaries called jacales and four-pole arbors called ramadas by the archaeologists. From the union and development of jacales and ramadas comes the typical Puebloan house. Some Anasazi peoples began to build their stonework buildings in 900 A. D., while others preserved their jacales until 1200 A. D. About 1000 A. D. in Chaco Canyon thick stone walls can support two or three floors, while in Pueblo Bonito (1100 A. D. ) one can still see five storey buildings. In Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde and Kayenta the Anasazi show sophisticated stone and plaster ornamentation, even if aeration of the rooms was poor and smoke lingered inside. The buildings are grouped following a precise architectural design; the modular unit is repeated numberless times, with a north-south orientation; the façade looked southward and the warehouses looked northward. On the southern side there is a square, which is the roof of a pithouse, usually the ceremonial kiva of the group, and beyond it there is the dumping site. This kind of architectural model appears also after the Great Migration of 1300 A. D., when the Anasazi cultures declined and the new Puebloan villages were established in the Southwest. Only after the Great Revolt of 1680 the Spaniards imposed a new orientation, focusing around the central square and the church and changed most of the labor force: building houses became men's work.

by H. E. Driver

The horizontal circular floor plan is almost universal in North American, even if it is not the dominant plan everywhere; the rectangular floor plan is limited geographically in its distribution and is culturally connected with agriculture. Its origin is dual: the origin of the Northwest Coast house seems to be Asian, while that in other areas seems Mesoamerican. Conic and subconic houses are best classified as to the number of poles, three or four, used for the tripod and their origin can be placed most likely in Asia. The origin of most semi-underground houses with tunnel entrance is probably a northern one. Eurasia and North America constitute a unitary, coherent area. The first semi-underground houses were built in Southern Russia and near Lake Baikal, Siberia, about 25,000 years ago and Alaskan Inuits still occupy the same kind of dwellings. In the Southeast these houses developed into very large, round "hot houses", while in the Southwest Basketmakers II semi-subterranean dwellings finally became men's ceremonial rooms, the kivas.

by John R. Jewitt

Chief Maquinna's English slave, J. R. Jewitt describes Friendly Cove village, reoccupied by the Nootka when the Spaniards were forced to abandon their fort.

by Francesco Spagna

The Ojibwa wigwam embodies the architectural principle that the only ecologically and aesthetically compatible dwellings are those which use the environment elements themselves, organizing them in a creative way. Its materials, trees, bark and fibers can be easily found and it usually takes only a half-day's work for two or three people. Johann Georg Kohl, a German traveller, described the manufacture of his personal wigwam by some Lake Superior Ojibwa women in 1855. Birch and maple bark are used, together with linden fiber to bind the bent poles. The pole dome is covered with reed mats and birchbark sheets. Also Frances Densmore states that the manufacture of wigwams was women's task in early 20 th century and describes daily life in winter wigwams, which could last for two or three generations. Inside grandmother occupied the best place opposite the door. The food supply was preserved outdoors on a big rack and a birchbark tepee was used as a closet. The wigwam was not the only type of dwelling in the Woodlands. At Barens River, Manitoba, anthropologist A. I. Hollowell found the Salteaux Ojibwa living most often in log cabins in 1935-36, and very common was the pi'kogan, a permanent tepee covered with birchbark and reed mats. Another winter dwelling was the conical mi'ti'gokwan, also with central fireplace, six poles, covered with mud and moss and sometimes rabbit skins. In this area the cäbandawan, a birchbark multifamiliar dwelling was common and cäbandawans with ten fires are reported, but when Hallowell visited the area they had almost disappeared. A revitalisation of the old building techniques can be found at Waswagoning (Lac du Flambeau), northern Wisconsin, where the Ojibwe Village learning Institute and museum was founded. An idea of the old Indian dwellings can also be found at the Heritage center of Turtle Mountain Reservation, North Dakota.

by Mauro Ruscello

The tipi (from a Sioux word meaning dwelling place) has become the typical lodge of the Plains Indians. This tent was very handy and could be raised by one woman; it was cool in summer and warm in winter. Inside the so called dew cloth was very practical, because it absorbed humidity and deflected drafts, while the smoke "ears" provided air circulation. Its inverted cone shape made it stand firm against storms and showers. Conical tents can be found in Siberia, among the Inuit ant the Athapaskan tribes, but the Plains tipi is different, in so much as it is more sophisticated. The first explorer to describe the tipi was the conquistador Coronado in 1540-42, speaking of the Plains Apache. The smoke ears were first described by major S. H. Long in 1819 among the Kiowa-Apache, the Otoes and other Missouri Indians. In the 19 th century many travellers and artists wrote of and painted the tipi, but few were precise in describing the details. When the Indians owned only dogs to carry their properties, Spanish witnesses tell of dog trains of 300 animals and praise the quality of the skins. Most tribes travelled to get their precious poles or militarily occupied wooded areas, since the Plains are very scarce with trees. The arrival of the horse transformed the Plains culture deeply and the tipi flourished. The most used woods for poles were pine tree, white and red cedar, larch and spruce tree. Buffalo cow skins were preferred and the best place on the west side belonged to the head of the family, in this place there were also the sacred bundles and the altar. The southern side was occupied by the women and their tools, while the northern one was the men's side. The tribes used three or four poles for the founding tripod, according to their provenance. In mid-19 th century less than a half of the Cheyenne used the tipi, and it spread slowly in the North, where Assiniboins and Plains Crees never used travois to carry poles, preferring European or Métis carts.

by Sandra Busatta

The Iroqoian peoples that constituted more or less loose confederations traditionally lived in multifamiliar buildings known as Longhouses. They can be traced back to 1000 A. D., and even before in the Ontario's First Iroquois stage and New York's Owasco culture. Archaeologist J. A. Tuck affirms that Summer Island, a Middle Woodlands site on Lake Michigan dating about 1300 A. D., may have been the prototype of the longhouse. After the 12 th century the longhouse is well established and in the 13 th and 14 th centuries there was a trend to very big longhouses, connected with the development of the villages. The apogee of the longhouse was in the 15 th century, when it spread also outside present New York State. The 14 th century saw gigantic longhouses, which sheltered maybe segments of matrilocal clans and the beginning of the great alliances which regulated intertribal wars and caused the building of smaller dwellings. The longhouse, a dome structure covered either with elm tree bark (Iroquoia) or cedar (Huronia) was divided into "apartments" and cut in the middle by a central corridor where each of the two to five fireplaces were used by two families. Sagard, a Franciscan friar which visited Huronia in 1623-24 describes a platform where people slept in summer to avoid the many fleas, while in winter they preferred to sleep on mats spread on the floor, near the fireplace. Under the platform, between the cubicles that formed the apartments and above them on other platforms wood, tools, and food were stored. The only openings were the doors and a smoke hole on the roof. In a big village the two longhouses belonging to the peace and war chiefs were used not only as dwellings but also for public events. Le Jeune, a Jesuit, in 1637 witnessed the torture of an Iroquois prisoner in the house of Atsan, a Huron war chief, called "the house of the cut heads". Food and properties were also stored in the hall and hanged from the roof beams, wrote Champlain in 1615-16, and the room was full of smoke, one of the worse disadvantages, together with fleas, mice and urine stench. The advantages lay in the sharing of a common life, where the longhouse represented the physical manifestation of the Iroquoian social system, family solidarity, economic cooperation and government by consensus. All these values were projected on the village and the tribe levels. The Longhouse become also a powerful symbol of the League of the Five Nations and, as such is still the symbol of the nationalist, fundamentalist Longhouse religion, even if today the traditional bark dwelling can be seen only in some museum reconstruction.

by Valentina Pagliai

One cannot tell a Native American house from an Euro-American one in Los Angeles, even if in L. A. there are about 220 tribes represented. This means that we cannot speak of one Indian culture, but of many fused together to form a Panindian one. Metropolitan L. A. accommodates more than 100,000, maybe 150,000 (unofficial estimate) Native Americans. This is the largest Indian community in North America, but it represents only a small minority group among L- A.'s fourteen million inhabitants, sometimes physically indistinguishable from Latin Americans and Anglos. Another important factor which contributes to American Indian invisibility is dispersion. There is no neighborhood, enclave, township, where Indians live together and places where they are more numerous; their percentage is always one or two percent of the total. Another cause is frequent change of place due to jobs and family needs and a movement between reservations and town. A high rate of mobility makes Indians prefer living in rented apartments, motels or friends' homes. But dispersed Indian inhabitants can coagulate in pow wows, centers, schools and churches and become visible. These community places constitute a network of mutual support anda lobby which help the ethnic individual. The image of the very poor Indian alcoholist is common but somehow false. Even if there are homeless and alcoholists, there is also a majority of working class and lower middle class Indians, economically steady and culturally strong, strictly in touch with their relations in the reservations, but actively building a Panindian culture in town.

In Jamestown, Virginia, a young Indian woman in buckskin dress stretches her arms in friendly gesture. She was Chief Powhatan's favored daughter and this status meant that Pocahontas, this was the nickname the English gave her, exercized her religious and political prerogatives. As a Peace Woman, she saved John Smith's life without risk and belonged to the "English party" inside her tribe. Smith was an adventurer, soldier, ex slave in Constantinople, slave trader and Indian fighter. We do not know the reason why Matoaka, this was her name, was nicknamed with a Spanish phrase Poca Hontas, "Without Shame". W. Strachey, Secretary of the Colony in his History of the Journey in Virginia Britannica (1612) states that Matoaka means "Penis". We know that Algonquinian women enjoyed great sexual freedom and that ritual coitus was a common way to incorporate a stranger in a tribe, but we do not know if Matoaka - Pocahontas "married" Smith when she saved his life. She married at least an Indian husband, then she was "engaged" with an Englishman, married a Captain Slocum and John Rolfe. Kidnapped and held as a hostage, she did not try to escape, learnt English and became a Christian, baptized Rebecca. Rolfe gave her a son, Thomas, and brought her to England, where she was welcomed at court. Unfortunately she got sick and died in 1617. She was forgotten until the Good Savage went on fashion and then the environmentalist movement brought Nature and "natural" peoples on stage. But nobody has explained yet why Rolfe's "little wanton", Princess Penis, was nicknamed the Shameless.

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