404 



BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLO€T 



[Bull. 137 



and the whole wattled with twigs like a basket, which is then covered with 

 clay very smooth, and sometimes white-washed. Instead of tiles, they cover 

 them with narrow boards. Some of these houses are two-story high, tol- 

 erably pretty and capacious; but most of them very inconvenient for want of 

 chimneys, a small hole being all the vent assigned in many for the smoak 

 to get out at. (Timberlake, Williams ed., 1927, p. 84.) 



Their summer council house corresponded to this after a fashion, 

 being described by Bartram (1909, p. 57) as "a spacious open loft or 

 pavilion, on the top of a very large oblong building." 



The relative length of the private dwelling is somewhat sugges- 

 tive of the Iroquois longhouse, but each seems to have been occupied 

 by but one distinct family group, and it was constructed of wattle 

 and plaster like the Gulf houses generally, though probably some- 



FiGUBB 5. — Ground plan of Cherokee house (after Bartram) . A, Summer house ; P, portico 



of summer house ; D, winter house. 



times clapboarded with bark like the dwellings of their northern 

 kinsmen. 



The meager details supplied by early writers indicate that the 

 town houses of the Muskhogeans on the coasts of South Carolina 

 and Georgia were similar to the circular buildings we have found 

 among the great inland nations. One of the Cusabo town houses 

 described by Hilton and Sandford was circular in outline, at least 

 200 feet in circumference, the walls 12 feet high to the "wal-plate," 

 which corresponds to our eaves, and thatched with palmetto. 

 There appear to have been beds around the wall such as have been 

 mentioned repeatedly, and in one place, most likely at the back, there 

 is noted a seat raised higher than the rest, for the chief and other 

 persons of eminence. Our best descriptions of town houses among 

 the Guale Indians are by the Quaker Dickenson in 1699, who saw 

 them after the Guale Indians had moved to Florida and settled on 



