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Later day Iroquois longhouse (c.1885) 50–60 people Interior of a longhouse with Chief Powhatan (detail of John Smith map, 1612) Longhouses were a style of residential dwelling built by Native American and First Nations peoples in various parts of North America. Sometimes separate longhouses were built for community meetings.
Traditional Iroquois longhouse. At the time of first European contact the Iroquois lived in a small number of large villages scattered throughout their territory. Each nation had between one and four villages at any one time, and villages were moved approximately every five to twenty years as soil and firewood were depleted. [197]
In North America two groups of longhouses emerged: the Native American/First Nations longhouse of the tribes usually connected with the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) in the northeast, and a similarly shaped structure which arose independently among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
The villages usually were 2 hectares (4.9 acres) to 3.25 hectares (8.0 acres) in area. Inside the palisades the St. Lawrence people lived in longhouses, typical of other neighboring Iroquoian peoples. The longhouses were 18 metres (59 ft) to 41 metres (135 ft) in length and each housed several families. [15]
They were historically sedentary farmers who lived in large fortified villages enclosed by palisades thirty feet high as a defence against enemy attack, these settlements were referred to as “towns” by early Europeans and supplemented their diet with additional hunting and gathering activities. [16] Longhouses were also common.
Ganondagan, site of a major 17th-century Seneca village, has a reconstructed Seneca longhouse and a small visitors center. The original town site covered nine acres, with dwellings and stores, fields, and areas for livestock. This area was the location of nearly 150 longhouses, as well as the burial grounds of the people.
Morgan was a pioneering American anthropologist and business lawyer who championed the land rights of Native Americans. Traditionally, the Iroquois had lived in communal longhouses based on matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence, giving women a great deal of power. Engels stressed the theoretical significance of Morgan's highlighting of ...
About 1000 to 2000 people lived in longhouses in the fortified community. Scientific excavation was first completed in 1921–1923, when the site was owned by the Lawson family. The searches have recovered 30,000 artifacts and the remains of 19 longhouses. [44] Some of the longhouses and the pallisade have been reconstructed. [45]