A typical Iroquois village link to more info on village life

The Double walled palisade entrance gave them plenty of protection

Four hundred years ago, Iroquois people were slash-and-burn farmers, who cut and burned clearings in the forest for their longhouse villages and farm fields.

Villages were typically located on hilltops, which were well drained Villages were typically located on hilltops, which were well drained. Farm fields and supplies of firewood and water were nearby.

The Iroquois preferred to clear second growth forest for fields and villages, because the trees in the second growth forest are smaller, and could be used as the raw materials for building the framework of the longhouses and for the palisade or stockade that surrounded the village

The palisade or stockade around the village provided protection The palisade or stockade around the village provided protection. It was woven together like a giant wicker basket

Longhouses were approximately 20 feet wide, 20 feet high and commonly 180 to 220 feet long.

The longhouses were covered with sheets of bark stripped from old, large-diameter trees

Different kinds of trees were used in longhouse construction and were chosen for properties of durability, strength, and flexibility. For covering, elm bark was preferred

Clearing the fields also provided some of the huge quantities of firewood that the residents used to cook, and to heat and provide light in the longhouses

Iroquois women were the farmers Iroquois women were the farmers. They planted corn, beans, and squash in the new fields, commonly together, between the charred stumps of the former forest.

As longhouses were completed in the new village, families moved in from the old village and immediately began life-as-usual.

Pictographs painted in red at the ends of the longhouses identified the clan of the extended family living within.

The men of a longhouse - husbands who moved into the longhouses of their wives' clan and the women's brothers - were soon digging storage pits.

Although older children assisted their mothers and fathers in various tasks, they also found time for play

For every hour spent in building the longhouse, probably five hours had been taken up with the collection and preparation of its raw materials.

A longhouse could be built in several days with the help of all the family members who would live in it - a kind of 'longhouse-raising bee.

The first corn of the year - "green corn" - was harvested in late summer; this was the occasion of one of the Iroquois thanksgiving ceremonies.

An elder assisting in the harvest An elder assisting in the harvest. In their work in the cornfields women were assisted by their older children and occasionally by elder men of their longhouse

Each longhouse was occupied by an extended family, all related through the mothers' side of the family.

A longhouse was a spacious and comfortable place for the many families who lived in the many compartments spaced down its length

Information about the interior of the longhouse has come from Iroquois oral tradition and from descriptions made by European visitors in the 1600s and 1700s. Artefacts recovered by archaeologists from the sites of former villages also help to complete the inventory of objects that were used in longhouses.