The Longhouse

The Longhouse. Illiniwek Village State Historic Site. , Imagine living in a long, wide house with 26 relatives. Perhaps your parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins all live under the same roof. The members of the Illinois at Iliniwek lived in just this manner in longhouses during the 17th century. This is the exact location of one such longhouse. It had a central ridgeline, which was the central support for the structure. The five large posts in the middle define this line. The posts around the outside edge may have been either the exterior wall or they may have supported an additional lean-to extension. On the north end, there was an arbor, open on the sides to let the breeze blow through in the hot summer and closed in the winter to function as a windbreak. , The Illinois Indians built several styles of houses, including longhouses and the smaller wigwam style. Henri Tonti about 1691 described them as "made with great pieces of timber, interlaced with branches, and covered with bark. The inside is more neat, the walls or sides, as well as the floor, being finely matted. Every cottage has two apartments, wherein several families might lodge, and under every one there is a cave or vault wherein they preserve their Indian corn..." When visiting here in 1673, Father Jacques Marquette referred to the Iliniwek houses as " ... very large, and are roofed and floored with mats made of rushes." Father Marquette estimated that about 8,000 people were living in 300 houses. , [Captions:] , An Illinois woman and child sit in front of their longhouse with some of their garden produce, including corn, beans, squash and watermelon , Interior view of a longhouse. , Exterior view of a wigwam., Above, a drawing of a smaller structure here at Illiniwek which has been rebuilt in the same location more than once. The black circles indicate the location of posts and the dotted lines represent the overall house shape. , Left, is a drawing made by an archaeologist who excavated the longhouse in front of you. Solid black circles represent the posts; shaded areas were storage pits. Care has been taken to select posts of the same diameter and place them exactly where the former posts were. It is not known how high the lodge might have been.