200 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
chiefly upon horticulture for subsistence. They had also carried the art of 
pottery to the ornamental stage, and manufactured textile fabries of cotton 
or flax, remains of which have been found wrapped around copper chisels. 
These facts, with others that will appear, justify their recognition as in the 
same status with the Village Indians of New and Old Mexico and Central 
America. They occupied areas free from lakes as a rule, and, therefore, 
the poorest for a fish subsistence. This shows of itself that their chief 
reliance was upon horticulture. The principal places where their villages 
were situated were unoccupied areas at the epoch of European discovery, 
because unadapted to tribes in the Lower Status of barbarism, who de- 
pended upon fish and game as well as upon maize and plants. 
A knowledge of the general character of the houses of the American 
aborigines will enable us to infer what must have been the general character 
of those of the Mound-Builders. This, again, was influenced by the con- 
dition of the family. Among the Indian tribes, in whatever stage of 
advancement, the family was found in the pairing form, with separation at 
the option of either party. It was founded upon marriage between single 
pairs, but it fell below the monogamian family of civilized society. In 
their condition it was too weak an organization to face alone the struggle 
of life, and it sought shelter in large households, formed -on the basis of 
kin, with communism in living as an incident of their plan of life. While 
exceptional cases of single families living by themselves existed among all 
the tribes, it did not break the general rule of large households, and the 
practice in them of communism in living. ‘These usages entered into and 
determined the character of their house architecture. In all parts of North 
and South America, at the period of European discovery, were found com- 
munal or joint-tenement houses, from those large enough to accommodate 
five, ten, and twenty families, to those large enough for fifty, a hundred, 
and in some cases two hundred or more, families. ‘These houses differed 
among themselves in their plan and structure as well as size; but a com- 
mon principle ran through them which was revealed by their adaptation to 
communistie uses. They reflect their condition and their plan of life with 
such singular distinctness as to afford practical hints concerning the houses 
of the Mound-Builders. 
