64 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 69 
interesting description of their habitations has been discovered in an 
unpublished manuscript which evidently dates from the early part 
of the eighteenth century: 
‘Their house is nothing else than a cabin made of pieces of wood 
of the size of the leg, buried in the earth and fastened together with 
lianas, which are very flexible bands. These cabins are surrounded 
with mud walls without windows; the door is only from three to four 
feet in height. They are covered with bark of the cypress or the 
pine. A hole is left at the top of each gable-end to let the smoke out, 
for they make their fires in the middle of the cabins, which are a 
gunshot distance from each other. The inside is surrounded with 
cane beds raised from three to four feet from the ground.” 
Heavy skins, such as those of the bear, buffalo, or deer, served as 
coverings; others were spread upon the ‘‘cane beds.’’ Their food 
was prepared in vessels of earthenware. This description, although 
quite ambiguous in detail, evidently refers to structures of wattle- 
work (fig. 4), covered with clay in a plastic state, to which grass or 
Spanish moss had probably been added. While the preceding ac-. 
ities orerte, Boies ral aele count was presented as a general 
=e =! SA a description of Choctaw dwellings, 
= ; it should be accepted as referring 
more particularly to those members 
: 4 lf . of the tribe who lived away from 
Fic. 4.—Example of wattlework. (From the lowlands bordering the coast, 
peat Bea es acting on the belief that Choctaw 
lived along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain and eastward. Accord- 
ing to the statements of several old Choctaw now occupying a few 
acres of land near Bayou Lacomb, which enters Lake Pontchartrain 
some 10 miles east of Mandeville, the primitive habitations of the 
‘“‘old people” who lived near the shore of the lake were of two forms, 
circular and rectangular. The frames were formed of small saplings, 
the tops and sides covered with palmetto thatch. Many of the circu- 
lar structures were quite large and served as shelter for many per- 
sons. The single door usually faced the south. The fire was kindled 
on. the ground within near the center, the smoke passing out through 
an opening made for the purpose in the center of the top or roof. 
Some examples of the rectangular thatched dwelling have been built 
and occupied within the past few years, one being shown in figure 5. 
This particular structure stood near Mandeville, St. Tammany Par- 
ish, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in 1879 (Bushnell, (3), 
p- 7). Some 20 miles east of Mandeville was the Choctaw settlement 
of Bonfouca, where Pére Rouquette erected his first chapel during 
the year 1845. <A part of this settlement as it was the next year is 
shown in plate 11, this being a reproduction of a painting made by 
Bernard, bearing the date 1846. This represents a group of women 
