The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century | Page 6

A Huron
family usually numbered from five to eight persons. The number of the
Huron towns changed from year to year. Champlain and Le Caron in
1615, reckoned them at seventeen or eighteen, with a population of
about ten thousand, meaning, no doubt, adults. Brébeuf, in 1635, found
twenty villages, and, as he thinks, thirty thousand souls. Both Le
Mercier and De Quen, as well as Dollier de Casson and the anonymous
author of the Relation of 1660, state the population at from thirty to
thirty-five thousand. Since the time of Champlain's visit, various
kindred tribes or fragments of tribes had been incorporated with the
Hurons, thus more than balancing the ravages of a pestilence which had
decimated them. ]
The region whose boundaries we have given was an alternation of
meadows and deep forests, interlaced with footpaths leading from town
to town. Of these towns, some were fortified, but the greater number
were open and defenceless. They were of a construction common to all
tribes of Iroquois lineage, and peculiar to them. Nothing similar exists
at the present day. [ The permanent bark villages of the Dahcotah of the
St. Peter's are the nearest modern approach to the Huron towns. The
whole Huron country abounds with evidences of having been occupied
by a numerous population. "On a close inspection of the forest," Dr.
Taché writes to me, "the greatest part of it seems to have been cleared
at former periods, and almost the only places bearing the character of
the primitive forest are the low grounds." ] They covered a space of
from one to ten acres, the dwellings clustering together with little or no
pretension to order. In general, these singular structures were about
thirty or thirty-five feet in length, breadth, and height; but many were
much larger, and a few were of prodigious length. In some of the
villages there were dwellings two hundred and forty feet long, though
in breadth and height they did not much exceed the others. [ Brébeuf,

Relation des Hurons, 1635, 31. Champlain says that he saw them, in
1615, more than thirty fathoms long; while Vanderdonck reports the
length, from actual measurement, of an Iroquois house, at a hundred
and eighty yards, or five hundred and forty feet! ] In shape they were
much like an arbor overarching a garden-walk. Their frame was of tall
and strong saplings, planted in a double row to form the two sides of
the house, bent till they met, and lashed together at the top. To these
other poles were bound transversely, and the whole was covered with
large sheets of the bark of the oak, elm, spruce, or white cedar,
overlapping like the shingles of a roof, upon which, for their better
security, split poles were made fast with cords of linden bark. At the
crown of the arch, along the entire length of the house, an opening a
foot wide was left for the admission of light and the escape of smoke.
At each end was a close porch of similar construction; and here were
stowed casks of bark, filled with smoked fish, Indian corn, and other
stores not liable to injury from frost. Within, on both sides, were wide
scaffolds, four feet from the floor, and extending the entire length of
the house, like the seats of a colossal omnibus. [ Often, especially
among the Iroquois, the internal arrangement was different. The
scaffolds or platforms were raised only a foot from the earthen floor,
and were only twelve or thirteen feet long, with intervening spaces,
where the occupants stored their family provisions and other articles.
Five or six feet above was another platform, often occupied by children.
One pair of platforms sufficed for a family, and here during summer
they slept pellmell, in the clothes they wore by day, and without
pillows. ] These were formed of thick sheets of bark, supported by
posts and transverse poles, and covered with mats and skins. Here, in
summer, was the sleeping place of the inmates, and the space beneath
served for storage of their firewood. The fires were on the ground, in a
line down the middle of the house. Each sufficed for two families, who,
in winter, slept closely packed around them. Above, just under the
vaulted roof, were a great number of poles, like the perches of a
hen-roost, and here were suspended weapons, clothing, skins, and
ornaments. Here, too, in harvest time, the squaws hung the ears of
unshelled corn, till the rude abode, through all its length, seemed
decked with a golden tapestry. In general, however, its only lining was
a thick coating of soot from the smoke of fires with neither draught,

chimney, nor window. So pungent was the smoke, that it produced
inflammation of the eyes, attended in old age