OJIBWAY HABITATIONS AND OTHER STEUCTURES. 



By David I. Bushkell, Jr. 



(With 6 plates.) 



A century or more ago Indian wigwams were numerous in the 

 country west of the Alleghenies, and only a few generations had 

 elapsed since villages of the Algonquian tribes were scattered 

 throughout the vast region from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and 

 beyond. But with the coming of the Jamestown colonists in 1607, 

 and the arrival a few years later of the Pilgrim-S on the northern 

 coast, began the gradual withdrawal of the native tribes. Some be- 

 came absorbed by the stronger, more numerous bodies, others moved 

 westward, later to fall before their native enemies, or to succumb to 

 the encroachment of European, and later of American, settlements. 

 Thus gradually, though surely, the native structures disappeared 

 before the advancing civilization, and although a generation ago 

 many were still to be seen in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota few 

 now remain, and probably within another generation all will have 

 vanished. 



The habitations of the northern and central Algonquian tribes, 

 from the coast westward to and including the greater part of the 

 Ojibway, appear to have been quite similar. The dome-shaped 

 wigwam predominated. The principal differences between those 

 erected in widely separated areas seem to have been in the kind of 

 bark or mats with which they were covered. The general appearance 

 of the small settlements was probably the same in all parts of the 

 country; therefore the last remaining villages and camps of the 

 Ojibway may be accepted as typical of all that once existed in the 

 upper Mississippi A^alley, in the vicinity of the Great Lakes and the 

 valley of the Ohio, and eastward to the coast. 



Nearly four centuries have elapsed since this form of habitation 

 was first mentioned. Verrazzano in the year 1524 passed northward 

 along the Atlantic coast, stopping at many widely separated villages, 

 one of which was evidently near the eastern end of Long Island. 

 This was undoubtedly an Algonquian settlement, and may have been 

 a village of the Shinnecock near Montauk Point. There "we saw 



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