Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/90

 sit." "We here find among the Virginia Indians at the epoch of their discovery long-houses very similar to the long-houses of the Iroquois, with the same evidence of a large household. It may safely be taken as a rule that every Indian household in the aboriginal period, whether large or small, lived from common stores.

Mr. Caleb Swan, who visited the Creek Indians of Georgia in 1790, found the people living in small houses or cabins, but in clusters, each cluster being occupied by a part of a gens or clan. He remarks that "the smallest of their towns have from ten to forty houses, and some of the largest from fifty to two hundred, that are tolerably compact. These houses stand in clusters of four, five, six, seven, and eight together. * * * Each cluster of houses contains a clan or family of relations who eat and live in common. Here the fact of several families uniting on the principle of kin, living in a cluster of houses, and practicing communism, is expressly stated.

James Adair, writing still earlier of the southern Indians of the United States generally, remarks in a passage before quoted, as follows: "I have observed, with much inward satisfaction, the community of goods that prevailed among them. * * * And though they do not keep one promiscuous common stock, yet it is to the very same effect, for every one has his own family, or tribe, and when any one is speaking either of the individuals or habitations of his own tribe, he says, 'He is of my house,' or, 'It is my house.'" It is singular that this industrious investigator did not notice, what is now known to be the fact, that all these tribes were organized in gentes and phratries. It would have rendered his observations upon their usages and customs more definite. Elsewhere he remarks further that "formerly the Indian law obliged every town to work together in one body, in sowing or planting their crops, though their fields were divided by proper marks, and their harvest is gathered separately. The Cherokees and Muscogees [Creeks] still observe that old custom, which is very necessary for such idle people." They cultivated, like the Iroquois, three kinds of maize,