462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



able tents were not in use in this region; and the wigwam is not by 

 any means a tent. It was not essentially a conical lodge, like those 

 used farther west, but it had in most cases an arched-over roof or 

 was hemispherical. The simpler forms were shaped like half an 

 orange, but the vast majority were elongate. The Sac and Fox 

 Indians, to mention no others, live in this type of dwelling even 

 to-day. The wigwam in many cases had room enough to accommo- 

 date a large number of families and would contain, in addition to 

 benches and sleeping platforms, space for a year's supply of food. 



The eastern Indians who used this form of dwelling were by no 

 means nomadic savages as often pictured, living by plunder and 

 the chase. They were peaceable farmers, when circumstances 

 allowed them to be, living on products quite familiar on our own 

 tables, corn bread, squashes, plums, wild grapes, berries, maple 

 sugar, and meat when obtainable. The settler on the Atlantic sea- 

 board got his food plants, his maple sugar, and his custom of hold- 

 ing " husking bees," directly from the Indian. 



This settled, agricultural mode of life together with the wigwam 

 v/as distributed over a large part of eastern North America. Briefly, 

 it went wherever the rainfall and the temperature permitted cul- 

 tivation of maize. This plant grows naturall}'- only where the hot 

 growing season is accompanied by rains. Everyone who has crossed 

 the continent has been struck by the change in the face of nature 

 in the region of the one hundredth meridian, the longitude of central 

 Kansas. Westward lies the region of dry as contrasted with rainy 

 summers. Corn can be grown in the drier west only with artificial 

 irrigation. Wigwams and the easy cultivation of maize go together 

 and are characteristic of eastern North America. 



The aborigines in this eastern area being sedentary in the same 

 sense as the present population is, it follows that their houses would 

 be permanent, not movable. The house structure consisted of a 

 framework of poles, planted solidly in the ground and bent over 

 to form arches, covered in with some light material. The con- 

 struction was practically determined in advance by the nature of the 

 forest, for the trees consisted in large part of hard woods, which could 

 not readily be worked up by primitive implements. The material 

 used to cover the house was of considerable variety. In the Atlantic 

 region the most popular covering was bark, which was readily 

 available, both in large quantities and in large pieces, from a variety 

 of trees, among them birch, elm, hickory, and ash. In areas where 

 large sheets of bark could not readily be obtained, other materials 

 were substituted. Thus, beyond the westward margin of the forested 

 area, on the plains of Arkansas, houses of a similar framework of 

 poles were thatched over with grass, as among the Wichita (see pi. 



