Home to Many.

As an example of the distinctive ways in which many Indian groups adapted their housing to fit their physical environment and social needs, the Iroquois longhouse stands out. In every Iroquois village stood thirty or more longhouses. Positioned side by side in parallel rows, longhouses were about twenty feet wide and stretched from forty to two hundred feet in length. Their framework consisted of saplings anchored in the ground and arched into a roof about fifteen feet tall. Sheets of elm bark formed the walls and roof. Inside the longhouse a central corridor, interspersed with fireplaces every twenty or so, traveled the length of the building. Living compartments, one on each side of a hearth, housed separate but related nuclear families. Each dwelling represented a particular matrilineage. Everyone living in a longhouse, except for husbands who moved into their wives'...