THE POLE AND PIT HOUSE TRADITION: THE SACRED PLAN

Although I will discuss individual cultures and their architecture in more detail below, I pause here to take a larger view of architectural production and to difierentiate the cultures that thrived in arid and rainforest environments, as discussed in Chapter 3, from the northern tradition. The former inevitably made buildings with a domed frame that was covered with leaves, grass, or reeds. Ropes made of vines and the fibers of roots served to tie elements together. These structures were made almost exclusively by women.

Such structures were not unknown to the people of the northern continuum, but since most of the northern regions abounded with coniferous forests there was always a plentiful supply of straight-growing pines and evergreens that resulted in the emergence of two very different types of architecture, both based on ancient prototypes: on the one hand, shaped structures out of poles, and on the other hand, earthen lodges with sunken cores and roofs made of logs and planks and covered with dirt. The latter are generally called pit houses, which is unfortunate since it seems to evoke a sense of primitivism that should not be ascribed to them. Some societies built exclusively with cone houses, others primarily with pit houses. Some had a combination of both. The pole structure could be designed to serve either winter or summer. The pit house, however, was usually a winter residence. In fact, among the Thompson Indians, a tribe in southwest Canada, the word for their lodges derives from the word “winter.”2

These houses took on a special ritual character because it was in winter that the sacred stories were recited and passed down. Winter ceremonies ensured that the harshness of the season would yield the bounties of spring, and the world would be renewed. Man’s role in the process was essential and involved long periods of drumming, singing, and storytelling. Children were told the genesis story of how their people were created only during the winter (Figure 4.2). It was during these ceremonies that much of the art was created. This means that an anthropologist who visited one of these cultures only during the summer would get what Native Americans called throw-away stories.3

The pit house and cone house tradition—lasting over 30,000 years—are the most fundamentally successful examples of architecture in human history. The reason for this is that regardless of the specifics of design, the most important element of their construction was the insistence that the plan serve as a model of the universe. This contrasts with the huts built by people in savanna and rainforest climes. There, the hut was used primarily for sleeping during the night or resting during the rainy season. Most ritual activity took place outdoors around the open fire. The! Kung do not view their huts as particularly sacred. But in the north, with long cold winters and long stretches of seasonal darkness, the interior of the hut had to accommodate large groups of people for long stretches of time. The powerful bonding that took place was unmistakable. The interior thus became a microcosm of a community, with men, women, children, relatives, and even visitors all slotted into particular zones.

Figure 4.2: Koryak shaman woman, Eastern Siberia, Russia. Photographed 1908. Source: Vladimir Jochelson, The Koryaks, The Jesup North Pacihc Expedition, Vol. VI, edited by Franz Boas (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1908), Plate III

Fire played an important role in these structures for obvious reasons, but just as it had to be maintained so that it did not go out, fire in such close quarters was not without risks, and perhaps for that very reason, among Siberian peoples, fire deities appear who live in the hearth and sometimes rule the underworld, sometimes the sky. The Tungus personified fire and gave its spirit food and drinks.4 The implements for fire making, which comprise a fire board, a bow, a wooden drill, and a headpiece of stone or bone, were inevitably sacred. When the Yakut hunter is getting ready to hunt, he pours some oil on the fire, gets down on his knees, puts his hand over his heart, bows toward the fire, and says a prayer asking for blessings from the fire deity. Having started out he is not allowed to look back.

The taboos connected with fire are designed to guarantee that nothing hurts or pollutes it. People, for example, are forbidden to pour water on it hastily, to throw any unclean sweepings into it, or to spit into it. Women and girls are forbidden to step over it, since they are considered unclean and may pollute the fire.5 The Samoyeds and other Siberians believed that fire was an old woman, and the licking flames of the fire are her movements. As the guardian of the tent, she would get angry if mistreated or disrespected. When children lost their teeth, their parents would tell them to throw the teeth into the fire, so that “Old Grandmother Fire” could give them new ones. People commonly swore by the fire, saying, “May I be devoured by Old Grandmother Fire if I am guilty!”6 Young children were not allowed to run up to the fire, lest they startle her, and men were expected to be courteous in her presence. When inside a tipi, one always moves behind a person, so as to not break the bond between a person and the fire. Nor need fire be associated just with the house. The Northern kayak-men believe themselves to be surrounded by ingerssuit (which means “great fire”), a benevolent sea god inclined to help men find safe passage.7

If fire was at the cosmological center of the architecture, producing a vertical axis, the horizontal axis connected the entrance and the fire with the rear of the house. The ancestor spirits inevitably “inhabited” the far rear of the structure, which in turn usually faced east. This is where the elder male or head of the household sat, which is just as true for the Mongolians and the Plains Indians as for the Sami in Finland. The prototype of this was already in place at Lepenski Vir where the axiality of the east-facing hut with the altar at the back makes it clear that each hut was a ritual space. This fundamental fact belies the tendency to see these timber and earthen structures through modern eyes as utilitarian shelters. They were from the outset in ancient history built around a unitary model that linked person, family, community, and

The conical hut can be particularly deceiving from the modern perspective, and has been associated for centuries with words like “primitive,” “rustic,” or “barbaric.” But a conical hut has strict rules about how its space is divided and conceptualized and not only for purposes of function, but also in its relationship to the world at large. It is relatively easy to erect and can be—as in the case of the reindeer herders in Siberia and the Prairie Indians—even packaged and made mobile. Not all pole structures, however, are alike, even though the main problem was how to maintain the integrity of the building in windy conditions. To accomplish this, horizontal bands were sometimes used, each one becoming a type of platform where the builders could reach up to make the next higher band. In other cases, saplings were bent around like an arch and tied to the rising poles where they intersected. The Plains Indians had the most ingenious system of all. There were no horizontal bands; instead, the structure was held together in compression by a tightly jacketed hide covering.

Earth lodges, by way of comparison, were substantial structures usually designed to last several years. Rarely meant to be lived in year around, they served primarily as winter residences. They had an internal structure of posts and beams on which logs rested that in turn supported the weight of the earth. Their size conforms to the number of people it is designed to hold, which can range from fifi:een to thirty. Unlike the pole structure, which is usually built by a group of women, this building was the product of communal activity. Depending on the number of available workers, construction usually takes four or five days to complete. The women would usually dig the ground with sticks and scrapers while the men cut down the trees and debarked them. The digging was accomplished with whale ribs, walrus tusks, or antlers. The pit is usually dug to about one meter with the soil deposited around the perimeter. The posts are planted into the sunken area already notched at the top so as to receive the beams. Roof poles are then added along with the rafters, which are then covered with pine needles and dry grass or a layer of earth, which is beaten down and stamped. Entrances can be formed on the top or from the side. The support structures are arranged according to various patterns. In some cases, they are in a square layout, while in others, two poles supported a ridge beam. As to the rafters, some are laid in a square fashion, some in a radial way. Some structures had vertical or nearly vertical walls, while others emerged at an angle from the ground. Though the procuring and construction of the timbers was usually done by the men, the sod was cut from areas outside of the village, usually by the women. It is no slight task. For a standard-sized lodge, eight women might typically be needed to cut the sod into squares, twenty or so girls or young women would then carry the blocks to the construction site, and six women would lay it on the roof.

Sometimes these structures were arranged facing the river, sometimes around a common central space. The floor was covered with reed mats or furs. Lit by seal oil, the interiors were luminous and warm. The main problem was the rotting of the base of the posts from ground moisture. Once the rot was too far gone, the lodge had to be abandoned and was usually destroyed. Since the lodge is a sacred space, its destruction is not without risk. The Hidatsa of North Dakota would only destroy a lodge on a calm day, since the act of destruction was surely to upset the spirits, who will cause the wind to blow. The women were the chief workers of this task with the men assisting them. The grass and earth were carried away flrst, exposing the rafters, which are divided among the women for flrewood. If any of the larger beams were still in good shape, they were salvaged for the new lodge. As for the posts, their rotten ends were chopped down to be reused in places closer to the perimeter where shorter posts were needed, or turned into flrewood.8 Not all such lodges were covered by earth. Lodges in Canada and the United States, where lumber is readily available, might be covered with planks and reed mats.

The pit house tradition was brought to the Americas by ocean and riverine specialists. Typical in this respect is the Yup’ik in Alaska and the Nlaka’pamux (“People of the Canyon”) in southern British Columbia.9 From there, the tradition moved southward into the United States. Around 100 ce or earlier it appears in the Southwest with the Hohokam; then around 600 ce it was used by people living along the Missouri River and its tributaries. Around 1000 ce, the Navajo, who derived from northwest Canada, brought the same package to far away southwest United States where by that time its local variant had died out. In the context of the United States, the pit houses were produced not only by riverine peoples, but also by agriculturalists who, after about 700 ce, began to grow corn, squash, beans, watermelons, and tobacco. The cross-continental and trans-temporal nature of this house form, adapted to cold climates as well as to desert, and adapted to riverine as well as agricultural communities, is a testament to its astonishing versatility.