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Show i goo] INDIAN LIFE 219 same idea to their frozen environment, but the rafters are lacking and the blocks of snow are wedged tight by the key- block at the summit of the rotmded arch. ? s The greatest development of wooden houses; that # Ttffe northwest coast, has already been described. 1 In that region the attempt was made to roughhew the planks, but in other parts of the continent wooden houses were usually built of poles, or sometimes, as among the Cherokee, of logs, ^ he highest form of native architecture is reached in the southwestern states and in Mexico. Nyithin the limits of the United States the Pueblo dwellings of Arizona and New Mexico are the best and most durable. The typical Pueblo village is a cluster of rectangular houses, or rather rooms, arranged about a central court, or in a row, and usually placed one over the other in terraces. ^ The walls of the older Pueblo houses are of undressed stone, and the roofs are formed of beams, with successive layers of smaller sticks, brush, and packed earth. Ladders give access to the terraces, and the rooms of the ground floor were entered by holes in the roof. In these modern days, doors, stone stairways, chimneys, and drains are being introduced with rapidity, and modify the more primitive character of the houses. The ancient cliff- dwellings of the canons were nothing more than these Pueblo houses built in See above, chap. iii. |
