AET. 32 INDIAN VILLAGE SITE IN MISSISSIPPI — COLLINS 11 



as having held pillars by which such seats or benches, as well as the 

 roof, were supported. 



Still more similar to the Deasonville house is Bartram's plan of 

 the circular council house or rotunda of the Creeks in which there 

 were three concentric rows of roof supports, the inner one consisting 

 of eight posts placed around a large central pillar and two larger 

 circles of posts between which were built rows of seats.- 



Hawkins has likewise given a description of the method of con- 

 structing a circular Creek house but speate of only two rows of posts,* 

 From Hawkins's description, as well as the later and more de- 

 tailed one by Major General Hitchcock,* we see that the roof of the 

 Creek house, like that of the Cherokee, was supported principally by a 

 series of heavy uprights placed near the center of the floor, an arrange- 

 ment Avhich could not have existed in the Deasonville house since 

 there were no large post holes (except that of the single center post) 

 anywhere near the center. 



The Chickasaw of northern Mississippi also had circular winter 

 houses, but these had sunken floors and in other structural features 

 closel}^ resembled the Plains type of earth lodge, while in the Deason- 

 ville houses the floors were not sunk below the surface. Choctaw 

 houses have been described as quadrilateral, but from Adair's state- 

 ment that they were exactly similar to those of the Chickasaw, we 

 may suppose that circular winter houses were also in use. However, 

 no adequate description of Choctaw houses exists. 



The houses of the other historic Mississippi tribes furnish no 

 parallels to House King No. 1; they are all described as simple, 

 rather lightly constructed buildings, either round or square in outline, 

 with wattlework walls. The Tunica, with their villages on the lower 

 Yazoo River about 50 miles west of what is now Deasonville, were the 

 nearest of the historic tribes. The following meager description of 

 their houses has been left by Gravier, who visited them in 1700 : 



Their cabins are round and vaulted. They are lathed with canes and plas- 

 tered with mud from bottom to top, within and without, with a good covering of 

 straw. There is no light except by the door. . . . Their bed is of round canes, 

 raised on 4 posts, 3 feet high, and a cane mat serves as a mattress. . . .° 



The houses of the Natchez, who lived about 75 miles south of the 

 Tunica on the Mississippi River, have been more fully described by 

 Du Pratz, Charlevoix, and Penicaut.« The dwellings were square in 



^Bartram, William, Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians. Trans. Amer. 

 Bthnol. Sop., Vol. Ill, pt. 1. p. 54, 1853. 



sBushnell, D. I., jr., Native Villages and Vllhige Sites East of the Mississippi. Bull. 

 60, Bur. Amer. Ethnol., p. 75, 1919. 



*A Traveler in Indian Territory. Edited by Grant Foreman.. The Torch Press, Cedar 

 Rapids, lo-wa, pp. 114-115, 1930. 



^ Swanton, John R., Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast 

 of the Gulf of Mexico : Bull. 43, Bur. Amer. Dthnol., p. 315, 1911. 



• Swanton, John R., op. cit., pp. 59-60, 159. 



