BUSHNELL] NATIVE VILLAGES AND VILLAGE SITES 29 
The utensils belonging to each family were scattered on the 
ground near they particular fire; mats were on the ground and 
served as sleeping places. Evidently there were other similar 
houses in the community, as the authors continue by saying, ‘‘All 
who live in one house are generally of one stock or descent, as father 
and mother with their offspring.” This and other statements led 
Morgan to remark: 
» “There is nothing in these statements forbidding the supposition 
that the household described practiced communism in living. The 
composition of the household shows that it-was formed) on the 
principle of gentile kin, while the several families cooked at the 
different fires, which was the usual practice in the different tribes.” 
(Morgan, (1), p. 119.) 
This suggests the house of the Mahican Indians near the Housa- 
tonic, already mentioned, and Gookin’s description of certain struc- 
tures of the tribes of eastern New England. As told in the preceding 
section, Algonquian tribes dominated both banks of the Hudson, 
therefore it must have been people of this stock who were encountered 
by the discoverers of the stream when, during the autumn of 1609, 
the Half-Moon sailed up as far as the vicinity of the present town of 
Hudson. In his journal Hudson wrote: 
“‘T sailed to the shore in one of their canoes with an old man, 
who was the chief of a tribe consisting of forty men and seventeen 
women; these I saw there in a house well constructed of oak-bark, 
and circular in shape, so that it had the appearance of being built 
with an arched roof. It contained a great quantity of maize or 
Indian corn and beans of last year’s growth, and there lay near the 
house for the purpose of drying enough to load three ships, besides 
what was growing in the fields. On our coming into the house, 
two mats were spread out to sit upon, and immediately some food 
was served in well made red wooden bowls; two men were also des- 
patched at once with bows and arrows in quest of game, who soon 
after brought in a pair of pigeons which they had shot. They like- 
wise killed a fat dog, and skinned it in great haste with shells which 
they had got out of the water.” (Laet, (1), p. 300.) 
Large circular houses, occupied by a number of persons, were 
quite unusual, but Roger Williams had evidently seen them among 
the Narraganset, and they may have been found elsewhere in New 
England. 
The right, or west, bank of the Hudson southward from the mouth 
of Catskill Creek was occupied by the Munsee, one of the three 
principal divisions of the Delaware. The Munsee were further 
_ divided, the Minisink constituting the most important group. A 
drawing of a Minisink village is given beneath the Mahican town on 
the map of Novi Belgii and bears the legend: Alter Modus apud 
