Housing

Housing Native Americans ! Housing and Construction Some Native American houses that appear simple, such as the Inuit igloo or the Florida Seminole chikee, are quite sophisticated: The igloo (Inuit for “house”), usually made of hide or sod over a wood or whalebone frame, is a dome with a sunken entrance that traps heat indoors but allows ventilation; the chikee, naturally air-conditioned, consists of a thatch roof over an open platform. The tepee of the Plains peoples constitutes efficient housing for people who must move camp to hunt; tepees are easily portable and quickly erected or taken down, and an inner liner hung from midway up the tepee allows ventilation without drafts, so that the enclosed space is comfortable even in winter. Some peoples in cold climates that were well supplied with wood, such as the peoples of Tierra del Fuego and the Subarctic Athabascan-language peoples, relied on windbreaks with good fires in front, rather than on tents. Many other peoples spent cold weather in dome-shaped houses that were sunk houses, inuit, igloo, peoples, winter, wood, housing, whalebone, ventilation, tepee, tents, stone, snow, over, made, long, house, frame, entrance, dome, cold, chikee, buildings, allows, without, windbreaks, western-style, weather, walrus, upper, unknown, two, turf, traps, towns, tierra