Village sites.—­The amount of land taken up as village sites varied considerably in different parts of the country.  It varied also in the same tribe at different times.  As a rule, the North American Indians lived in communal houses of sufficient size to accommodate several families.  In such cases the village consisted of a few large structures closely grouped together, so that it covered very little ground.  When territory was occupied by warlike tribes, the construction of rude palisades around the villages and the necessities of defense generally tended to compel the grouping of houses, and the permanent village sites of even the more populous tribes covered only a very small area.  In the case of confederated tribes and in the time of peace the tendency was for one or more families to establish more or less permanent settlements away from the main village, where a livelihood was more readily obtainable.  Hence, in territory which had enjoyed a considerable interval of peace the settlements were in the nature of small agricultural communities, established at short distances from each other and extending in the aggregate over a considerable extent of country.  In the case of populous tribes the villages were probably of the character of the Choctaw towns described by Adair.[4] “The barrier towns, which are next to the Muskohge and Chikkasah countries, are compactly settled for social defense, according to the general method of other savage nations; but the rest, both in the center and toward the Mississippi, are only scattered plantations, as best suits a separate easy way of living.  A stranger might be in the middle of one of their populous, extensive towns without seeing half a dozen houses in the direct course of his path.”  More closely grouped settlements are described by Wayne in American State Papers, 1793, in his account of an expedition down the Maumee Valley, where he states that “The margins of the Miamis of the Lake and the Au Glaize appear like one continuous village for a number of miles, nor have I ever beheld such immense fields of corn in any part of America from Canada to Florida.”  Such a chain of villages as this was probably highly exceptional; but even under such circumstances the village sites proper formed but a very small part of the total area occupied.

    [Footnote 4:  Hist. of Am.  Ind., 1775, p. 282.]

From the foregoing considerations it will be seen that the amount of land occupied as village sites under any circumstances was inconsiderable.

Agricultural land.—­It is practically impossible to make an accurate estimate of the relative amount of land devoted to agricultural purposes by any one tribe or by any family of tribes.  None of the factors which enter into the problem are known to us with sufficient accuracy to enable reliable estimates to be made of the amount of land tilled or of the products derived from the tillage; and only in few cases have we trustworthy estimates of the population of the tribe or tribes practicing agriculture.  Only a rough approximation of the truth can be reached from the scanty data available and from a general knowledge of Indian methods of subsistence.