LONGHOUSE

traditional dwelling of the Iroquois Indians of the northeastern United States, particularly northern New York, until the 19th century, when they abandoned it as a residence. The term has also been used to describe the dwellings of other North American Indians; and it is applied today to the building on an Iroquois reservation that is designated as church and meeting hall, though its form is entirely different from the traditional longhouse residence. The traditional Iroquois longhouse is thought to have been built by constructing a long rectangular box out of poles 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5 centimetres) in diameter. A domed roof was placed down the entire length of the building by bending saplings from posts on one side over to the opposite side. The whole was then covered by tying bark onto the frame. Separate doors were provided for men and women, one at each end of the house. Excavations of many longhouses in New York state testify to the design and structure of these houses. They ranged from 40 to 334 feet (12 to 102 metres) in length but were always about 22 or 23 feet wide. Each was subdivided into numerous stalls by walls built out from the two long side walls about every seven feet, leaving a long, open centre aisle from one end of the house to the other. It is supposed that each family had a stall for its use; but as there was no wall shutting off each stall from the central aisle, there was virtually no privacy. For cooking, four stalls, two on each side, shared a central fire built in the aisle; an opening was left in the roof to serve as a chimney. Life in the longhouse had ended by 1800, but the meeting room of the contemporary tribe continues to be called the longhouse. Today, however, it is generally built with clapboard sides, and the interior, which has no stalls, functions as a large meeting hall. Separate doorways for males and females are still provided. The dwelling gave its name to the Longhouse Religion, founded by a Seneca, Handsome Lake. See Handsome Lake cult.