624 MOUND EXPLORATIONS.- 



The following from Sagard'.s " Voyages des Ilurons" ' relates to the 

 dwellings of the Hurons : 



These twenty-five cities aud villages are inhabited by two or three thousand men 

 of war, at the most, without including the entire poimlation, which nunil)crN per- 

 haps thirty or forty thousand souls in all. The jirincipal town ha(i formerly two 

 hundred large cabins, each one containing a number of households. » * » Xheir 

 cabins, called by them " Gauonchia," are built, as I have said, in the shape of arbors 

 or garden bowers, covered with the liark of trees, of th(^ lengtli of 2.5 to 80 toises [50 

 to 60 yards] more or less, for they are not all of the same length, and six [12 yards] 

 in width, leaving in the center a hall ten or twelve feet wide extending I'rom one 

 end to the other. On each side there is a sort of bench or platform four in' live feet 

 high. 



Among the ''tracts and otlier papers relating to the origin, settle- 

 ment, and progress of the colonics in North America, coHccted by Peter 

 Force," is "A Relation by William Hitton of a discovery made on the 

 Coast of Florida." In this '' is the following statement: 



That which we note<l there was a fair house, round, two hundred fet^t at lesist, 

 completely covered with palmetto leaves, the wall plate being twelve feet high or 

 thereabouts, and witliin, lodging rooms and foums. Two pillars at tlie entrance 

 and a higli seat aliovo all the rest. 



This was probably a council lionse, but at that early day little was 



known of the Indian customs. 

 Marquette, speaking of the Illinois Indians, says: 

 Their cabins are very large; they are lined and floored with rush-mats.^ 

 Gravier, who passed down the Mississippi in 1700, speaks as follows 



of the customs and cabins of the Arkansas Indians living near the 



mouth of tlic Arkansas river :^ 



The men do here what the peasants do in France ; they cultivate and dig the earth, 

 plant and harvest tlie crops, cut the wood and bring it to the cabin, dress-the deer 

 and buftalo skins when they have any. They dress them the best of all Indians that I 

 have seen. The women do only indoor work, make the earthen jpots and their clothes. 

 Their cabins are round and vaulted. They are lathed with canes and plastered with 

 mud from bottom to top, within and without, with a good covering of straw. » » * 

 Their bed is of round can«s raised on four posts three feet high, and a cane mat 

 serves as a mattress. Nothing is neattr than their cabins. * * * Their grana- 

 ries are near their caliins, made like dove-cotes, built on four large posts, 15 or 16 

 feet high, well put together and well polished, so that mice can not climb up, and 

 in this way they protect their corn and squashes, which are still better than those 

 of the Illinois. 



As reference will be made hereafter to the Indian forts and fortifica- 

 tions, it is unnecessary to mention tlieni here. Nevertheless we give 

 the following quotation from Jaccjues (Jartier's account of his second 

 voyage tip the St. Lawrence : 



We went ahmg and al)0ut a mile and a lialf farther we began to flnde goodly and 

 large fields, full of such come as the countrie yieldeth. It is even as the Millet of 



'Paris oa., 18G5, ]ip. 80, 81. 

 'Pages. 



^Relation of A'dyagos anil Diacovorii'S of Marquette, by Dahlon, Hist. Coll. La, vol. 4, p. 33. 

 '*Jonm.'il of the Voyage of Father Gravier in 1700, Shea's Early Voyages up aud down tlie Missis- 

 sippi, p. 134. 



