Native America

This afternoon, I'm sitting in a Seneca bark longhouse which we reconstructed on this historic site known as Ganondagan. And Ganondagan means that there's a town situated on a hill, surrounded by the substance of white, referring to white blossoms that were growing here when the people first settled here, which eventually turned into an edible fruit. In the year 1997, we built this bark longhouse based on a longhouse that we had-- that had been excavated maybe about 18 miles to the west of here on a site where there was a buffalo farm. And because of that, there was no plowing taking place there, and after 300 years, what is left in the ground is a pattern of the posts that have rotted away in the ground. They leave these post molds, and so archaeologists working there were able to map out how many poles were in the outside wall, how wide the doorways were, how the fire pits were spaced, and even a little bit about the materials that were used for the post that represent the outside walls, or hold up the outside walls, which are cedar, in this case. And the rest of the poles in here are hickory, and every hickory pole was peeled and the bark was used for the lashing to tie the house together. Houses of this time period came into existence before the arrival of nails and screws, so the houses were lashed together. So this is a house that has-- is going through the fur trade period when European items are making their way into our possession by our providing beaver pelts to the people who are trading with us-- to the English, the French, and the Dutch. But this is a fully reconstructed Seneca bark longhouse that I'm sitting in this afternoon. And the longhouse was first a home to people who lived here. And the home was, you know, a multi-family dwelling. You could maybe have 35 people living in this house. Each compartment is for a family. This is their cooking fire, this is how they've kept warm. Mother, dad, maybe an infant on that side, and on this side, the children that are older. Two or three children might sleep on this side of the fire. And families shared this fire-- I always say, you know, the kind of privacy that we're used to didn't exist in this kind of structure. When a man married a woman, he didn't go and build a new house. He moved into the house of his wife, and her mother was still living here and her daughters, her other daughters. As they married, their husbands moved in. All of the members of that family descending from the mother are of the same clan. We can't marry within our own clan. So the only person who is not a member of the... let's just say this is the Heron household-- is the husband who is married in. He's from a different clan. So there's a kind of a structure to the house that, of course, is not visible when you just see it. Beyond the fact that this is a living quarters, or a house, is the fact that all kinds of things could take place here. Whether it is a ceremony that needs to take place, whether it might be a naming ceremony for an infant that's first come into the world now, whether it might be a storyteller who comes and tells stories to the group. Maybe a visitor comes from the distance and has a message to deliver and he comes here. There might have been a larger house of the same style and design where the council itself met, where the chiefs, the leaders of the community sat and conferred on the needs of the particular community. Today, when we say longhouse, we mean two things. We mean on the one hand, it's the place where, in the traditional governments, where the chiefs meet, where the clan mothers confer with the chiefs, and they take up the issues that are confronting the community, and they try to come up with solutions that are the ideal solution. And then, on the other hand, it's a place where the ceremonial way of life is carried out. The longhouse is that kind of a place. And so as the ceremonial cycle progresses throughout the year, various ceremonies of giving thanks, it's whatever gifts that our mother the earth is supplying to us, and our creator has provided for us.