54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 69 
often filled with carbonized grain, have been found on many long- 
deserted village sites. Other similar pits served as places for the 
storage of various possessions of the people, such as skins, cured meats, 
and different vegetables. It will be recalled that ‘‘a Cave or Vault,” 
filled with corn, was discovered by the French in 1679 beneath the 
floor of every wigwam at the great village of the Illinois, but among the 
Iroquois it was the custom to prepare the caches outside the dwellings. 
When away from their villages the Iroquois erected a small tem- 
porary shelter of rather unusual form: “It was triangular at the 
base, the frame consisting of three poles on a side, gathered at the 
top, but with space sufficient between them for a chimney opening.” 
This frame was covered with sheets of bark after the fashion of 
the larger structures. (Morgan, (2), I, p. 310.) But even a 
simpler form of shelter was known’ to the people of the region, as 
described by one who enjoyed its protection. On the night of July 
11, 1743, while on his journey to Onondaga, Bartram and his party 
encamped in the vicinity of the Indian settlement of Shamokin, near 
the forks of the Susquehanna, when ‘‘about break of day it began to 
rain and the Indians made us a covering of bark got after this 
manner: They cut the tree round through the bark near the root, 
and make the like incision above 7 feet above it, there horizontal 
ones are joined by a perpendicular cut, on each side of which they 
after loosen the bark from the wood, and hewing a pole at the small 
end gradually tapering like a wedge about 2 feet, they force it in till 
they have compleated the separation all round, and the bark parts 
whole from the tree, one of which, a foot diameter, yields a piece 7 feet 
long and above 3 wide: And having now prepared four forked sticks, 
they are set into the ground the longer in front; on these they lay ~ 
the cross-poles, and on them the bark. This makes a good tight 
shelter in warm weather.” (Bartram, J., (1), pp. 20-21.) 
Temporary shelters of some simple form must necessarily have been 
made by all tribes, but seldom were they seen or described by those 
who have left accounts of their journeys through the Indian country 
of a century and more ago. The shelter mentioned by Bartram may 
have been of the form used throughout the eastern area. 
The site of the palisaded Onondaga town which was attacked by 
the French led by Champlain in the year 1615 was identified some 
years ago. It stood in the town of Fenner, 3 miles east of Perryville 
in the present Madison County, at the outlet of Nichols pond. 
As described by Champlain it was surrounded by a quadruple 
palisade, very strongly built, as shown in the accompanying drawing. 
(Champlain, (1), p. 444.) This, one of the earliest illustrations of 
an Troquoian settlement, is reproduced in plate 8, 6. This location 
was within the lands of the Oneida, east of the Onondaga, although 
it was evidently a settlement of the latter tribe, one of their principal 
