18 INDIAN TRIBES. [Chap. I. 



In the long evenings of midwinter, when in the 

 wilderness without the trees cracked with biting 

 cold, and the forest paths were clogged with snow, 

 then, around the lodge-fires of the Iroquois, war- 

 riors, squaws, and restless naked children were 

 clustered in social groups, each dark face brighten- 

 ing in the fickle firelight, while, with jest and laugh, 

 the pipe passed round from hand to hand. Perhaps 

 some shrivelled old warrior, the story-teller of the 

 tribe, recounted to attentive ears the deeds of an- 

 cient heroism, legends of spirits and monsters, or 

 tales of witches and vampires — superstitions not 

 less rife among this all-believing race, than among 

 the nations of the transatlantic world. 



The life of the Iroquois, though void of those 

 multiplying phases which vary the routine of civil- 

 ized existence, w^as one of sharp excitement and 

 sudden contrast. The chase, the war-path, the 



were placed over against us. This cabin is about eighty "feet long and 

 seventeen broad, the common passage six feet wide, and the apartments 

 on each side five feet, raised a foot above the passage by a long sapling, 

 hewed square, and fitted with joists that go from it to the back of the 

 house ; on these joists they lay large pieces of bark, and on extraordinary 

 occasions spread mats made of rushes : this favor we had ; on these floors 

 they set or lye down, every one as he will ; the apartments are divided 

 from each other by boards or bark, six or seven foot long, from the lower 

 floor to the upper, on which they put their lumber ; when they have eaten 

 their homony, as they set in each apartment before the fire, they can put 

 the bowl over head, having not above five foot to reach ; they set on the 

 floor sometimes at each end, but mostly at one ; they have a shed to put 

 their wood into in the winter, or in the summer to set to converse or 

 play, that has a door to the south ; all the sides and roof of the cabin are 

 made of bark, bound fast to poles set in the ground, and bent round on the 

 top, or set aflatt, for the roof, as we set our rafters ; over each fireplace 

 they leave a hole to let out the smoke, which, in rainy weather, they 

 cover with a piece of bark, and this they can easily reach with a pole to 

 push it on one side or quite over the hole ; after this model are most of 

 their cabins built." — Bartram, Observations, 40. 



