The Indian city was inhabited by several thousand people, living in
wigwams about a hundred and fifty feet long by fifty wide, built of bark
over a frame of wood, and arranged around a large open space. The whole
was surrounded by a stockade of three rows of stakes twelve or fifteen
feet high. The middle row was set straight, the other two rows five or
six feet from it and inclining toward it like wigwam-poles. The three
rows, meeting at the top, were lashed to a ridgepole. Half way down and
again at the bottom cross-braces were fastened diagonally, making a
strong wall. Around the inside, near the top, was a gallery reached by
ladders, on which were piles of stones to be thrown at invaders. Instead
of being square, or irregular with many angles and outstanding towers,
like a French walled town, it was perfectly round.
The interpreters afterward explained that each of the houses was
occupied by several families, as the head of each house shared his
shelter with his kinfolk. When a daughter was married she brought her
husband home, as a rule, and her father added an apartment to his house
by the simple device of taking out the end wall of bark and building on
another section. Each household had its own stone hearth, the smoke
escaping through openings in the roof.
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