SWANTON] INDIANS OP THE SOUTHEASTERlSr UNITED STATES 401 



This house is nearly of a circular figure and built of clay mixed with haulm 

 [straw or grass]. The top is conical and covered with a kind of thatch [the 

 nature of] which I could not make out. The inside roof is divided into four 

 parts and there are cane seats raised about two feet from the ground which 

 go round the building (I mean on the inside), broad enough to lie upon, mak- 

 ing the wall serve the purpose of a pillow. Underneath these seats or beds 

 they keep their potatoes and pumpions, cover'd with earth, but their corn is 

 in a building by itself raised at least eight feet from the ground. The fire place 

 is in the middle of the floor, just as in some parts of the Highlands of Scotland 

 only they have no aperture at top to evacuate the smoke. The door is oppo- 

 site one side (for the house is round without, yet on the inside it approaches 

 near to the figure of an octagon) and is exceedingly small both in height and 

 breadth. (Swanton, 1931 a, p. 39.) 



The anonymous relation thus describes the summer house, though 

 without indicating that there was another type : 



The house is merely a cabin made of wooden posts of the size of the leg, buried 

 in the earth [at one end], and fastened together with lianas, which make very 

 flexible bands. The rest of the wall is of mud and there are no windows ; the 

 door is only from three to four feet in height. The cabins are covered with 

 bark of the cypress or pine. A hole is left at the top of each gable-end to let 

 the smoke out, for they make their fires in the middle of the cabins, which are 

 a gunshot distant from one another. The inside is surrounded with cane beds 

 raised from three to four feet above the ground on account of the fleas which 

 live there in quantities because of the dirt. (Swanton, 1931 a, p. 37.) 



This, it will be seen, resembled the later Alabama house, and it was 

 evidently the forerunner of the log house with which Cushman was 

 familiar in the early part of the nineteenth century : 



They lived in houses made of logs, but very comfortable; not more rude or 

 uncouth, however, than many of the whites even of the present day [the work 

 was published in 1899]. Their houses consisted generally of two rooms, both 

 of which were used for every domestic purpose — cooking, eating, living and 

 sleeping; nor was their furniture disproportionate with that of the dwelling — 

 for the sitting room, a stool or two; for the kitchen, a pot or kettle, two or 

 three tin cups, a large and commodious wooden bowl, and a horn spoon, consti- 

 tuted about the ultimatum [ !] (Cushman, 1899, p. 39.) 



The winter and summer house patterns seem to have been carried 

 by the Choctaw to Louisiana, where the distinctive characters of the 

 two were probably lost. Bushnell reports that the old people at 

 Bayou Lacomb remembered them. 



The frames were formed of small saplings ; the tops and sides were constructed 

 of palmetto thatch. According to the present inhabitants [in 1908-9], many of 

 the circular houses were large, affording shelter for many persons. Only one 

 door was made, this in most cases facing the south. A fire was kindled on the 

 ground within the lodge, the smoke passing out through an opening made for 

 the purpose at the top near the center. (Bushnell, 1909, p. 7.) 



The picture of a plank house which he gives reminds one of the 

 Alabama house. He also illustrates a palmetto thatched dwelling 

 which stood near Mandeville on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain 



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