HULL. 30] 



ARCHITECTUEE 



81 



tress and the long-house of the Iroquois, 

 in use at tlie l)eginning of the historical 

 period, mark the highest limit in the 

 building arts. On the Gulf coast the 



tural details are utilized freely for pur- 

 poses of embellishment. A people that 

 could carve wood and stone and could 

 decorate pottery and weave baskets of 

 admirable pattern could not mold the 

 unwieldy elements of the building into 

 esthetic form. But esthetic suggestions 

 and features did not pass entirely unap- 

 preciated. Some of the lower types of 

 structures, such as the grass lodge and 

 the mat house, partaking of textile tech- 

 nique, were characterized by elements of 

 symmetry, grace, and rliythmic repeti- 

 tion of details. The wooden house of 



tip: of plains tribes; shoshoni. 

 Cloth 



simple "pile dwellings set in the shallow 

 waters were all that the conditions of 

 existence in a mild climate required. 



BARK HOUSE. 



Method of construction 

 long-house 



OF THE Iroquois 



It is probably useless to speculate on 

 what might have been in store for the 

 native builders had they been ])ermitted 

 to continue unmolested throughout the 

 ages. The stone- 

 builders had the 

 most promising 

 outlook, l)nt they 

 were still in 

 the elementary 

 stages of the arts 

 of construction. 

 They had not 

 made the one 

 essential step to- 

 ward great build- 

 ing — the discov- 

 ery of the means 

 of covering large 

 spaces without 

 the use of wood. 

 Although they 



were acquainted _ ""^"^ ^°'"^^' *'="'^^- 

 with many essential elements of construc- 

 tion, they had devised neither the offset 

 span of stone nor the keystone arch. 



In none of these areas had the tribes 

 reached the stage in the building arts 

 where constructive features or architec- 



Bull. 80—05 6 



MAT HOUSE, CAROLINA INDIANS. (aftER JOHN WHITE, 

 OF THE ROANOKE COLONY, 1585) 



the N. W. had massiveness of form and 

 boldness of outline, and the sculptured 

 and painted details lent much esthetic 

 interest; while in the arid region the 

 stone-builders had introduced a number 

 of features to relieve the monotony of 

 walls and to add to the pleasing effect of 

 the interiors. In these things the native 

 mind certainly took some pleasure, but 

 probably little thought was given to ar- 

 chitectural effect as this is known to the 

 more civilized 

 tribes, such as 

 the INIaya of Yu- 

 catan, who spent 

 a vast amount of 

 time and energy 

 on the purely 

 decorative fea- 

 tures of their 

 stone buildings. 

 Numerous au- 

 thors dwell more 

 or less on the 

 buildings of the 

 tribes n. of Mex- 

 ico, l)ut only the 

 more important 

 publications will 

 here be cited. 

 See Boas, Dorsey, Fewkes, Hoffman, 

 the Mindeleffs, Nelson, Mrs Stevenson, 

 Thomas, and Turner in various Reports, 

 B. A. E.; Adair, Hist. Amer. Inds., 1775; 

 Bandelier, various reports in Papers Arch. 

 Inst. Am., 1881-92; Beauchamp, Iroquois 



EMBELLISHED CONSTRUCTION. 



