Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/823

 their ends molded upon each other by the aid of an axe, or an adz. The Choctaws have long built such houses, and the more intelligent tribes of the Indians on our frontier will undoubtedly follow their example, as they become completely surrounded by our advancing line of civilization.

From this point, did the scope of my article admit of it, I should like to show how, from such houses as have thus far been described, we pass through easy transitional stages to the higher types of architecture, or the communal homes of the Indians of the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. Such a treatise, however, would form quite a volume, and far exceed my limits.

In those transitional stages to which I refer, it can be shown that a great many interesting forms of homes are built, or



used to be built, by the Indians. These present every imaginable form: in some the thatching is very well done, and very ingenious; in some the door is at the side, while in others it is on the roof; they contain single rooms, as well as rooms en suite; and finally they gradually pass from the use of brush, poles, hides, and mud-plaster to the employment of adobe-plaster, rubble-stone, and adobes. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan has said that "a comparison will show that they belong to a common indigenous system of architecture. There is a common principle running through all this architecture, from the hut of the savage to the commodious joint-tenement house of the village Indians of Mexico and Central America, which will contribute