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Longhouse
The longhouse is the traditional residential structure of many of the indigenous people who lived in the Great Lakes area. The tribes who became members of the Iroquois League are some of these groups. Longhouses were sometimes very, very large, with the largest known example at the Howlett Hill site near Syracuse, New York at 334 feet long and 23 feet wide. The longhouse accommodated an extended family group, based on the matrilineal and matrilocal kinship practices of the Iroquois tribes. Each house was led by the eldest woman, and her sisters and daughters joined the family group, along with their husbands and children. As the matrilineal unit grew, so did the longhouse in which they lived. The Iroquois tribes were one of a number of Native American groups in which women played a very prominent leadership role.
The longhouse was framed with wood, and the ceiling was barrel-shaped with bent wood until that style was replaced by sharply gabled roofs in the 18th Century. The structure was enclosed with sheets of overlapping bark. The bark sheets were tied together with strips of green basswood or elm. Central smoke holes were kept open, serving both as a source of external light and a vent for the smoke from the fires which burned in the central corridor through the longhouse. On either side of the central corridor, each family had a living area, including a lower sleeping platform, storage space, and an upper shelf or platform for more storage.
Layout of an Iroquois longhouse. The entrances at each end open into a vestibule. The sections are organized around the central fires.
(diagram based on Nabokov and Easton 1989).
The longhouses were organized in large communities. The communities were surrounded by palisaded fences, preventing attacks by enemies.
Huron village with longhouses and palisade fencing. (drawing based on Nabokov and Easton 1989).
The longhouse was important not only as a residence for the people, but as a symbol of their political organization. Five Iroquois tribes, the Seneca, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Oneida, formed a confederacy for the purpose of ending warfare among them and building a strong alliance against other tribes with whom they were in competition for resources. The longhouse was the symbol of the confederacy, and each tribe had a place in the organization.
Representation of the Iroquois Confederacy as a longhouse. (Drawing based on Nabokov and Easton 1989).
The Mohawks were the "keepers of the Eastern door," and the Seneca were "keepers of the Western door." They were responsible for watching the territory boundaries of the confederacy and repelling intruders. The Onondagas were "keepers of the fire," and hosted council meetings of the members of the confederacy.
The Iroquois League was a great political alliance among Native Americans, and in some respects, the government of the United States was modeled after the political relationships and power-sharing concepts of the Iroquois League. European conquest eventually dismantled the League, but the longhouse was still used by the Delaware Indians in their new territory in Oklahoma as recently as the early 20th Century.
Source: Nabokov, Peter and Robert Easton. Native American Architecture. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
