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There were many different types of American Indian houses in North America.
Each tribe needed a kind of housing that would fit their lifestyle and their climate.
Since North America is such a big continent, different tribes had very different
weather to contend with. In the Arizona deserts, temperatures can hit 120 degrees
Fahrenheit, and in the Alaskan tundra, -50 is not unusual. Naturally, Native Americans
developed different types of dwellings to survive in these different environments. Also,
different American Indian tribes had different traditional lifestyles. Some tribes were
agricultural-- they lived in settled villages and farmed the land for corn and
vegetables. They wanted houses that would last a long time.
Other tribes were more nomadic, moving frequently from place
to place as they hunted and gathered food and resources. They
needed houses that were portable or easy to build.
Here are descriptions and pictures of some of the Native American house styles
the people developed over the years to fit these needs.
Native American Homes
Wigwams (or wetus) are Native American houses used by Algonquian Indians in the woodland regions.
Wigwam is the word for "house" in the Abenaki tribe, and wetu is the word for "house" in the Wampanoag
tribe. Sometimes they are also known as birchbark houses. Wigwams are small houses, usually 8-10 feet tall.
Wigwams are made of wooden frames which are covered with woven mats and sheets of birchbark. The frame can
be shaped like a dome, like a cone, or like a rectangle with an arched roof. Once the birchbark is in place, ropes or strips of
wood are wrapped around the wigwam to hold the bark in place. Here are some
pictures of a woman building a wigwam.
cone-shaped
dome-shaped
rectangular shape
wigwam frame
Wigwams are good houses for people who stay in the same place for
months at a time. Most Algonquian Indians lived together in settled
villages during the farming season, but during the winter, each family
group would move to their own hunting camp. Wigwams are not
portable, but they are small and easy to build. Woodland Indian
families could build new wigwams every year when they
set up their winter camps.
Longhouses
are Native American homes used by the Iroquois tribes and some of their
Algonquian neighbors.
They are built similarly to wigwams, with pole frames and elm bark
covering. The main difference is that longhouses are much, much
larger than wigwams. Longhouses could be 200 feet long, 20 feet wide,
and 20 feet high. Inside the longhouse, raised platforms created a
second story, which was used for sleeping space. Mats and wood screens
divided the longhouse into separate rooms. Each longhouse
housed an entire clan-- as many as 60 people!
sketch of a longhouse
longhouse cutaway
a longhouse today
Longhouses are good homes for people who intend to stay in the
same place for a long time. A longhouse is large and takes a lot of
time to build and decorate. The Iroquois were farming people who lived
in permanent villages. Iroquois men sometimes built wigwams for
themselves when they were going on hunting trips, but women might live
in the same longhouse their whole life.
Tepees (also spelled Teepees or Tipis)
are tent-like American Indian houses used by Plains tribes.
A tepee is made of a cone-shaped wooden frame with a covering of
buffalo hide. Like modern tents, tepees are carefully designed to set
up and break down quickly. As a tribe moved from place to place, each
family would bring their tipi poles and hide tent along with them.
Originally, tepees were about 12 feet high, but once the Plains Indian
tribes acquired horses, they began building them twice as high.
Indian tepee photograph
picture of tepees being set up
Tepees are good houses for people who are always on the move.
Plains Indians migrated frequently to follow the movements of the
buffalo herds. An entire Plains Indian village could have their tepees
packed up and ready to move within an hour. There were fewer
trees on the Great Plains than in the Woodlands, so it was important
for Plains tribes to carry their long poles with them whenever
they traveled instead of trying to find new ones each time they moved.
Grass houses
are American Indian homes used in the Southern Plains by tribes such as
the Caddos. They resemble large wigwams but are made with different
materials. Grass houses are made with a wooden frame bent into a
beehive shape and
thatched with long prairie grass. These were large buildings, sometimes
more than 40 feet tall.
Wichita grass house
Caddo grass house
construction
Grass houses are good homes for people in a warm climate. In
the northern plains, winters are too cold to make homes out of prairie
grass.
But in the southern plains of Texas, houses like these were comfortable
for the people who used them.
Wattle and daub houses (also known as asi,
the Cherokee word for them) are Native American houses used by
southeastern tribes.
Wattle and daub houses are made by weaving rivercane, wood, and vines
into a frame, then coating the frame with plaster. The roof was either
thatched
with grass or shingled with bark.
rivercane frame
plastered and thatched
Wattle and daub houses are permanent structures that take a lot
of effort to build. Like longhouses, they are good homes for
agricultural people who intended to stay in one place, like the
Cherokees and Creeks. Making wattle and daub houses requires a fairly
warm climate to dry the plaster.
Chickees (also known as chickee huts, stilt houses or platform dwellings)
are Native American homes used primarily in Florida by tribes like the
Seminole Indians. Chickee houses consisted of thick posts supporting a
thatched roof and a flat wooden platform raised several feet off the
ground. They did not have any walls. During rainstorms, Florida Indians
would lash tarps made of hide or cloth to
the chickee frame to keep themselves dry, but most of the time, the
sides of the structure were left open.
drawing of a chickee
Seminole chickee
Chickees are good homes for people living in a hot, swampy
climate. The long posts keep the house from sinking into marshy earth,
and
raising the floor of the hut off the ground keeps swamp animals like
snakes out of the house. Walls or permanent house coverings are not
necessary in a tropical climate where it never gets cold.
Adobe houses (also known as pueblos)
are Native American house complexes used by the Pueblo Indians of the
Southwest.
Adobe pueblos are modular, multi-story houses made of adobe (clay and
straw baked into hard bricks) or of large stones cemented together
with adobe. Each adobe unit is home to one family, like a modern
apartment. The whole structure, which can contain dozens of units, is
often home
to an entire extended clan.
Pueblo Indian houses
Adobe cliff dwellings
Hopi Mesa pueblos
Adobe houses are good homes to build in a warm, dry climate
where adobe can be easily mixed and dried. These are homes for farming
people
who have no need to move their village to a new location. In fact, some
Pueblo people have been living in the same adobe house complex, such as
Sky City, for dozens of generations.
Earthen house
is a general term referring to several types of Native American homes
including Navajo hogans, Sioux earth lodges, subarctic sod houses, and
Native American pit houses of the West Coast and Plateau. Earthen
houses made by different tribes had different designs, but all were semi-subterranean dwellings -- basement-like living spaces dug from the earth, with a domed mound built over the top (usually a
wooden frame covered with earth or reeds.)
Pawnee earth lodge
Navajo hogan
Alaskan sod house
Earthern houses are good for people who want permanent homes and live
in an area that is not forested. (It's difficult work to excavate
underground
homes in areas with many tree roots!) Living partially underground has
several benefits, especially in harsh climates-- the earth offers
natural protection
from wind and strong weather.
Plankhouses
are Native American homes used by tribes of the Northwest Coast (from
northern California all the way up to Alaska.)
Plank houses are made of long, flat planks of cedar wood lashed to a
wooden frame. Native American plank houses look rather similar to old
European houses, but the Indians didn't learn to build them from
Europeans-- this style of house was used on the Northwest Coast long
before
Europeans arrived.
Chinook plankhouse
Yurok plank house
Plank houses are good houses for people in cold climates with
lots of tall trees. However, only people who don't need to migrate
spend the time
and effort to build these large permanent homes. Most Native Americans
who live in the far northern forests must migrate regularly to follow
caribou herds and other game, so plank houses aren't a good choice for
them. Only coastal tribes, who make their living by fishing, made
houses like these.
Igloos (or Iglu)
are snow houses used by the Inuit (Eskimos) of northern Canada. Not all
Inuit people used igloos --
some built sod houses instead, using whale bones instead of wooden
poles for a frame. Like a sod house, the igloo is dome-shaped and
slightly excavated, but it is built from the snow, with large blocks of
ice set in a spiral pattern and packed with snow to form the dome.
Inuit (Eskimo) igloo
Building an igloo
Inside an igloo
Igloos are good houses for the polar region, where the earth is frozen, the snow cover is deep, and there are few trees.
Snow is a good insulator, and dense blocks of ice offer good protection against the arctic winds.
Brush shelters (including wickiups, lean-tos, gowa,
etc.) are temporary Native American dwellings used by many tribes.
Brush shelters are typically very small, like a camping tent. People
cannot usually stand up straight inside brush lodges -- they are only
used for sleeping in.
A brush shelter is made of a simple wooden frame covered with brush
(branches, leaves, and grass.) The frame can be cone-shaped, with one
side left
open as a door, or tent-shaped, with both ends left open.
conical frame
conical wickiup
tent-shaped frame
tent-shaped brush lodge
Most Native Americans only made a brush shelter when they were
out camping in the wilderness. But some migratory tribes who
lived in warm dry climates, such as the Apache tribes, built brush
shelters as homes on a regular basis. They can be assembled quickly
from materials that are easy to find in the environment, so people who
build villages of brush shelters can move around freely without
having to drag teepee poles.
Do Native Americans still live in houses like these today?
Most
Native Americans do not live in old-fashioned Indian houses like the
ones on this page, any more than other Americans live in
log cabins. The only Native American housing style on this page that is
still in regular use as a home is Indian adobe houses.
Some Pueblo families are still living in the same adobe house complexes
their ancestors used to live in. There are also a few elders on the
Navajo reservation who still prefer to live in hogans. But otherwise,
traditional
Native American houses like these are usually only built for ritual or
ceremonial purposes, such as a sweat lodge or tribal meeting hall.
Most American Indians today live in modern houses and apartments, just
like North Americans from other ethnic groups.
Further Reading
We have visited all of these sites and to the best of our knowledge they are informative, respectful,
and safe for kids. Please let us know if you find
inappropriate material on any of them.
Native Pre-Contact Housing Types:
Thorough resource page including excellent sketches of each American Indian house style.
North American Settlements:
Information about Native American villages and houses in different culture areas of North America.
Native American Housing:
Pictures, links and background information about traditional Native American shelters.
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