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5. Architecture
- The University of Alabama Press
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Architecture re®ects social space. It re®ects public and private areas and household organization. It can re®ect gender roles and changes in society. Historians and archaeologists have argued that changes in Maskókalkî society and culture are re®ected in architectural forms and household organization (Braund 1993; Waselkov and Smith 2000; Waselkov et al. 1990; Wesson 2002). However, just like their pottery, Maskókalkî architecture varied over time and space. In this chapter I will characterize the architectural variation that was in use by the Maskókalkî during the eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. I will describe the ethnohistoric accounts of architectural forms and construction techniques. Then I will describe all known architectural structures that have been investigated while using the historic accounts to interpret the archaeological evidence. Last, I will evaluate the ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence for structures in the context of economic and social change during the eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. For a variety of reasons, Maskókalkî household architecture is more historically documented than other architectural forms. Much of that variation was recently reviewed by David Hally (2002). Most of the useful historic descriptions of Creek Indian houses and structures are from the late eighteenth century . However, between 1739 and 1740, an assistant to General Oglethorpe, the governor of Georgia, traveled to the Lower Creek towns on the Chattahoochee and described “[t]heir Houses or Hutts are built with Stakes and plaistered with Clay Mixed with Moss which makes them very warm and Tite”(Mereness 1961:221). This pattern of structures made of a wooden frame covered in hardened mud lasted for the next few decades. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a number of travelers through the Creek territories gave descriptions of their buildings. David Taitt, a British agent hired to map the Creek Indian towns, gave one of the best descriptions of public architecture: 5 Architecture The Square is formed by four houses about forty feet in Length and ten wide. Open in front and divvied into three different Cabins each. The seats are made of Canes Split and woven together raised about three feet off the Ground; and half the width of the House, the back half being raised above the other about one foot; these Cabins serve for beds as well as seats in Summer. The hot house is generally built at the north west Corner of the Square having the door fronting the South East. The one in this Town [Upper Creek town of Tukabatchee] is a Square building about 30 feet diameter rounded a little at the Corners; the walls are about four feet high; from these walls the roof rises about twelve feet, terminating in a point at top. The door is the only Opening in this house for they have no window nor funnel for the smoke to go out at, there is a small entry about ten feet long built at the out side of the door and turned a little round the side of the house to keep out the cold and prevent the wind blowing the ¤re about the House. . . . In this house the Indians Consult about the affairs of their Nation in the Winter Season and their Square in the Summer. (Mereness 1961:503) This pattern of two major public structures in Lower Creek towns is repeated by numerous authors (Foster 2003a:71; Milfort 1959:93–95; Swanton 1928b, 1946; Waselkov and Braund 1995:168–186). William Bartram, the renowned botanist, drew an idealized Creek Indian town in 1789 (Figure 1.2). He shows the enclosed round council house that was used in the winter and the open square ground that was used in the summer as described by Taitt. The U.S. Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins described a round council house: the rotunda or assembly room, called by the traders, “hot house” . . . is near the square, and is constructed after the following manner: Eight posts are ¤xed in the ground, forming an octagon of thirty feet diameter. They are twelve feet high, and large enough to support the roof. On these,¤ve or six logs are placed, of a side, drawn in as they rise. On these, long poles or rafters, to suit the height of the building, are laid, the upper ends forming a point, and the lower ends projecting out six feet from the octagon , and resting on posts ¤ve feet high, placed in a circle round the octagon, with plates on them, to which the rafters...