XXVI INTRODUCTION. 



footpaths leading from town to town. Of these towns, 

 some were fortified, but the greater number were open 

 and defenceless. They were of a construction common 

 to all tribes of Iroquois lineage, and peculiar to them. 

 Nothing similar exists at the present day.^ They covered 

 a space of from one to ten acres, the dwellings clustering 

 together with little or no pretension to order. In gen- 

 eral, these singular structures were about thirty or thirty- 

 five feet in length, breadth, and height ; but many were 

 much larger, and a few were of prodigious length. In 

 some of the villages there were dwellings two hundred 

 and forty feet long, though in breadth and height they 

 did not much exceed the others.^ In shape tliey w^re 

 much like an arbor overarching a garden-walk. Their 

 frame was of tall and strong saplings, planted in a double 

 row to form the two sides of the house, bent till they met, 

 and lashed together at the top. To these other poles 

 were bound transversely, and the whole was covered 

 with large sheets of the bark of the oak, elm, spruce, or 

 white cedar, overlapping like the shingles of a roof, upon 

 which, for their better security, split poles were made fast 

 with cords of linden bark. At the crown of the arch, 

 along the entire length of the house, an opening a foot 

 wide was left for the admission of light and the escape 

 of smoke. At each end was a close porch of similar 



^ The permanent bark villages of the Dahcotah of the St. Peter's are 

 the nearest modern approach to the Huron towns. The whole Hm-on 

 country abounds with evidences of having been occupied by a numerous 

 population. " On a close inspection of the forest," Dr. Tache writes to 

 me, " the greatest part of it seems to have been cleared at former periods, 

 and almost the only places bearing the character of the primitive forest 

 are the low grounds." 



2 Brebeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1635, 31. Champlain says tliat he saw 

 them, in 1615, more than thirty fathoms long; while Vanderdonck re- 

 ports the length, from actual measurement, of an Iroquois house, at a 

 hundred and eighty yards, or five hundred and forty feet ! 



