OCR Text |
Show 158 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1600 twenty feet wide. The house was built of a stout frame- work of upright poles set in the ground, with horizontal supports to strengthen them, and the roof was either triangular or rounded. The whole was covered in with bark shingles, and a second frame- work on the outside held the covering firm. The interior was divided into compartments, roughly six or eight feet square, ranging along each side of the house and opening on a common passageway down the centre, in which the fires of the occupants were built. Sleeping- bunks were arranged around the walls of each chamber. *• Each of these long houses was inhabited by related families, which would mean that the mothers and children were as a rule of the same clan, while the fathers were of other and various clans.^~ As a consequence, one clan, that of the women, would predominate in the house, and it thus became a factor of importance in the general organization. Further, the system completely altered the general status of women in the group, for over each house a matron presided whose authority was almost absolute in matters of domestic economy, and any undesirable male occupant could be summarily expelled by the female element. The women also had a voice in the councils of the clan and could make their influence felt even in the deliberations of the general council of the confederacy, although they were not permitted to address that body in person. |