Native American Homes in Olden Times     Today, Native Americans live in houses just like yours and mine. But once, they lived in very different homes. Everything was made by hand. Everything was made with things they found in nature. It took hard work to make a home. Come learn about the creative homes people built in olden times. Longhouses Hogans Earth Homes Tipis (Tepees) Wickiups   Adobe/Pueblo Wigwams  Chickees Plank Houses Links for Kids about Homes   Return to Native Americans     Longhouse Longhouses were used by the Eastern Woodland Indians. Longhouses were really long - they could be over 200 feet long, 25 feet wide, and 25 feet high. That's huge! To get an idea of how big they were, measure the distance from floor to ceiling in your own house. First, they made a frame out of long poles of wood. Then, they tied young trees to the frame, trees young enough to bend and shape. Once they had the shape of the longhouse in place, they covered the house with bark. They added a few smoke holes and two doors - one at each end. The Iroquois rigged a flap on the smoke holes. When it snowed or rained, the holes could be opened and closed as needed. Later, the people might go back and add to the longhouse, making it even longer as needed. Longhouses, once built, lasted about twenty years. Many longhouses had a huge pole fence built around them for additional protection. Stairs were built on the inside of the fence, so that archers could easily climb up and defend against attack. The poles ended in long sharp points to discourage anyone from climbing over. Many families lived together in one longhouse. Each was assigned their own section. Fireplaces and fire pits ran down the middle of the longhouse for heat and for people to share as a place to cook food. Houses were not measured by feet. They were measured by camp fires. A house might be 10 fires long, or 12 fires long. Longhouses were so important to the Iroquois way of life that the Iroquois call themselves "the People of the Longhouse". Tipi, Tepee, Teepee No matter how you spell it, the tipi remains a wonderful invention. A tipi (tepee, teepee) is a Plains Indian home. It is made of buffalo hide fastened around long wooden poles, designed in a cone shape. The poles were about 15 feet long. Good poles were hard to find. They took a lot of work to make. Some Plains people traded for poles. A typical trade would be one horse for five poles. A tipi used a hide flap as a doorway. Weather permitting, the entrance faced east, towards the rising sun. If the weather was miserable or a storm was brewing, the people positioned the flap opening in whatever way would best serve the comfort of the occupants. Sometimes, the people arranged their tipis in a circle, with all the opening flaps facing the center open space created by the circle of tipis. If the entrance flap was open, it was an invitation to enter. If the flap was closed, you needed to announce yourself and wait for an invitation to enter a tipi, even if you lived there. Tipis were comfortable homes. They were warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Some were quite large. They could hold 30 or 40 people comfortably.         "Where else can you — lie by an open fire and listen to the rain without getting wet? - In a tipi — roast food over glowing embers while the wind blows and not get smoke in your eyes? - In a tepee — on a hot summer day, raise the wall of your shelter on the shady side and let a cool breeze flow through, or sit out a winter storm, secure and warm, while the elements rage on the outside? - in a teepee — gaze up at the stars as you fall asleep and awake to a cloud burst and still stay dry? - in a tipi — find a shelter so pleasing to the eye, so compatible with nature, so versatile, so complete? Only in a tipi! Only in a tepee! Only in a teepee!"  Reece TipiTips Wigwams Is a wigwam the same as a tepee? NO Not all Woodland Indians built longhouses. Some built wigwams. A wigwam was a round building with a round top. It was made from tree logs, covered again with bark. Some were additionally covered with mats or hide. Some were quite large - about 6 feet long. There were huge rush mats in front of the fire, and brightly dyed mats on the walls. The women made the wigwam as colorful as they could. Extended families - kids, parents, and grandparents - all lived together in one wigwam. A wigwam is not a tipi. A tipi is totally portable. It is made with long poles covered with hides. Some wigwams were fixed shelters. Some were a mix of permanent and portable. The Ojibwa, for example, made their wigwams by covering a wood frame with hide and then covering the hide with bark. When an Ojibwa family moved to a new location, the hide was rolled up and taken with them. The frame stayed. When they returned the following year, or several years later, they simply unrolled the covering they always carried, and placed it on the frame. If a frame was not available, they would make a new one. Hogans A Navajo home was called a hogan. Hogans were made of wooden poles covered with tree bark and mud. They were permanent structures, and dark and gloomy. They had no windows, and only a small hole in the ceiling to let out smoke. The door of the hogan faced east to welcome the rising sun. Hogans were usually one room affairs. People sheltered in the hogan at night. The only furniture in a hogan was bedding. Bedding was usually a sheepskin on the floor. Each Navajo family had two hogans - one in the desert and one in the mountains. Wickiup Wickiups were Apache homes. The Apache bent young trees, creating a U shape. They attached the bent trees together to make an upside-down U-shaped home. The frame of bent young trees was covered with animal skin. There was one big room in a Wickiup, but each had an entrance added to the front. The entrance area was designed with a very low roof, so you had to bend over to enter a Wickiup. Once inside, you could stand up straight. There was not a lot of room inside a Wickiup for a family, which is one of the reasons Apache families had little to no furniture in olden times. Chickee Each family had their own home. Homes were called chickees. Chickees were platform houses, made of logs. The bottom floor was about 3 feet off the ground for protection from flooding and animals. The roof was slanted. Certain times of the year, people hung canvas curtains (walls) to keep out the rain and cold weather. When walls were not needed, the Seminole rolled up their canvas curtains and hung them from the rafters to keep them safe and dry. They hung many things from the rafters of their homes - cooking utensils, a baby swing, perhaps a wheel. You had to keep things off the wet ground if you wanted to keep them safe. Sometimes, the women worked in the chickee during the day. The baby's swing, which was securely fastened to the rafters of the chickee, had a piece of cloth tied to it that hung down. While working at something else, the women would tug the piece of hanging cloth to gently rock the baby. Seminole families slept in their chickee at night. Their beds of hides or blankets were called "comfortables". Comfortables were rolled up and hung from the rafters during the day. They had very little other furniture, perhaps a chair, a table, and a few colorful baskets. Earth Homes Some Plains people were not hunters and gatherers. They were farmers. They lived in villages. They lived in round earth lodges. These were huge things. Some were 40 feet in diameter and about 15 feet high. They were made of framework of poles, with a roof covered with earth.  They were earthy, but warm in the winter and cool in the summer. These were fixed structures. Adobe Pueblos The Pueblo were cliff dwellers. They built homes of adobe brick on cliffs and on mesas. Homes were stacked one on top of the other, like an apartment complex. Sometimes they were stacked four high. Those who had homes on the ground floor could simply walk up to their door. Others had to climb ladders to reach their front door. Each floor of homes had a walkway that ran in front of many doorways. Once you reached the next level up, if that was your floor, you used the walkway to reach your front door. If you needed to go higher, you found a ladder and climbed to the next level. Northwest Plank Houses The Northwest Pacific Coastal Indians did not live in tepees as did the Yakima Indians of Eastern Washington. Instead, they lived in longhouses built of thick cedar planks. These homes were also called plank houses. These early people chopped down and split massive cedar trees using beaver teeth and stone axes. Amazing! The longhouses were huge. Some were about 100 feet long and 25 feet wide, with low roofs for easy heating. The only openings in the whole building was the entrance door and a hole in the roof to allow smoke to escape. If the longhouse was built by the tribe, the Chief would assign space within the longhouse. Each family would be assigned a living area, a space of their own, within the house. If an individual built the longhouse for his own family, he lived in that longhouse, along with his wife, his male and female children and their children. As each member of the family grew to adulthood and married, they were assigned space for their family, within the family longhouse. When the owner of the house died, this arrangement ended. Either the house was given away to someone outside the family or it was burnt to the ground. It was believed if the family remained the spirit of the departed might be either bothered by them or worried about them. To avoid the possibility of this, the family had to move and live elsewhere. Whether space in the longhouse was assigned by the father of a family, or by the chief of a tribe, life in each longhouse was the same. Links for Kids Drawings of Native Dwellings Native American Shelters Virtual Coloring Book - Wigwam Longhouses, Tents, more Play Games To return to the main menu, click on the basket  All Rights Reserved Counter start date January 2006     Clip Art Credit: Phillip Martin Have a great year!