110 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
The tribes of the valley of the Columbia lived more or less in villages, 
but, like the tribes of California, were without horticulture and without 
pottery. But they found an abundant subsistence in the shell-fish of the 
coast, and in the myriads of fish in the Columbia and its tributaries. They 
also subsisted upon kamash and other bread roots of the prairies, which 
they cooked in ground ovens, and upon berries and game. They were 
expert boatmen and fishermen, manufactured water-tight baskets, imple- 
ments of wood, stone, and bone, and used the bow and arrow. As another 
quite remarkable fact, they used plank in their houses, made by splitting 
logs with stone and elk-horn chisels. Like the Kutchin, they were in the 
Upper Status of savagery. 
When Lewis and Clarke visited the Columbia River district (1805-1806) 
they found the Indian tribes living in houses of the plainest communal type, 
and some of them approaching in ground dimensions and in the number of 
their occupants the pueblo houses in New Mexico. They speak of a house 
of the Chopunish (Nez Pereés) as follows: ‘This village of Tumachem- 
ootool is in fact only a single house one hundred and fifty feet long, built 
after the Chopunish fashion, with sticks, straw and dried grass. It con- 
tains twenty-four fires, about double that number of families, and might 
perhaps muster a hundred fighting men.” 
This would give five hundred 
people in a single house. The number of fies probably indicates the num- 
ber of groups practicing communism in living among themselves, though 
for aught we know it may have been general in the entire household. 
oe 1 ee el ae 
Ao Gale 
Fic. 6—Ground-plan of Neerchokioo. 
Another great house, Neerchokioo, is thus described: ‘This large 
building is two hundred and twenty-six feet in front, entirely above ground, 
and may be considered a single house, because the whole is under one roof, 
otherwise it would seem more like a range of buildings, as it is divided into 
1 Travels, etc., l. c., p. 548. 
