ABORIGINAL USE OF WOOD IN NEW YORK 



95 



will live comfortably and lovingly in a little round house of some 

 fourteen or sixteen foot over, and so more and more families in 

 proportion." The latter expression might refer to a longer house, 

 but he does not mention it. In another place he describes one 

 intended for festival purposes. This was " toward Harvest, when 

 they set up a long house called Qunnekamuck Which signifies Long 

 house, sometimes an hundred, sometimes two hundred foot long 

 upon a plaine near the Court (which they call Kitteickauick) where 

 many thousands, men and women meet.'' Williams, ch.28 



Houses probably varied according to the standing of the person, 

 tribe or nation. The Rev. Mr Higgeson gave no flattering account 

 of those in Massachusetts in 1630: "Their houses are verie little 

 and homely, being made with small poles pricked into the ground, 

 and so bended and fastned at the tops, and on the sides they are 

 matted with boughs and covered on the roof with sedge and old 

 mats." Higgeson, 1:123 



This is quite different from the account in New England Prospect, 

 which follows: 



Their employments be many: First their building of houses, 

 whose frames are formed like our garden-arbours, something more 

 round, very strong and handsome, covered with close-wrought mats 

 of their owne weaveing, which deny entrance to any drop of faine, 

 though it come both fierce and long, neither can the piercing North 

 winde, finde a crannie, through which he can conveigh his cooling 

 breath, they be warmer than our English houses ; at the top is a 

 square hole for the smoakes evacuation, which in rainy weather is 

 covered with a pluver : these bee such smoakie dwellings, that when 

 there is good fires, they are not able to stand upright, but lie all 

 along under the smoake, never using any stooles or chaires, it being 

 as rare to see an Indian sit on a stoole at home, as it is strange to 

 see an English man sit on his heels abroad. Their houses are 

 smaller in the Summer, when their families be dispersed, by reason 

 of heate and occasions. In Winter they make some fiftie or three- 

 score foote long, fortie or fiftie men being inmates under one roofe. 

 Wood, ch.19 



This clearly shows that the long house was not confined to the 

 Iroquois family, as some have supposed. The covering with mats, 

 instead of bark, may be noted. This was from the comparative 

 scarcity of large timber near the sea coast. The above description 



