MORGAN. | COMMUNISTIC HOUSES OF VIRGINIA INDIANS. 67 
hunting and fishing party made a common stock of the capture, of which 
the surplus, on their return, was divided among the several families of each 
household, and, having been cured, was reserved for winter use. The village 
did not make a common stock of their provisions, and thus offer a bounty 
to imprudence. It was confined to the household. But the principle of 
hospitality then came in to relieve the consequences of destitution. We 
can speak with some confidence of the ancient usages and customs of the 
Iroquois ; and when any usage is found among them in a definite and pos- 
itive form, it renders probable the existence of the same usage in other 
tribes in the same condition, because their necessities were the same. 
In the History of Virginia, by Capt. John Smith, the houses of the 
Powhatan Indians are partially described, and are found to be much the 
same as those of the Iroquois. We have already quoted from this work 
the description of a house on Roanoke Island containing five chambers. 
Speaking of the houses in the vicinity of James River in 1606-1608, he 
remarks, ‘Their houses are built like our arbors, of small young sprigs bowed 
and tied, and so close covered with mats, or the bark of trees, very hand- 
somely, that notwithstanding either wind, rain, or weather, they are as 
warm as stoves but very smoky; yet at the top of the house there is a 
hole made for the smoke to go into right over the fire Against the fire they 
lie on little hurdles of reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a 
foot and more by a hurdle of wood. On these, round about the house, 
they lie, heads and points, one by the other, against the fire, some covered 
with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from 
six to twenty ina house * * * In some places are from two to fifty 
of these houses together, or but little separated by groves of trees.”' The 
noticeable fact in this statement is the number of persons in the house, 
which shows a household consisting of several families. Their communism 
in living may be inferred. Elsewhere he speaks of “houses built after their 
”2 and speaking of one of the 
manner, some thirty, some forty yards long ; 
houses of Powhatan he says, ‘This house is fifty or sixty yards in length;”* 
and again, at Pamunky, ‘‘A great fire was made in a long-house, a mat was 
spread on one side as on the other; and on one side they caused him to 
1 Smith’s History of Virginia, Richmond ed., 1819, i, 130. 21b., i, 143. 31b., i, 142. 
