MORGAN.] HOUSES OF TRIBES OF COLUMBIA. 1a: 
seven distinct apartments, each thirty feet square, by means of broad boards 
set up on end from the floor to the roof. The apartments are separated 
from each other by a passage or alley four feet wide, extending through 
the whole depth of the house, and the only entrance is from the alley 
through a small hole about twenty inches wide and not more than three feet 
high. The roof is formed of rafters and round poles laid on horizontally, 
The whole is covered with a double roof of bark of white cedar.”’ The apart- 
ments, as in the previous case of the fires, may be supposed to indicate the 
number of groups into which the great household was subdivided for the 
practice of communism. 
Elsewhere, speaking of the houses of the Clahclellahs, they remark: 
“These houses are uncommonly large; one of them measured one hundred 
and sixty by forty feet, and the frames are constructed in the usual manner. 
* * * Most of the houses are built of boards and covered with bark, 
though some of the more inferior kind are constructed wholly of cedar bark, 
kept smooth and flat by small splinters fixed crosswise through the bark, 
at the distance of twelve or fourteen inches apart.”” 
The houses of the coast tribes (Clatsops and Chinooks) are also 
described. “The houses in this neighborhood are all large wooden build- 
ings, ranging in length from twenty to sixty feet, and from fourteen to 
twenty in width. They are constructed in the following manner: two posts 
of split timber or more, agreeable to the number of partitions, are sunk in 
the ground, above which they rise to the height of fourteen or eighteen feet. 
They are hollowed at the top, so as to receive the end of a round beam or 
pole (ridge-pole) stretching from one to the other, and forming the upper 
point of the roof for the whole extent of the building. On each side of this 
range is placed another, which forms the eaves of the house, and is about 
five feet high; and as the building is often sunk to the depth of four or five 
feet, the eaves come very near the surface of the earth. Smaller pieces of 
timber are now extended by pairs, in the form of rafters, from the lower to 
the upper beams, where they are attached at both ends with cords of cedar 
bark. On these rafters two or three ranges of small poles are placed hori- 
zontally, and secured in the same way with strings of cedar bark. The 
1 Lewis and Clarke’s Travels, p. 503. 2Ib., p. 515. 
