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SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMOISriAL LIFE 39
Mease,^^ is the following description of the house of a Choctaw
Indian of Imoklasha town named Astolabe
This house is nearly of a circular figure and built of clay mixed with haulm
Lstraw or grass]. The top is conical and covered with a kind of thatch [the
nature of] which I cou'd not make out. The inside roof is divided into four
parts and there are cane seats raised about two feet from the ground which
go round the building (I mean on the inside), broad enough to lie upon,
making the wall serve the purpose of a pillow. Underneath these seats or beds
they keep their potatoes and pumpions, cover'd with earth, but their corn is
in a building by itself raised at least eight feet from the ground. The fire
place is in the middle of the floor, just as in some parts of the Highlands of
Scotland only they have no aperture at top to evacuate the smoke.^" The door
is opposite one side (for the house is round without, yet on the inside it
approaches near to the figure of an octagon) and is exceeding small both in
height and breadth.*"
One of my own Choctaw informants asserted that entire canes
were used for the roof of a house and anciently for the walls as well.
He also claimed that, as a rule, they " walled off " only the north
side of the house in order to keep the north wind from getting at
them. The other winds were thought to be healthful. They also
reinforced the north side with pine tops and branches. By the above
statement he certainly does not mean that there was but one wall to
the house—and at any rate this would be refuted by the descriptions
given above—merely that the north wall was the most substantial.
Weeds and similar growths were always cleaned out about a house
as often as three times a year, and usually by the women. They
thought if these were left "it would be a place for the devil to
hide in."
Of the Choctaw house and its furniture at the opening of the
nineteenth century Cushman says:
They lived in houses made of logs, but very comfortable; not more rude
or uncouth, however, than many of the whites even of the present day [1899].
Their houses consisted generally of two rooms, both of which were used for
every domestic purpose—cooking, eating, living and sleeping ; nor was their
furniture disproportionate with that of the dwelling—for the sitting room, a
stool or two ; for the kitchen, a iwt or kettle, two or three tin cups, a large
and commodious wooden bowl, and a horn spoon, constituted about the ultimatum
[ ! ]—'twas all they needed, all they wanted, and with it they were per-
fectly contended and supremely happy .^^
Paths alone, plain and straight, then led the Choctaws where now are
broad roads and long high bridges, from village to neighborhood, and from
neighborhood to village, though many miles apart; and so open and free
of logs, bushes, and all fallen timber, was their country then, rendered thus by
^ Copy in Miss. State Archives.
"The home described by our anonymous Frenchman (p. 37) had two smokeholes and
such an arrangement has been described to me.
^° Miss. State Archives, British Dominions.
*i H. B. Cushman : Hist, of the Choc, Chiclj., and Natchoz Inds. Greenville, Tex.,
1899. P. 231.