118 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
and six sections. Each house, on this hypothesis, would be from twenty- 
four to forty-eight feet long. A reference (supra, p 67) has been made to 
the size of the houses of the Virginia Indians, from which their communistic 
character may be inferred. 
In the “Journal of a Voyage to New York,” in 1679~80, by Jasper 
Dankers and Peter Sluyter, edited and translated by Hon. Henry C. Mur- 
phy, there is a careful description of a house of the Nyack Indians of Long 
Island, an Algonkin tribe, affiliated linguistically with the Virginia Indians. 
The Nyack house corresponds very closely with those last named. “We 
went from hence to her habitation,” these authors remark, “‘ where we found 
the whole troop together, consisting of seven or eight families, and twenty 
or twenty-two persons, I should think. Their house was low and long, 
about sixty feet long and fourteen or fifteen feet wide. The bottom was 
earth; the sides and roof were made of reed and the bark of chestnut trees; 
the posts or columns were limbs of trees stuck in the ground, and all 
fastened together The top or ridge of the roof was open about half a foot 
wide, from one end to the other, in order to let the smoke escape, in the 
place of a chimney. On the sides or walls of the house, the roof was so 
low that you could hardly stand under it. The entrance, or doors, which 
were at both ends, were so small and low that they had to stoop down and 
squeeze themselves to get through them. The doors were made of reed or 
flat bark. In the whole building there was no lime, stone, iron, or lead 
They build their fires in the middle of the floor, according to the number 
of families which live in it, so that from one end to the other each of them 
boils its own pot, and eats when it likes, not only the families by themselves, 
but each Indian alone, according as he is hungry, at all hours, morning, 
noon, and night. By each fire are the cooking utensils, consisting of a pot, 
a bowl or calabash, and a spoon, also made of a calabash. These are all 
that relate to cooking. They lie upon mats with their feet towards the fire, 
on each side of it. They do not sit much upon anything raised up, but, for 
the most part, sit on the ground or squat on their ankles. Their other 
household articles consist of a calabash of water, out of which they drink, 
a small basket in which to carry and keep their maize and small beans, and 
a knife. *~* * All who live in one house are generally of one stock or 
