Inside is a passage down the middle of the longhouse connecting the two ends and used for the daily administrations of living such as walking, visiting and cooking. At the two opposite sides there is a shelf that runs the length of the longhouse that is cooler for sleep in the summer. They sleep end to end all the way down the longhouse on both sides.
In winter they sleep below on mats near the fire for greater warmth and lie close to one another with no space between them or separation.
The space beneath the shelf is called garihagueu and eindichaguet that is a place to put the dry wood to burn in winter. They also use large logs called aneincuny that were stored in front of the lodges or in the porches which they call aque. The larger log is placed in the fire and as it burns, the ashes are tended and the log lifted and placed in the fire to continue to burn.
Inside the longhouse, there would be one fire for two families (one on each side of the longhouse across from each other). Sometimes a longhouse would have as many as eight, ten or twelve fires, which meant that there were sixteen, twenty, or twenty-four families living in that longhouse.
All women help in collecting the wood. They use only dry wood because the green wood makes too much smoke. If they did not find dry wood, they would find trees that have dry branches and break these into pieces to use. If they had to fall a tree to get to the dry branches, they would leave the tree on the ground to dry out for the next year because they did not have the tools to saw up the wood.
Because they did not have storage chests or cupboards to put their private or precious possessions in, they would dig a hole inside the longhouse as a cache and place the possession in the hole and then cover it with dirt.
At each end of the longhouse was a porch that they used to store the dried corn by using large vats or casks of treebark. In the midst of the lodge are suspended two large poles which they call ouaronta to hang the pots, and put their clothing, provisions, and other things to keep them dry and up off the floor. |
