Chapter 15

Home, Native Home

In This Chapter

Building family homes from the forest

Putting tipis in context

Eyeing the igloo

Looking up at Mohawks in the sky

In the hierarchy of human needs, after our need for air, water, food, and sleep are satisfied, shelter and safety come next. This is universal for all human beings, and Native Americans developed innovative and creative ways to create a wide variety of shelters to provide this necessity. Each unique structure reflected not only their local climate, but also made excellent use of the array of natural resources available to them.

Trees were used for wood; plants for thatch; earth for mud. Native Americans looked around and asked themselves, “How can I use what I see to create a place to live?” (Maybe they didn’t sit around actually asking each other that question. But you get the point.)

This chapter explores the many housing styles invented by different tribes, which are still in use today or have inspired other contemporary styles.

Wooden Homes

The original Native people were practical environmentalists. And many Native Americans today continue to “think green.” Regarding the earliest Indigenous people, the key word is “practical.”

For many tribes, the natural world played a large role in spiritual life. For this reason, it didn’t make sense to exploit nature to the point of devastation — it would be like sacrilege. Trees were used for raw wood for building. The bark was used for roofing and siding. Grasses and branches were also used for protective covering and shelter. Saplings were used as cord. Many tribes had specific prayers for the construction of a new dwelling that acknowledged the role of both the community and the environment in bringing it forth. This section looks at a few of the most common Native American homes and dwellings, from simple lean-tos, to the legendary and undeniably iconic igloo, the only house built from snow.

Plankhouses

Plankhouses were constructed in a range of sizes, the larger ones for use as an extended family residence. The design of the plankhouse is long and rectangular, with a sloped, inverted “V” roof. Like a barn without a wide door at the end. This type of house was common in areas where the forests were extensive enough to accommodate harvesting.

Plankhouses were common among the northern California and Pacific Northwest Indian tribes.

They were built by the Tlingit, the Yurok, and other tribes of the West and Northwest, but the construction varied according to the tribe. Tribes in the Northwest Coast built houses of red cedar, spruce planks with vertical boards and an inverted V-shaped roof. Plankhouses had one door, which was sometimes round; they had no windows, and there was a pit in the center of the floor where the heating and cooking fire was built. A hole in the roof allowed the smoke to escape.

The really large plankhouses often housed more than one family, and woven cedar mats were used to create individual “rooms” of a sort for sleeping and private activities.

Commonly, a ledge or bench was constructed inside the house at about waist height for sitting and storage. Some houses were marked by the presence of totem poles that identified the clans or moieties of the houses.

For a virtual tour of the inside of a Yurok plankhouse, visit www.virtualguidebooks.com/NorthCalif/RedwoodPark/PatricksPoint/YurokHouseInteriorL.html.

Longhouses

The Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras refer to themselves collectively as the Haudenosaunee, which means “People Building a Long House.” This confederacy was perceived to be an enormous, invisible longhouse stretching from coast to coast and housing all the families of the six tribes. That’s a beautiful image, isn’t it?

Not to be flip, but longhouses (see Figure 15-1) were long. The typical longhouse was between 180 and 220 feet long, but evidence of a 400-foot longhouse has been found in upstate New York.

Longhouses needed to be long, as they were designed to house several families, each of which needed its own sleeping and storage bunks and spaces, as well as its own central fire. There was a hole in the roof above each fire, and this would tell visitors how many families lived in a particular longhouse. Some longhouses were big enough to house a hundred (or more) people.

Longhouses were built by placing poles in the ground at specific intervals based on the planned finished length. Long logs would then be attached to the poles lengthwise for strength. The roof was made of sheets of bark that were attached to the tops of the support posts after they had been bent toward the opposite side of the frame. Bark was also used for the walls.

Figure 15-1: A longhouse.

Hogans

The hogan is a Navajo dwelling that is one of their most sacred of built places. Hogans can be described as male and female, based on their construction. They have been used as both a home and a place for rituals.

Male: This one uses a forked stick placed facing south, onto which a straight pole is propped facing north. East and west poles are then placed. It is pyramidal in shape and is used only for rituals. Its walls are a combination of branches, strips of bark, and earth. A smoke hole is left at the top, and the poles are put in place in the specific order of east, south, west, north.

Female: The female hogan was originally dome-shaped, but after the 1900s and the prevalence of the railroad running through Indian lands, the availability of surplus, straight railroad ties resulted in new, octagonal-shaped structures. These newer hogans have eight sides and are much larger than the male hogan. Logs are interlocked as in a log cabin, and the roof is domed. These larger hogans were ideal for family living, but are also a place where sacred rituals are performed.

First Man and First Woman, with help from Coyote and Beaver, built the first hogan, and these places are considered a spiritual necessity for Navajos today. Many modern Navajo will construct a hogan on their property for ceremonial uses — even while living in a much more contemporary home.

Chickees

Have you ever been to a park or beach area where there was a roofed, open-sided pavilion under which there were picnic tables, and sometimes barbecue grills? People often congregate beneath this structure to escape a brief shower at the beach, or when the sun just gets too darn hot.

We can thank the Seminole Indians of Florida for this type of sheltering structure, which is called a chickee. The chickees were originally developed by the Seminole as structures that could be quickly assembled and disassembled while people were on the run in the 1800s from American soldiers.

Chickees have no walls, but that’s okay, since the climate where they were invented was always warm. The original chickees had a thatched roof that was supported by logs. Today’s modern versions use either steel or wood support beams and a wood or shingled roof.

Some chickees had a raised floor, allowing sleeping and comfort off the ground, but the sides were still wide open.

Chickee means “house” in the Seminole language.

Tipis

In contemporary American culture (at least for the past century or so), the tipi has become so associated with Indians that many Native Americans today feel its image has devolved into a stereotype.

It’s not so much that the tipi (see Figure 15-2) has become an offensive slur, but more that it’s now almost trite from overuse (as well as from misuse, oftentimes conflating all Native Americans tribes into one huge tipi-inhabiting clan — that just ain’t so), and, thus, is commonly not given the respect the dwelling deserves. As is common with many aspects of Indian culture, there is a spiritual component to the erection of a tipi and to its occupancy.

Tipis have been used by Plains tribes for thousands of years, according to archaeologists, who have identified rings of rocks believed to have been used to hold down the tipi covers. Today, many people in Plains tribes continue to use tipis, but not as permanent housing. At Crow Fair, an event held by the Crow Nation in Montana, many people bring tipis to camp in during the days of the fair. This event has been described as the “tipi capital of the world!”

“Tipi” is the Sioux spelling of the word. Also commonly used in mainstream cultural writings are “tepee” and “teepee.”

The exterior of the tipi is made from hides. Flaps controlled by poles or ropes allow a fire to be built inside the dwelling. These openings also serve as a ventilation source. During cold winters, an interior lining is often used for additional warmth. The tipi’s cone shape is remarkably stable in high winds, as long as the support poles are securely anchored.

Tipis are also portable, which allowed tribes to set up villages as they followed herds of buffalo, move to uncultivated lands, or established camps (see Figure 15-3) near streams for the fishing seasons.

The poles of the tipi served a dual purpose: They could be used for a travois. (See Chapter 16 for more on the travois.) And in an example of true utility, the poles from a single tipi could provide the travelers with six or more travois for transporting.

Figure 15-2: A tipi.

Figure 15-3: An Indian village.

Other Indian Dwellings

There were dozens of different types of Native American dwellings, and their conception and construction were dependent on:

Resources available: Lots of trees? Few trees? Lots of moist earth? Lots of reeds? Easy availability of animals whose skins could be used for construction? More rocks than anything else?

Climate: Dry and hot? Rainy? Windy? Snow and cold?

Geographic area: Was the area close to a river and villages were relatively permanent? Was the area noted for migrating herds that had to be followed? Were interlopers and enemies likely to force tribes off their land, thus requiring portability?

The Europeans were amazed by the variety of dwellings Indians had created in adaptation to their surroundings.

Wigwams and wickiups

A wigwam (see Figure 15-4) is a form of dwelling that is commonly dome-shaped with a sapling frame that is then covered with hides or bark, which was then commonly covered with grass or thatch.

Wigwams were commonly used in the U.S. Northeast. In other areas, especially the southwestern United States, the same type of structure is called a wickiup.

Figure 15-4: A wigwam.

Igloos

The igloo is a cold-climate domed shelter built with blocks of snow, and it is one of humankind’s truly innovative structures. Igloos were used by people in the Western Arctic, including Greenland. The film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (see Chapter 24) made by Zacharias Kunuk has a great scene of people building an igloo. Most indigenous shelters are designed with only what’s available in nature, but the igloo really wins the prize for doing the most with what could reasonable be described as the least.

Igloos are the ultimate in environmentally friendly housing in that they are constructed only from a renewable and recyclable resource — snow!

Igloos are made from snow blocks that are cut from snow using special knives. The blocks are placed in a spiral pattern so that each is slightly leaning on the next. An igloo might have a tunnel entrance that was slightly sunken in the ground to trap the cold outside air at a lower position relative to the living quarters inside.

Igloos are very sturdy structures, and their construction takes advantage of the physical properties of snow. After an igloo was constructed, but before a smoke hole was carved out, a lit oil lamp would be placed inside the dome of snow blocks. The heat from the lamp would eventually melt the snow blocks slightly, which would refreeze with exposure to the cold outside air, providing a layer of ice over the inside that was both insulating and strengthening to the structure. Over time, as people lived inside, the snow blocks would eventually become more ice than snow. There are stories that people could even stand on top of an igloo without fear of it caving in.

Snow is a magnificent insulator. The interior temperature of a well-built igloo could range from around freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit/0 degrees Celsius) to the 40s (Fahrenheit) and warmer.

An air hole is always made in the top of the igloo, since a human’s exhalations could cause a build-up of carbon dioxide if it is not vented, which could be lethal.

The Inuits know not to build a fire inside an igloo. Smoke inhalation and melting snow could combine to make it a very dangerous situation. Candles or small oil lamps are okay, though.

Interestingly, scientists that have studied the temperatures inside igloos and analyzed how body heat, combined with the snow’s insulating properties, affect internal air temps, have determined that, believe it or not, the best way to be the warmest inside an igloo is to be naked.

The radiating heat from a nude human body serves to warm the interior air to its maximum. Human body heat is captured inside clothing, instead of emanating up, so being clothed actually results in a person being colder. (Heat rises, after all.) But, we can hear you wondering, won’t the snow floor be a tad chilly on a person’s . . . y’know? Sure, but one can always sit on a coat or a sweater, while still allowing the mini-furnace that is our body to heat the air. Maybe that’s why some Inuits and other Arctic region Indians were known to sometimes line the interiors of their igloos with skins and hides?

Earth lodges

Earth lodges are also called sod houses, and they are constructed almost solely from sod either above or below ground. Many tribes used some form of earth lodge, but the ones used by Plains tribes such as the Mandan and Hidatsa are known to have been in use in the 19th century. George Catlin painted many pictures that show people and their lodges. If you want to stand inside an earth Evidence of an earth lodge was found by archaeologists during excavations on Macon Plateau and this structure is believed to date to nearly a thousand years ago. The Macon earth lodge has been reconstructed, down to the bird-shaped altar made from earth inside the building.

Regarding the earth lodge, there’s a bit of crossover with other Native American homes, since many other types of dwellings use sod as a building material for walls and even ceilings.

The Earliest Apartment Buildings

In the Southwest, around 900 years ago, ancient Pueblo peoples built apartment complexes using adobe, which is a brick made from straw and dried mud.

These structures were amazing, and many still stand and can be visited. Inside the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi at Mesa Verde, for example, “suites” of rooms connect in very efficient design layouts, and evidence of communal rooms where the floor’s cooking and heating fire still survive.

At the Pueblo Bonito (“pretty village”) site in New Mexico, some archaeologists estimate the number of rooms as between 600 and 800, and housing over a thousand people. By any standards, that is quite the multi-person dwelling.

The interior rooms were connected by hallways, and access to the outside was via a main courtyard where kivas — below ground ceremonial areas — were located. For a virtual tour of the Pueblo Bonito ruins, check out the University of Colorado’s QuickTime “visit” at www.colorado.edu/Conferences/ chaco/tour/pbtour/fs2.htm.

Native American Housing Today

In June 2005, 56 percent of the United States’s 4.5 million Native Americans owned their own home. But this number jumps to greater than three-quarters when specifically looking at homeownership on Native American reservations. Nationally, the overall U.S. homeownership rate is around 70 percent. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau.)

There are around 300 federally recognized reservations in the United States. About half of the U.S. Native American population live on reservations; the others live in houses, apartments, and mobile homes in both urban and rural areas. Interestingly, though, the percentage of apartment dwellers among Native Americans is a fraction of American apartment occupancy rates. The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that 27 percent of Americans nationwide live in apartments. That rate is only 5 percent for Native Americans on reservations. Here’s how the housing breaks down:

Single-family homes: 56 percent all Native Americans; 75 percent plus on reservations (U.S. average: 70 percent)

Mobile homes: 12 percent all Native Americans; 14 percent on reservations (U.S. average: 7 percent)

Apartments: 28 percent all Native Americans; 5 percent on reservations (U.S. average: 27 percent)

What is life like on a reservation where half of the U.S.’s Native Americans live? The answer varies based on the reservation.

Some reservations are enormous, equal or larger than some states. (The total number of acres of reservation land in the United States is 55.7 million.) On many reservations, poverty is high, as are unemployment, alcoholism, and crime. The vast majority of reservations are not involved in gaming, and many tribes refuse to exploit mineral rights for coal and oil deposits beneath their lands. Most tribes that refuse to allow exploitation do so for cultural reasons.

The Mohawk Steelworkers

Mohawk David Rice, in a 2002 interview with Indian Country News, said the only way to walk around on girders 110 stories off the ground without a safety harness or a net is to put one foot in front of the other, look straight ahead, and never, under any circumstances, look down. Yikes. Sounds like good advice, eh?

During the interview, Rice tells about the time he actually did freeze while walking across a girder with a bucket of bolts on his shoulder. What did he do? He stood there until the paralysis passed and then, “I just walked to safety.”

This incident is an interesting metaphor for Indian self-sufficiency. He had to save himself, because he knew no one would come out to help him. That’s apparently one of the rules of high-rise work: better to lose one man than two.

Rice was working on a building in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, as were many Mohawk ironworkers, and after he realized what had happened, he averted his gaze from the smoke rising into the air from the World Trade Center.

Mohawk steelworkers began in the late 1880s working on the Quebec Bridge across the St. Lawrence River. When the first design of the bridge collapsed in 1904, 33 of the 75 workers that were killed were Mohawks. Since then, Mohawks have become known as some of the finest steelworkers in the world.

A resume to be proud of

The following are just a few of the projects in and around New York — and also across the country — that Mohawk steelworkers helped get off the ground:

The Quebec Bridge

The Empire State Building

The Chrysler Building

The Triboro Bridge

The George Washington Bridge

The Pulaski Skyway

Rockefeller Center

The Verrazano Bridge

The West Side Highway

Madison Square Garden

The Golden Gate Bridge

The World Trade Center