66 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 69 
This would indicate that each family had three separate structures— 
a summer house, a corn house, and a winter house. This again may 
refer to the northern part of the tribe, living in the neighborhood 
of the Chickasaw. The same writer left a very interesting statement 
regarding the small temporary shelters erected by the southern tribes 
when away from their villages. He wrote of the Muskhogean people 
(p. 65): 
‘““A Choctaw makes his camp in travelling in form of a sugar loaf; 
a Chicasaw makes it in form of our arbours; a Creek like to our sheds, 
or piazzas, to a timber house; in this manner every nation has some 
distinguishing way.’’ 
Similar customs as they existed among the Narraganset, the 
Algonquian tribes of Virginia, the northern Iroquois, and others, 
have already been cited. 
In the vicinity of Lake Pontchartrain lived several Muskhogean 
tribes whose connection with the Choctaw proper has not been clearly 
determined. All appear to have been closely allied, possibly forming 
a confederation of tribes similar to that of the Creek confederacy in 
early times. Among these were the Acolapissa, Tangipahoa, and 
others. <A village of the former tribe then standing on the left bank 
of the Mississippi a short distance above New Orleans was visited 
by Charlevoix January 4, 1722, at which time he wrote: 
‘This is the finest in all Louisiana, though there are not above two 
hundred warriors in it, who, however, have the reputation of being 
very brave. Their cabbins are in the form of a pavilion . . . They 
have a double covering, that within being a tissue of the leaves of 
Lataniers trees, and that without consists of Matts. The chief’s 
cabbin is thirty-six feet in diameter: I have not hitherto seen any of 
a larger size, that of the chief of the Natchez being no more than 
thirty.” (Charlevoix, (1), II, p. 285.) 
Much has been written regarding the Natchez, one of the most 
interesting of the native American tribes, and the greater part of 
the available material has been gathered and presented in a single 
volume (Swanton, (1)). The Natchez settlements, at one time 
nine in number, lay scattered along the course of St. Catherines 
Creek, a few miles from the left bank of the Mississippi, on the eastern 
edge of the present city of Natchez. The dwellings were evidently 
widely dispersed and did not form a compact group. One village, 
the home of the great Sun, probably served as the center of the nation. 
This was the stopping place of Charlevoix on December 25, 1721, when 
he prepared a brief description of the town (op. cit., II, p. 256): 
“The cabbins of the great village of the Natchez, the only one I 
have seen, are in the form of square pavilions, very low, and without 
windows. Their roofs are rounded pretty much in the same manner 
as an oven. Mostof them are covered with the leaves and straw of 
