Unlike the square buildings of the Mississippi people, or the more intimate structures of the Lenape, the Iroquoians maintain the ancient tradition of longhouses. The earliest were built in the shape of flat ellipses. But with the introduction of the corn crop around 700 CE, two or more families overwintered together in longhouses, thus ensuring close socialization and communal child rearing. By 1350, the Iroquoians shared a vibrant trade network among themselves and with the surrounding populations. Some areas specialized in stone axe manufacturing, others in preparing furs and deer hide, others again dealt in dried maize, tobacco, net making, or pottery. Originally, the Iroquoian culture was
A patrilineal culture with one family per house. With the increasing importance of the corn crop, matrilineal linages appeared, populations grew, and the longhouses became longer. Some reached 100 meters in length. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we also begin to see inter-village conflicts that helped promote the banding together of smaller groups into long house unities.34 Although not all household members are tied by bonds of kinship, they were generally treated that way. All members would be guaranteed access to the necessities of life. Food belonged to the household and not to the individual. No member could refuse to share food. In some households a senior male may have functioned as steward or manager of resources. This does not mean that all people were treated equally. Children were treated differently and the status of men and women was also differentiated.
Because of soil depletion, villages were relocated every few decades. Occasionally one village would split into two. It also seems that as populations grew, the longevity of villages shrank.
The expansion of the villages was dramatic. The Mantle Site is known to have had over ninety longhouses. A better-known site is known as Draper, located 15 kilometers north of Lake Ontario in Canada (Figures 16.54 and 16.55). It grew from a core area of 1.2 hectares to a total size of 4.2 hectares over five separate expansions during its thirty-five-year life span, with a total, at the end, of thirty-five longhouses that held as many as 2,000 people. Each time, the palisade that protected the settlement was expanded as well. Some of the longhouses were also extended in length, and eventually some houses were built outside the palisade altogether.
The houses were built around a sturdy and tall barrel-vaulted frame onto which bark shingles were attached. The front sides of lodges were ofi:en painted with figures of birds, men, and animals in red or black colors. Hearths were located in the front center of the house. It is generally thought that one hearth served two families. Corn and fish were hung from the roof to dry or stored at the ends near the entrances. Inside, the structure was partitioned, and each family was assigned its compartment with elevated sleeping platforms. The longhouses were regularly lengthened as the clan grew. The preferred northwest orientation caught the prevailing winter wind to create draft: for the fireplace.
Construction was a formidable task. It might have taken thirty men an entire winter to cut and prepare the timber and bark. The houses were more than shelters for their owners, but were simultaneously food-processing and storage plants, as well as workshops and recreation centers; they might even have served to some degree as a temple, theater, and fortress. The largest houses often had a communal central area where guests were entertained by the headman and where dances were held. This highest-ranking locality was usually to the rear or in the corner farthest from the door. A house might last as long as twenty years, but if it was well maintained, it could last considerably longer than that.35
World History
