Longhouses of The Indigenous Peoples of North America

Longhouses Of The Indigenous Peoples Of North America

Longhouses were built by native peoples in various parts of North America, sometimes reaching over 100 m (330 ft) but generally around 5 to 7 m (16 to 23 ft) wide. The dominant theory is that walls were made of sharpened and fire-hardened poles (up to 1,000 saplings for a 50 m (160 ft) house) driven into the ground and the roof consisted of leaves and grass. Strips of bark were then woven horizontally through the lines of poles to form more or less weatherproof walls, with doors usually both ends of the house covered with an animal hide to keep warm, although doors also were built into sides of especially long longhouses. Longhouses featured fireplaces that kept them warm. On top of the longhouses they made holes to keep the smoke out so they didn't lose oxygen. This can be a problem when it rains or snows.

Read more about Longhouses Of The Indigenous Peoples Of North America:  Iroquois and The Other East Coast Longhouses, Northwest Coast Longhouses, Bibliography

Famous quotes containing the words north america, indigenous, peoples, north and/or america:

    Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    She is watching her country lose its evoked master shape watching
    it lose
    And gain get back its houses and peoples watching it bring up
    Its local lights single homes lamps on barn roofs
    James Dickey (b. 1923)

    I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.
    Mother Jones (1830–1930)

    ... we are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom ...
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)