MORGAN] EMBANKMENTS FORMED BASE OF HOUSES. 209 
steeper and the summit platform broader. On embankments thus reformed 
out of their original materials respectable as well as sufficient sites would 
be provided for long joint-tenement houses, comparted into chambers like 
stalls opening upon a central passage way through the structure from end 
to end, as in the long-houses of the Iroquois. Such embankments were 
strikingly adapted to houses of the aboriginal American model, the charac- 
teristic feature of which was sufficient length to afford a number of apart- 
ments. This feature became more marked in the houses of the Village 
Indians, among whom houses three hundred, four hundred, and even five 
hundred feet in length have been found, as elsewhere stated. 
These embankments answered as a substitute for the first story of the 
house constructed of adobe bricks, which was usually from ten to twelve 
feet high, and closed up solid on the ground, externally. The gateways 
entering the square were protected, it may be supposed, with palisades of 
round timber set in the ground, each row of stakes commencing at the 
opposite ends of the embankments and contracting after passing each other 
to a narrow opening on the inside, which might be permanently closed. 
Indian tribes in a lower condition than the Mound-Builders were familiar 
with palisades. The inclosed square was thus completely protected by the 
long-houses standing upon these embankments and the gateways guarding 
the several entrances. The pueblo, externally, would present continuous 
ramparts of earth ten feet high, around an inclosed area, surmounted with 
timber-framed houses with walls sloping like the embankments, and coated 
with earth mixed with clay and gravel, rising ten or twelve feet above their 
summits; the two forming a sloping wall of earth twenty feet high. It 
seems extremely probable, for the reasons stated, that they raised these 
embankments as foundations, and planted their long-houses upon them, thus 
uniting the defensive principle with that of communism in living. Such 
houses would harmonize with the general plan of life of the American abo- 
rigines, and with the general type of their house architecture. 
It is not necessary to know the exact form or internal plan of these 
houses in order to establish this hypothesis. It is sufficient to show that 
these embankments as restored were not only adapted, but admirably 
adapted, to joint-tenement houses ot the aboriginal American type. 
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