For generations they had held the land, and, though their clothing was scanty and their customs odd, they possessed many of the elements of character that are esteemed noble, and, had they been left to themselves, they might have progressed--so people who have studied into their character now believe--into a fairly advanced stage of what is known as barbaric civilization.
They lived in long, low houses of bark and boughs, each house large enough to accommodate, perhaps, from eighty to a hundred persons--twenty families to a house. These “long houses” were, therefore, much the same in purpose as are the tenement-houses of to-day, save that the tenements of that far-off time were all on the same floor and were open closets or stalls, about eight feet wide, furnished with bunks built against the wall and spread with deer-skin robes for comfort and covering. These “flats” or stalls were arranged on either side of a broad, central passage-way, and in this passage-way, at equal distances apart, fire pits were constructed, the heat from which would warm the bodies and cook the dinners of the occupants of the “long house,” each fire serving the purpose of four tenements or families.
In their mode of life these people--tall, well-made, attractive, and coppery-colored folk--were what is now termed communists, that is, they lived from common stores and had all an equal share in the land and its yield--the products of their vegetable gardens, their hunting and fishing expeditions, their home labors, and their household goods.
Their method of government was entirely democratic. No one, in any household, was better off or of higher rank than his brothers or sisters. Their chiefs were simply men (and sometimes women) who had been raised to leadership by the desire and vote of their associates, but who possessed no special authority or power, except such as was allowed them by the general consent of their comrades, in view of their wisdom, bravery, or ability. They lived, in fact, as one great family bound in close association by their habits of life and their family relationships, and they knew no such unnatural distinction as king or subject, lord or vassal.
Around their long bark tenements, stretched carefully cultivated fields of corn and pumpkins, the trailing bean, the full-bunched grapevine, the juicy melon, and the big-leafed tabah, or tobacco.