100 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 69 
termed ‘‘hot-houses”’ by the traders, by reason of the temperature of 
the interiors. And among many of the southern tribes the dwellings 
were similarly strong and secure, but in the far South, near the Gulf 
coast and scattered over the peninsula of Florida, were shelters 
covered with a thatch of palmetto. 
Among many Algonquian tribes each family usually occupied a 
single wigwam, covered with mats or sheets of bark, either dome- 
shaped or in the form of an arbor with rounded roof and flat ends. 
The long communal dwellings were typical of the villages of the 
Iroquois, while in the South the home of each family often consisted 
of a group of two, three, or four separate buildings, each of which 
served a special purpose. 
The villages differed in appearance as well as did the separate 
structures. Some, more particularly among the numerous widely 
scattered Algonquian tribes, were groups of small wigwams, close to 
one another and often surrounded by palisades. In other localities , 
where there was less danger of being attacked by their enemies, the 
habitations were more separated, often with gardens and _ fields 
between, and unprotected by palisades. Among the Iroquois or 
Five Nations a strongly fortified central village, usually protected by 
a double or triple line of palisades, served in times of danger as the 
gathering place for the people of the surrounding region, similar in 
many respects to the various ‘‘stations”’ in Kentucky and other 
parts of the western country a century and more ago the South, 
among the Creeks, the Cherokee, and others, a town would often 
extend for several miles along the bank of some stream, or over the 
lowlands on both sides of the valley, but the center of the settlement 
would be the town house, usually placed on the summit of an artifi- 
cial mound, in and around whieh the people would gather to hold 
their dances and to enact their different ceremonies. 
Sweat houses were probably to have been found in all the willaee 
of the North, but less often in the South, and the quotation from 
Lawson would probably apply to the people over a wide area, although 
referring particularly to the eastern Siouan. 
A custom which was evidently quite fixed in the South was that 
of placing a carved wooden figure of a bird above the council house, 
the temple, or the most important building of the town. This was 
first witnessed by the Spaniards at Ucita, in the year 1539, when 
they saw ‘‘a fowle made of wood, with gilded eies” above the roof of 
the temple. Charlevoix in 1721 described the Natchez temple as 
having at each end ‘‘something like a weather-cock of wood, which 
has a very coarse resemblance of an eagle,’ while a few years later 
Adair wrote of the large winter houses of the Chickasaw ‘‘where ~ 
commonly a pole is fixed, that displays on the top the figure of a large _ 
earved eagle.”’ And a century ago when Hodgson visited the Lowez 
Creek town of Cussetah he saw ‘‘a high pole . . . with a bird at the 
