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Show 218 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 mats were also common in many tribes, but usually as summer shelters. The Nez Perc6 of Idaho were described by the early explorers as living in houses as much as one hundred and fifty feet in length and built of straw and mats, the idea having been borrowed, it was supposed, from the wooden houses of the Pacific coast. The evidence is fairly good, however, that such were not the common Shahaptian dwellings but sporadic foreign introductions. The simpler type of the more permanent dwellings is seen in the underground lodges of the northwestern plateaus, which were devised to afford protection in the severe winters of that region, and are simply a modification of the more temporary shelters of brush and bark just described. A ' shallow excavation, circular in form, was covered in with a conical roof of poles, and that with brush or mats, and often with earth.. These earth houses are typically western and appear chiefly on the plateaus, in Oregon and central California, on the southern plains, and in the southwest, among such tribes as the Navajo and Porno. They occur sporadically, but not generally, in other parts of the continent, ^ he details of construction vary: they are sometimes round, sometimes square, sometimes large, and sometimes small, but almost always embody the three features of excavation, particularly where the winters are hard; of a frame- work of poles or beams; and of a covering of earth or sod. ^ he snow houses of the Eskimo are adaptations of the |
