
Today, Native Americans live in houses just like yours and
mine. But in olden times, 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.
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.

Wigwams
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
Seminole families each had their own home called a
chickee. 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.

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Clip Art Credit: Phillip Martin
Wickiup: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/kids/newwords.html#w
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