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Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines — A Reader’s Guide

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In Category - Customs Everyday Life

Authors: Morgan, Lewis Henry, 1818-1881 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2005 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Indians of North America -- Dwellings; Indians of North America -- Social life and customs Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 118,164

Reading time 514 min

Text sections 10

This digital edition of Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines — A Reader’s Guide is described by source-level measurements including 118,164 words, 8 hr 34 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

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Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Indians of North America -- Dwellings,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #8112

Morgan's ethnographic study argues that Indigenous American communal houses—from Iroquois longhouses to Pueblo adobe complexes—reflect a social organization based on large households, not single-family dwellings. The excerpts detail Zuni bread-making, grinding mills, and terrace living, grounding architectural forms in daily practice.

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SOCIAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION.

The Gens: organized upon kin; rights, privileges, and obligations of its members--The Phratry: its character and functions--The Tribe: its composition and attributes--The Confederacy of Tribes: its nature, character and functions.

THE LAW OF HOSPITALITY AND ITS GENERAL PRACTICE.

Indian tribes in three dissimilar conditions--Savage tribes-- Partially horticultural tribes--Village Indians--Usages and customs affecting their house life--The law of hospitality practiced by the Iroquois; by the Algonkin tribes of lower Virginia; by the Delawares and Munsees; by the tribes of the Missouri, of the Valley of the Columbia; by the Dakota tribes of the Mississippi, by the Algonkin tribes of Wisconsin; by the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Creeks; by the Village Indians of New Mexico, of Mexico, of Central America; by the tribes of Venezuela; by the Peruvians--Universality of the usage--It implies communism in living in large households.

A law of their condition--Large households among Indian tribes-- Communism in living in the household--Long Houses of the Iroquois-- Several families in a house--Communism in household--Long Houses of Virginia Indians--Clustered cabins of the Creeks--Communism in the cluster--Hunting bands on the plains--The capture a common stock-- Fishing bands on the Columbia--The capture a common stock--Large households in tribes of the Colombia--Communism in the household-- Mandan houses--Contained several families--Houses of the Sauks the same--Village Indians of New Mexico--Mayas of Yucatan--Their present communism in living--Large households of Indians of Cuba, of Venezuela, of Carthagena, of Peru.

USAGES AND CUSTOMS WITH RESPECT TO LAND AND FOOD.

Tribal domain owned by the tribe in common--Possessory right in individuals and families to such land as they cultivated--Government compensation for Indian lands paid to tribe; for improvements to individuals--Apartments of a house and possessory rights to lands went to gentile heirs--Tenure of land among sedentary Village Indians at Taos, Jemex, and Zunyi--Among Aztecs or Ancient Mexicans, as presented by Mr. Bandelier; in Peru--The usage of having but one prepared meal each day, a dinner--Rule among Northern tribes--A breakfast as well as a dinner claimed for the Mexicans--Separation at meals, the men eating first, and by themselves, and the women and children afterwards.

HOUSES OF INDIAN TRIBES NORTH OF NEW MEXICO.

Houses of Indian tribes must be considered as parts of a common system of construction--A common principle runs through all its forms; that of adaptation to communism in living within the household--It explains this architecture--Communal houses of tribes in savagery; in California; in the valley of the Yukon; in the valley of the Columbia--Communal house of tribes in the lower status of barbarism-- Ojibwa lodge--Dakota skin tent--Long houses of Virginia Indians; of Nyach tribe on Long Island; of Seneca-Iroquois; of Onondaga-Iroquois-- Dirt Lodge of Mandans and Minnetarees--Thatched houses of Maricopas and Mohaves of the Colorado; of the Pimas of the Gila--What a comparison shows.

HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO.

Improved character of houses--The defensive principle incorporated in their plan of the Houses--Their joint tenement character--Two or more stories high--Improved apparel, pottery, and fabrics--Pueblo of Santo Domingo; of adobe bricks--Built in terraced town--Ground story closed--Terraces reached by ladders--Rooms entered through trap-doors in ceilings--Pueblo of Zunyi--Ceiling--Water-jars and hand mill--Moki pueblo--Room in same--Ceiling like that at Zunyi-- Pueblo of Taos--Estufas for holding councils--Size of adobes--Of doorways--Window-openings and trap-doorways--Present governmental organization--Room in pueblo--Fire-places and chimneys of modern introduction--Present ownership and inheritance of property--Village Indians have declined since their discovery--Sun worship--The Montezuma religion--Seclusion from religious motives.

HOUSES IN RUINS OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF THE SAN JUAN RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.

Pueblos in stone--The best structures in New Mexico--Ruins in the valley of the Chaco--Exploration of Lieut. J. H. Simpson in 1849; of William H. Jackson in 1877--Map of valley--Ground plans--Pueblo Pintado and Weje-gi--Constructed of tabular pieces of sandstone-- Estufas and their uses--Pueblos Una Vida and Hungo Pavie--Restoration of Hungo Pavie--Pueblo of Chettro-Kettle--Room in same--Form of ceiling--Pueblo Bonito--Room in same--Restoration of Pueblo--Pueblo del Arroyo--Pueblo Penyasca Blanca--Seven large pueblos and two smaller ones--Pueblo Alto without the valley on table land on the north side--Probably the "Seven Cities of Cibola" of Coronado's Expedition--Reasons for supposition--The pueblos constructed gradually--Remarkable appearance of the valley when inhabited.

HOUSES IN RUINS OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF THE SAN JUAN RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES--(Continued.)

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Lewis Henry Morgan’s Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines (1881) is not a detached architectural survey but an argument that house forms reveal social organization. The excerpts show Morgan weaving together structural description—such as the Zuni pueblo’s terraced roofs, grinding mills with graduated sandstone slabs, and multiple fireplaces—with the claim that “the house for a single family was exceptional throughout aboriginal America.” The work repeatedly ties architecture to the “plan of life” of large households composed of several families, a thesis Morgan developed from earlier articles and the manuscript of Ancient Society.

From Cyclopedia Entries to Unified Argument

The preface reveals that this book was assembled from previously published parts: a cyclopedia article on “Architecture of the American Aborigines,” a North American Review piece on “Montezuma’s Dinner,” and a study prepared for the Archaeological Institute of America. Morgan states he has “added and reduced” the materials to present them “in their proper connection.” This compositional history matters because it explains the book’s structure: each chapter was originally a standalone piece, yet Morgan insists the whole forms “one system of works.” Readers should note that the argument is cumulative, with evidence from Iroquois longhouses, Pueblo adobe towns, and Mesoamerican ruins all pointing to the same conclusion about communal house-life. The preface itself is a key document of how nineteenth-century ethnology was built from discrete, repurposed studies.

Zuni Domestic Details: Bread, Mills, and Terrace Life

The longest excerpt describes Zuni Pueblo in precise, almost ethnographic present tense. Morgan reports that waiavi bread is baked on a polished slab heated over coals, that grinding mills consist of a series of sandstone compartments at a forty-five-degree angle, and that women kneel before them “as a laundress does over the wash-tub.” He notes that the same rooms serve for cooking, sleeping, and storage, with water-jars, osier baskets, and hand-loom blankets. The description is notable for its frankness: “Neatness is not one of the characteristics of the Zunyians,” Morgan writes, and he observes that outdoor adobe ovens double as dog kennels and children’s playhouses. These details ground the architectural argument in lived practice—the terrace roofs become living spaces, and the mills become evidence of a labor system unchanged “from time immemorial.”

Architecture as Social Evidence

Morgan’s central claim is that the size and layout of Indigenous houses reflect a social unit larger than the nuclear family. He writes that “the family through these stages of progress was too weak an organization to face alone the struggle of life, and sought a shelter for itself in large households composed of several families.” The excerpts do not provide the full comparative evidence from Iroquois or Mesoamerican sites, but they do show how Morgan reads architecture: the Zuni living-room dimensions (twelve by eighteen feet), the multiple fireplaces, and the terrace access all point to communal use. The book’s catalog subjects—dwellings and social life—are thus not separate topics but two sides of the same argument. Readers should watch how Morgan moves from a building’s physical features to inferences about kinship and daily cooperation.

Morgan’s work is best approached as a sustained thesis rather than a neutral compendium. Because the excerpts are drawn from the preface and a single Zuni description, they show only part of the comparative framework that spans the continent. Readers should note that the book’s argument depends on linking the “Long House of the Iroquois” to the “Joint Tenement houses of adobe and of stone” in the Southwest and Mesoamerica—a connection that the excerpts hint at but do not fully demonstrate. The value lies in watching how a nineteenth-century ethnologist used architectural evidence to reconstruct social structure.

I remember standing beneath the great cedar beams of my grandmother’s cabin, imagining the longhouse families’ shared fire. Her quiet hearth felt like threads to those Pueblo grindstones — life shaped by walls and warmth. Then I recalled Burial Mounds of the Northern Sections of the United States — A Reader’s Guide; its earth-heavy hills whispered the same slow truth: dwelling and memory are one continuous gesture.