HURON FORTIFICATIONS. Xxix 



exposed to Iroquois incursions. The fortifications of all 

 this family of tribes were, like their dwellings, in essen- 

 tial points alike. A situation was chosen favorable to 

 defence, — the bank of a lake, the crown of a difficult 

 hill, or a high point of land in the fork of confluent 

 rivers. A ditch, several feet deep, was dug around the 

 village, and the earth thrown up on the inside. Trees 

 were then felled by an alternate process of burning and 

 hacking the burnt part with stone hatchets, and by 

 similar means were cut into lengths to form palisades. 

 These were planted on the embankment, in one, two, 

 three, or four concentric rows, — those of each row in- 

 clining towards those of the other rows until they inter- 

 sected. The whole was lined within, to the height of a 

 man, with heavy sheets of bark ; and at the top, where 

 the palisades crossed, was a gallery of timber for the 

 defenders, together with wooden gutters, by which 

 streams of water could be poured down on fires kindled 

 by the enemy. Magazines of stones, and rude ladders 

 for mounting the rampart, completed the provision for 

 defence. The forts of the Iroquois were stronger and 

 more elaborate than those of the Hurons ; and to this day 

 large districts in New York are marked with frequent 

 remains of their ditches and embankments.^ 



Among these tribes there was no individual ownership 

 of land, but each family had for the time exclusive right 



1 There is no mathematical regularity in these works. In their form, 

 the builders were guided merely by the nature of the ground. Frequently 

 a precipice or river sufficed for partial defence, and the line of embank- 

 ment occurs only on one or two sides. In one instance, distinct traces of 

 a double line of pahsades are visible along the embankment. (See Squier, 

 Aboriginal Monuments of New York, 38.) It is probable that the paUsade 

 was planted first, and the earth heaped around it. Indeed, this is stated 

 by the Tuscarora Indian, Cusick, in his curious History of the Six Na- 

 tions (Iroquois). BreTjeuf says, that as early as 1636 the Jesuits taught 

 the Hiu-ons to build rectangular palisaded works, with bastions. The Iro- 



c* 



