124 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
sapling hewed square, and fitted with joists that go from it to the back of 
the house. On these joists they lay large pieces of bark, and on extraordi- 
nary occasions spread mats made of rushes, which favor we had. On these 
floors they set or lye down every one as he will. The apartments are 
divided from each other by boards or bark six or seven feet long from the 
lower floor to the upper, on which they put their lumber. When they have 
eaten their hominy, as they set in each apartment before the fire; they can 
put the bowl over head, having not above five foot to reach. They set on 
the floor sometimes at each end, but mostly at one. They have a shed to 
put their wood into in the winter, sr in the summer to set, converse or play, 
that has a door to the south. All the sides and roof of the cabin is made 
of bark, bound fast to poles set in the ground, and bent round on the top, or 
set aflat for the roof as we set our rafters; over each fire-place they leave a 
hole to let out the smoke, which in rainy weather they cover with a piece 
of bark, and this they can easily reach with a pole to push it on one side 
or quite over the hole. After this manner are most of their cabins built.”? 
The end section shows a round roof, as in the houses of the Virginia 
Indians, and the ground plan agrees in all respects with the old long-houses 
of the Seneca-Iroquois as described by them to the author before he had 
seen Mr. Bartram’s plan. 
In the Documentary History of New York (vol. iii, p. 14) there is a 
remarkable picture of the principal village of the Onondagas which was 
visited or rather attacked by Champlain in 1615. The location of this vil- 
lage was not established until 1877, when General John 8. Clarke, of Au- 
burn, by means of Champlain’s map and sketch of the village, and his rela- 
tion of the particulars of the expedition, found the site of the village in the 
town of Fenner, some miles northeast of the Onondaga Valley. 
It was situated upon the edge of a natural pond, covering ten acres of 
land, and between a small brook which emptied into the pond on the left 
and the outlet of the pond which passed it on the right. The space covered 
by the village site was about six acres of land, strongly fortified by a series 
of palisades. Champlain states in his relation that “their village was en- 
closed with strong quadruple palisades of large timber, thirty feet high, 
! Observations, etc.; Travels to Onondaga, Lond. ed., 1751, pp. 40, 41. 
