Village Life

Village Life in Ancient Times

In the past, living in villages meant safety in numbers and shared supplies. Some groups built dwellings. Others followed the food trails, like the Subarctic people who carried caribou skin shelters from camp to camp. Several tribes wintered in pit houses covered with mud. Alaskan Eskimos lived partly underground beneath turf roofs, while Southern Seminoles raised their thatched homes on stilts above the swampy land. Southwesterners solved the problem of fitting many people into a small apce by stacking their stone and mud-brick houses one on top of another, like modern apartment buildings. Native American dwellings came in various shapes : cones, domes triangles, squares and rectangles. Their names were just as varied : chickees, hogans, igloos, tepees, longhouses, Ican-tos, wigwams and wickiups.

Pueblo Village

Sothwestern villages were honeycombs of two-storey stone houses. Ladders led to the roofs and the entrances to the upper rooms.

Split Level Living

Up to 12 Northeastern Iroquois families shared a longhouse. The top level was used for storage, the bottom for sleeping. Curtains separated areas.

Round Houses

The Mandan people built villages on rises beside the Missouri River. Heavy rain ran easily down the domed sides of the houses.

Village in Jamaica. Photo by Elena.

Village Layout

In the well-planned Creek villages of the Southeast, airy summer sleepouts were built beside warmer lodges. The largest round council buildings could seat 500 people. The villagers used them for ceremonies, dancing, winter meetings of the tribal elders and to house the homeless and the aged.

Front Door Poles

Northwest Coast tribes, such as the Haida, lived in wooden buildings. Carved cedar totem poles indicated who lived in each house.

Back Shelter

Some tribes built huts from chunks of redwood or cedar bark. The sweet-smelling wood repelled insects.