394 BUREAU OF AMEiRICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



or shingles; every habitation consists of four oblong square houses, of one story, 

 of the same form and dimensions, and so situated as to form an exact square, 

 encompassing an area or court yard of about a quarter of an acre of ground, 

 leaving an entrance into it at each corner. (Bartram, 1792, pp. 394-395.) 



Of the Yuchi town on Chattahoochee River, in the Lower Creek 

 country he remarks : 



The walls of the houses are constructed of a wooden frame, then lathed and 

 plastered inside and out with a reddish well tempered clay or mortar, which 

 gives them the appearance of red brick walls; and these houses are neatly 

 covered or roofed with Cypress bark or shingles of that tree. (Bartram, 1792, 

 p. 386.) 



By 1790, only a few years after the time of Bartram, some Creek 

 houses had undergone considerable alterations which Swan illustrates 

 for us in connection with the report of his expedition to the Creek 

 country, the drawing itself having been made by J. C. Tidball, U. S. A. 

 Swan describes this as "The Creek house in its best state of native im- 

 provement in 1790" (pi. 58). This has a chimney and at least one 

 window. It appears from Swan's text, however, that most of the 

 dwellings were still of a very much more primitive type : 



The houses they occupy are but pitiful small huts, commonly from twelve to 

 eighteen or twenty feet long, and from ten to fifteen feet wide ; the floors are of 

 earth ; the walls, six, seven, and eight feet high, supported by poles driven into 

 the ground, and lathed across with canes tied slightly on, and filled in with 

 clay, which they always dig for, and find near the spot whereon they build. 

 The roofs are pitched from a ridge pole near the centre, which is covered with 

 large tufts of the bark of trees. The roofs are covered with four or five layers 

 of rough shingles, laid upon rafters of round poles, the whole secured on the 

 outside from being blown away, by long heavy poles laid across them, and tied 

 with bark or withes at each end of the house. In putting on these curious roofs, 

 they seem to observe an uniformity in all their different towns ; which, upon the 

 approach of a stranger, exhibit a grotesque appearance of rudeness, not so easily 

 to be described with the pen, as it might be with the pencil. The chimneys are 

 made of poles and clay, and are built up at one end, and on the outside of tlie 

 houses. On each side of the fire-place, they have small cane-racks or platforms, 

 with skins whereon they sleep; but many of them, too lazy to make these plat- 

 forms, sleep on the floor, in the midst of much dirt. 



They have but one door at the side and near the centre of the house; this, 

 although nothing remains inside to be stolen, is barricaded by large heavy pieces 

 of wood, whenever they quit the house to go out a hunting. 



Their houses being but slightly made, seldom resist the weather more than one 

 or two years, before they fall to pieces. They then erect new ones, on new 

 plots of ground; thus, by continually shifting from one place to another, the 

 bulk of some of their largest towns are removed three or four miles from where 

 they stood three or four years before, and no vestiges remain of their former 

 habitations. (Swan, 1855, pp. 692-693.) 



While related to the old summer house, in certain features the 

 house erected in modern times by the Alabama Indians is also remi- 

 niscent of the Choctaw summer dwelling to be mentioned presently. 

 This was described to me as follows : 



