An outline of the assigned reading that includes thesis of the reading, 3-5 critical points and your assessment of the effectiveness of the reading. -

An outline of the assigned reading that includes thesis of the reading, 3-5 critical points and your assessment of the effectiveness of the reading.
need at least 3-5 Paragraphs

Chapter 2

Don't use plagiarized sources. Get Your Custom Assignment on

An outline of the assigned reading that includes thesis of the reading, 3-5 critical points and your assessment of the effectiveness of the reading.

From as Little as $13/Page

Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

Modifying factors in Native American architecture

It is impossible to single out why any Indian dwelling looked and worked the way it did.
To be sure, Indians were responding to the climate around them and making the most of
natural building materials at hand. But the evolution of a particular habitation also was
affected by social organization, patterns of gathering food, religious life, and history. To
understand the factors that form Indian architecture, one must look for what environment
and culture made possible, not inevitable. Before proposing a major determinant for the
design of a tribal building, one must undertake the long and painstaking accumulation
of recalcitrant detail, in the words of architectural scholar P.G. Anson, to clarify how the
structure functioned in every aspect of life.

Amos Rapoport, the leading proponent of a multidisciplinary analysis of vernacular
architecture, writes in House Form and Culture: Materials, construction and technology
are best treated as modifying factors, rather than form determinants, because they decide
neither what is to be built nor its form. Our chapters interweave these modifying
factors into a full-bodied narrative, but we consider six of them paramount: technology,
climate, economics, social organization, religion, and history. Moreover, we are interested
as much in how these factors help to interpret an Indian dwelling as in what the dwelling
can tell us about Indian life. For one tribe, social factors may play a major role in deter-
mining building size; for another, the demands of gathering food might have a greater
impact. For a third, the importance of a structure to religious beliefs might have the
strongest consequences, and a fourth might manifest a struggle for dominance between
Indian and non-Indian building traditions.

TECHNOLOGY

Indians had no choice but to build with raw materials from the land around them. They
fashioned their dwellings from wood, bark, leaves, grass, reeds, earth, snow, stone, skin,
and bones. Their principal types of construction were (1) tensile or bent frame with
covering, (2) compression shell, and (3) post and beam (joined) wood frame with various
walling materials.

The wigwam style of framing exemplified tensile construction (Figure 2.1). The
dome-shaped frame gained enough springy strength from its bent saplings to support bark,
mat, or thatch covers. In the compression shell, illustrated by the snow block iglu of the

American Architectural History : A Contemporary Reader, edited by Keith Eggener, Taylor & Francis Group, 2004. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csupomona/detail.action?docID=200277.
Created from csupomona on 2023-04-30 21:20:22.

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

Arctic or the stone-and-adobe walls of the Southwestern Pueblo, the building material
served both as structural support and wall covering (Figures 2.2 and 2.3). The joined-
frame type was used for a variety of conical, rectilinear, or gabled structures found across
North America. Their superstructure was made of straight poles or timbers which were
tied together or otherwise joined and covered with planks, skins, or earth (Figure 2.4).
Few, however, of the Indian house types conformed exactly to these methods. Both the
pueblo (compression shell) and the Plains earthlodge (joined frame) were roofed with
wooden beams covered by smaller poles and completed with a padding of fine twigs and
grass and a layer of earth. Where joining required cordage, the means of preparing lengths
of inner bark, slender withe, or root fibers was a basic craft that often escaped the scrutiny
of early ethnographers. To a considerable extent, Indian architecture was tied, wrapped,
and knotted together.

Although important to Indians in profound ways, houses were not usually conceived
as articles of permanent craftsmanship. Much of their building technology had an impro-
visational and practical flavor. This is not to say that building methods were arbitrary.
Construction techniques followed time-honored rules, but little attempt was made to
preserve materials. On the Northwest Coast the woodwork in large family houses was
painted or sculpted only where it was meant to impress onlookers. Even at the Pueblo
Bonito ruins in western New Mexico, walls of elaborately patterned stonework were

40 | Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

2.1
Wichita Grass
House,
Southern
Plains, probably
Oklahoma or
Texas

2.2
Eskimo Iglu,
Alaska

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

plastered over, and, by historic times, pueblo walls were hastily manufactured and
rarely bonded.

Constructing each house type called for special skills and tools. To bend a sapling
into a smooth arch might call for debarking, trimming, aging, prebending, or steaming so
that weak points would not splinter and crack. Felling trees, peeling bark, splitting boards,
cutting and rainproofing hides, and making fiber ties were skills that were transmitted
from the old to the young, often through prescribed interpersonal relationships and at
appropriate moments in the tribal calendar.

Materials and construction techniques contributed to the appearance of Indian
buildings, but did not restrict the ideas of their builders, who often pushed materials to
their limits as they made structures in all shapes and sizes. We must stress again that the

Modifying factors in Native American architecture | 41

2.4
Apsaroke (Crow) Tipi,
Montana, 1908

2.3
Taos Pueblo, New
Mexico, sixteenth
century and after

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

question of Indian architecture is less what they could build than what they wanted to
build. Expanding a building to accommodate new family members, for example, could
most easily be accomplished by rectilinear structures. In nearly every geographical area
Indians built houses of extended length to meet social requirements. Early Eskimo struc-
tures of the late Dorset Period could be more than 150 feet long with stone sidewalls and,
probably, a series of connected tent roofs. In the eastern woodlands, the Iroquois lashed
together pole and bark longhouses exceeding 300 feet in length. The Coast Salish people
of the Northwest put up shed-roofed plank buildings that were more than 600 feet in
length, sheltering an entire tribe under one roof. The modular plan of both the Iroquois
and Coast Salish structures allowed sections to be added or removed as new individuals
married into the family.

It was difficult to enlarge circular structures, but they could be joined. When Eskimo
families wanted more space, they clustered their winter snow houses, or joined two tents
with an inner passageway in summertime. The Mandan of North Dakota, preferring
smaller earthlodges during the winter, sometimes added sleeping chambers connected to
the main lodge by a short tunnel.

CLIMATE

Indian builders developed ways to keep the cold, rain, wind, and heat at bay. Techniques
for warming or cooling were sometimes part of the hidden engineering of a dwelling and
might have little effect on its outward appearance. The smaller and more subterranean the
building, the easier it was to heat, but in chilly climates, dwellings often were built at
ground level and were large and drafty.

Indians had other means of adapting to the weather besides designing their houses
for protection. Partitions of hanging mats broke up drafts in large structures, and split-
plank, adobe, or snow-block windbreaks frequently were built against doorways. Some
Subarctic tribes relayered their floors with fresh, fragrant pine boughs every week. During
the worst of a winter season some tribes migrated to warmer or more sheltered environs.
They might wear heavy clothing indoors, and they were trained from childhood to tolerate
variations in temperature. They also built a variety of structures and spaces in which to
spend time during the different seasons of a single day.

Indian dwellings were generally heated from centrally located hearths, or separate
family fires in large structures (Figure 2.5). A wide range of insulating methods was
devised. The earth surrounding pit houses retained heat and was an effective barrier
against wind chill. Southwestern Pueblos built above ground level used the same heat-
retention principle. Their thick adobe walls soaked up heat from the sun during the day,
and at night, radiated warmth into the rooms.

Indian builders employed a range of double-shelled walls. On the Plains, tipis had
an inner liner that created an insulating air pocket. When temperatures dropped, this space
could be filled with dry grass, and snow could be piled around the outside. In the Aleutian
Islands, the natives built double walls of planks, stuffing moss or grass in between for
insulation, and stacking sod against the outside walls and roof.

42 | Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

Relief from the heat was also important. Nearly everywhere Indian encampments
included arbors. In the Southwest they were simple post and beam structures, shaded with
leafy boughs, split cactus trunks, or cornstalks. In the southern Plains, the Kiowa and
Wichita devised large bowed frames that they thatched with willow boughs to within a
few feet of the ground. In scorching weather they frequently splashed the cover with water;
evaporation lowered the shaded areas temperature by ten degrees or more. A long,
running arbor shading an entire village was built by the Yokuts of the Central Valley in
California.

In the Southeast, where humidity as well as heat was a problem, houses needed as
much air flow as possible. The Seminole of the Florida swamps achieved this by
constructing thatch-roofed, open-sided buildings with deep eaves and raised floors so that
air circulated above and below. The raised floor also protected the occupants from the
fluctuating ground water, insects, and snakes.

SOCIAL

Social organization significantly influenced the size of Indian dwellings and living arrange-
ments. Local resources and methods of food gathering might restrict the size of a

Modifying factors in Native American architecture | 43

2.5 Karl Bodmer, The Interior of the Hut of a Mandan Chief

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

community, but social rules usually governed who lived with whom and who slept beside
whom, where one moved after marrying, the size of dwellings, and their spatial relation-
ships. The way in which tribal people arranged their spaces and used their dwellings
reflected the way they organized their society as a whole. Architecture, then, was a prin-
cipal tool for socializationa means by which members of a tribe learned rules of
behavior and a particular worldview.

Social customs also dictated who worked on the erection of the building, who owned
it, and where it should be positioned in a village complex. Tribes such as the Siouan
speakers of the Plains, and some Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande, split their societies
into halves, social divisions known to anthropologists as moieties. In some villages the
residences of the two groups were placed on opposite sides of a stream or valley (Figure
2.6). During their summer gatherings, the Siouans pitched their tipis in a circle with an
invisible line running north-southdividing Sky clans from Earth clans. Many
different housing patterns were found across Native America, from single dwellings for
extended families, to grouped dwellings for single patrilineal families, to areas within large
villages where clan members clustered together.

Men and womens roles in the construction and ownership of dwellings were
sharply defined. Over most of central North America, women held sway over home and
hearth, either building or supervising construction of their houses. Along the West Coast
from Alaska to Southern California and on the eastern seaboard, however, men
were largely responsible for building. In parts of the Southwest, and in pockets of the
Great Basin, men and women shared the labor equally. Among the Mandan Hidatsa of

44 | Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

2.6 Taos Pueblo, plan of the central portion

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

the upper Missouri River, women held the right to erect earthlodges, but men cut and
erected the frame.

Cheyenne women had a guild which convened with feasting and prayer whenever
they gathered to cut and sew covers and make porcupine quill ornaments for their tipis.
Where kinship was traced through the female line and children automatically became
members of the mothers clan, the house and its property were generally considered hers.
Thus, among the Navajo, a divorce usually forced the husband to leave his wifes dwelling
and return to his parents home.

Sometimes house-building was a ritualized means of cementing relations among
tribes, or between clans, moieties, and important families. Among the Hisanai of the
southern Plains and the Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast, kin or clan groups, each
supplying specific materials and each with a different construction assignment, worked
together, as in a barn raising. Such collaborative efforts often tightened kinship bonds and
raised the status of the new occupants.

Within the confines of the house, rules concerning the use of space could be quite
strict. Even for hunting people frequently on the move, such as the Cree of central Canada,
temporary quarters and sleeping assignments were in traditional places determined by sex,
family, marital status, and age. The Cree told of a supernatural woman who traveled
ahead of the hunters to set up their tents and prepare campso that no matter where they
moved, it was as if they were staying in the same place. Cree youngsters were warned not
to count the tent poles in their lodges or her magic would fail. The Cree, Eskimo, Pawnee,
and many other groups also recreated that same place by carefully observing rules of
domestic etiquette. In that way role relationships among tribal members were preserved
and people found a measure of privacy and peace within spaces that most Europeans and
Americans today would find too exposed and too cramped.

ECONOMICS

No Indian group had a single dwelling suited to all seasons; even Pueblo people were semi-
nomadic, moving into summer quarters near their cornfields. Most tribes relied on
different food sources at least for summer and winter, and occupied different camps in fall
and spring. Each location commonly had its characteristic house type. Modern archeology
refers to a hunting and gathering societys base camp as their central place. Even if a
band traveled widely, they often had one such location which was to them home.
Indians on the Northwest Coast considered themselves more at home in winter, when
they occupied the family plank houses built on coastal sites that families had owned for
years. Their summer fishing and berry-gathering camps were inland, up the rivers. When
some tribes departed for the summer spots, they untied the wallboards of their winter
houses, lashed them between canoes, and used them as siding for the more makeshift
summer quarters. In the fall they returned to the bare frames of their winter homes and
walled them up again with the same boards.

The opposite seasonal pattern was customary for the earthlodge dwellers of the
northern Plains. They were more at home during the summer in large, cool, earth-roofed

Modifying factors in Native American architecture | 45

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

buildings, which were framed with heavy cottonwood timbers and situated on high river
terraces. They left these structures to occupy portable tipis during their autumn hunts,
moving into smaller earthlodges in protected, wooded areas along the Missouri River
floodplain when winter came.

For more sedentary people such as the woodland dwellers of upper New York state,
intense occupation of a single village site often exhausted both local building supplies and
garden soil. Every ten or fifteen years, when the saplings they used as their primary
building material became sparse, the Iroquois would resettle the entire community, often
downhill from the original site. Insect infestation, overcrowding, and a pile-up of garbage
could also cause a village to move on.

Fluctuations in supplies of food or water quickly affected population size, which in
turn had an impact upon architecture. In Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, North Americas
most advanced expression of public architecture was achieved because Indians were able
to divert rainwater that fell on surrounding mesas for agricultural use. But an apparent
decrease in the amount of summer rain in the thirteenth century probably upset this fragile
dependence, and the tribes could no longer support themselves nor their high-density
apartment-house complexes.

Highly mobile native bands such as the Eskimo of the Arctic or the Paiute of the
Great Basin stayed at home only when the weather forced them to. For the Eskimo in
their turf or snow houses, winter was a time of seclusion; for the Paiute in their brush- or
tule-covered shelters, the only time spent indoors was in January and February when the
Nevada desert was frozen. For both groups winter was a period of family gatherings and
storytelling, but afterwards they were anxious to be on the move again. The literature on
Indian settlement patterns usually ignores the fact that a seminomadic existence not only
made good sense, but that Indians deeply enjoyed it. Apparently some tribes followed a
food-seeking, nomadic way of life because they had little other choice, but they also
relished the sense of freedom, the reunions with distant kin, and the activity and change
of scenery.

RELIGION

The buildings of Native Americans encoded not only their social order but often their
tribal view of the cosmos. Many Indian narratives tell of a Distant Time or a Myth
Age when a First House was bestowed upon a tribe as a container for their emerging
culture. Some tribes likened the creation of the world itself to the creation of a house,
strengthening the metaphoric correspondence between dwelling and cosmos. Thereafter
Indian peoples held the ritual power to renew their cosmos through rebuilding, remod-
eling, or reconsecrating their architecture.

The idea that houses served as models of the universe is suggested by the folklore
and architectural terms of native groups as distant from one another as the Eskimo, the
Mohave, the Navajo, the Hopi, the Delaware, and the Blackfeet. To the Navajo, moun-
tains were models for the first house, its four principal posts symbolically equated
with the four cardinal directions, and its floor space divided into day and night domains.

46 | Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

The Hidatsa of North Dakota believed the universe was a mammoth earthlodge, its sky
dome held up by four enormous pillars just like those of their own four-post lodges.

The mythological house and the buildings consecrated as their replicas could repre-
sent the four quarters of the sky, zenith and nadir, and the skydome, which shamans
could enter through a sky door or sun hole, in order to obtain special powers. The
earth-navel and cosmic tree, or center-of-the-world pole, were two other important
cosmological concepts (which the historian of religions Mircea Eliade has named the
umbilicus mundi and axis mundi) that were often represented architecturally.

The tribal cosmos might also be multilayered. Usually there were three tiers, with
the present world situated on the middle plane. The Delaware, though, envisioned their
universe as twelve houses, one on top of another, which they symbolically entered during
their annual Big House ceremony.

Origin myths also helped to teach tribal members the proper way to collect building
materials, good construction techniques, and how to bless the finished building.
Sometimes a myth was recited before construction began. The tale of the first Wichita
grass house prescribed which materials should be harvested by women and which by men.
It also regulated each phase of construction, described the prayers to be uttered, and
dictated how the building, its doors and four cedar ribs jutting from the top, was to be
aligned with the cardinal directions.

Symbolic correspondence between building and body was also common. Among the
Tolowa of Northern California, a special sweathouse was dedicated to the spirit of an
ancient supernatural salmon just before the annual spawn. As the hopeful fishermen
entered to pray for a healthy catch, they believed they were entering the salmons body;
the ridgepole had become its backbone and the roof boards its ribs. On the Plains, the
Hugging Bear design, found on both Blackfeet and Kiowa tipis, produced the effect of
a giant furry creature embracing its occupants. For tribes as distant from one another as
the Sanpoil of the Plateau and the Winnebago of the Great Lakes, the sweat bath was
envisaged as the body of a sacred being which people entered to be purified or cured.

Houses and the materials that went into them were often considered alive. Your
house is a person, said an Achumawi Indian from Northern California during a visit to
the linguist Jaime de Angulo. It knows very well that I am a stranger here. Thats why I
sent it tobacco smoke, to make friends with it. I said House, you are the house of my
friend. You shouldnt do me harm. House, I want you to protect me. During the years
of European domination such attention to the inner, sacred life of architecture focused
upon ceremonial structures such as the Delaware Big House, the Apache puberty tipi, the
Papago Rain House, and the Plains Sun Dance lodge. Among the Kickapoo of Oklahoma
and Mexico, and certain tribes of the Southwest, however, the ritual renovation of
domestic space is still observed.

Village plans also reflected tribal mythology. The Creek of the Southeast constructed
their ceremonial square grounds to reflect the directional order in the universe and to
signify the progression of a mans life through it. Four arbors, which were aligned with
the cardinal directions, surrounded a four-log fire around which boys, middle-aged
warriors, and aged men were assigned seating according to age. In the center of the
circular plazas of the Mandan villages on the Missouri River, a shrine protected an effigy

Modifying factors in Native American architecture | 47

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

of their culture hero, Lone Man. He had instructed the Mandan in how to marry, hunt,
and build houses, and had saved them from the Great Flood by placing them inside an
enclosure symbolized by the shrine. The temple lodge on the innermost circle of buildings
around the plaza always faced the direction where Lone Man disappeared after saying
good-bye to his people. Everyday Mandan life revolved around these affirmations of their
divine origins.

HISTORY

Modifications in Indian architecture did not begin with the arrival of Europeans. Change
had been under way for at least nine and a half thousand yearsroughly the date of the
oldest North American Indian house thus far identified, a 12-foot-long oval-shaped
dwelling which stood near the Stanislaus River in eastern California. In pre-Columbian
times numerous Native American societies flourished, and a succession of architectural
ideas evolved. Some building forms developed rapidly, some gradually, and their rates of
change can only be plotted in areas where archeological remains reveal considerable depth
of time.

Scholarly interest in the pedigree of Indian buildings has been limited largely to one
house type: the pit house. Indians burrowed into the ground to sink the floors for many
different forms of dwellings, and tracing the distribution of semisubterranean houses has
produced a kind of architectural family tree. The superstructure of the Kamchadal pit
house in Siberia is similar to that of an early Pueblo kiva (Figure 2.7), which in turn was
a survivor of an older domestic pit house form in the Southwest. Across the Arctic the
semisubterranean winter housecommonly rectangularis found everywhere. To the
south are the pit houses of British Columbias interior with their unique, slanting inside
supports. In California, valley bands lived in dug-out dwellings that bore a remarkable
resemblance to the Plateau pit houses. It has been argued that upper Missouri River earth-
lodges extended this tradition into the Great Plains, and that it continued into the partly
excavated town houses of the Southeast.

The problem with such hypotheses of direct architectural influence is that there is
usually a dearth of minute data, a wide range of time periods, and too variable a range of
terrains and climates to make them convincing. It might be more profitable to develop
small-scale architectural sequences in limited geographical regions and time periods.
What is probable, however, is that tribes retained outdated house types for other uses,
either as ritual structures or for storage. Because of the gradual nature of architectural
change in pre-Columbian Native America, tribal areas often became a sort of architec-
tural memory bank.

With the arrival of Europeans, architectural change in Indian settlements acceler-
ated. Disease, resettlement, and warfare forced the coalescence of some villages and
building traditions (Figure 2.8), and the virtual abandonment of others. As metal tools
and nails, then paints and cloth, and finally milled lumber and molded bricks became
available, traditional materials such as buffalo hide, elm bark, and other natural supplies
became harder to get. Reservation life also restricted the Indians freedom of movement

48 | Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

to obtain building materials. Indian agents and missionaries frowned on all primitive
and pagan expressions of traditional Indian cultures, often singling out for disapproval
old forms of house-life. Social reformers and East Coast friends of the Indian repro-
duced in their publications photographs of tipis and bark houses with captions decrying
the old, unhealthy, disease-breeding mode of existence that they represented.

Despite strong pressure to forsake their architectural heritage, some Indian groups
were reluctant to give up the buildings and the way of life they represented. They had
already retained outmoded house types out of nostalgia for a golden age; the Hopi Kisi,
a brush shelter used during the Snake ceremony, or the Mandan Okipa (temple lodge)
both were probably descendants of domestic structures. Instructed to behave like
Europeans, a number of Indian groups clung to their traditional architecture even more
tenaciously. Others viewed the structures blending European and Indian elements as the
foundation of a new traditional identity. Many of the stories in this book describe a
historical struggle between cultures waged on an architectural front.

It is tempting to make comparisons between Indian architecture and that of contem-
porary America, to forget that these traditional dwellings arose out of specific historical,
demographic, ecological, and cultural circumstances. These buildings seem to offer what
we miss so much. Their architectural imprint, often ephemeral, blends harmoniously with

Modifying factors in Native American architecture | 49

2.7 Kiva, Namb Pueblo, Santa Fe Co., New Mexico

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

the land, and the ebb and flow between residents and surroundings is smooth. They are
places where people can live together in comfort and tranquillity.

These buildings often resist description because there is so little to them in material
terms; in large measure, they must be experienced to be fully understood. Yet many of
their secrets will remain forever with the builders. A number of house types were never
recorded, and most of those included in this book have been eclipsed. Like the oral tradi-
tion which passed them along, the intimate knowledge of their construction materials and
building skills was always a few generations away from disappearance. The aesthetics
and proportions which determined the right look and feel for many of these buildings,
and their criteria for selecting the best natural materials for them are often irretrievable.

50 | Peter Nabokov and Robert Easton

2.8 Karl Bodmer, Encampment of Piekann Indians, near Fort McKenzie, Muscleshell River,
Montana, c.1842

C
op

yr
ig

2
00

4.
T

ay
lo

r
&

F
ra

nc
is

G
ro

up
. A

ll
rig

ht
s

re
se

rv
ed

Related Questions:

Related questions

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply