Daily Life
Tools
Hunting and battle spear
The Iroquois were resourceful people who made many tools to help them perform their day to day activities. Paraphernalia such as woven baskets were used as storage containers or a carrying cases. The mortar and pestle crushed corn to make cornmeal. Wooden cradle boards could be strapped onto a mother's back so she can tend to her baby while doing manual labour. Hollowed-out log canoes made transportation a lot easier. A sharpened piece of rock tied to a minute carved piece of wood served as a knife, which had many uses, like cutting bark and scalping enemies. Spears, and bows and arrows, were used in hunting and fishing, as well as in warfare. Another important tool was the snowshoe. They were wooden frames onto which moccasins could be strapped. Snowshoes helped the Iroquois travel in winter by spreading out body weight thus keeping them from sinking into the snow. Life was hard for the Iroquois, but these tools and many others made life easier.
Shelter
Longhouse Diagram
The Iroquois were very skilled when it came to carpentry. The type of house the Iroquois lived in was called a longhouse. These wooden longhouses were 200 feet in length and had a door or an opening to enter at each end. Longhouses also had 5 or 6 openings in the ceiling over the fire pit so when they cooked food the smoke wouldn't be kept in the house and sunlight would be let in. This is similar to the concept of the current day exhausts which let out the unwanted smoke. The way longhouses were made was men cut down trees or branches to make poles for the skeleton or structure of the house, then women stripped bark from an elm tree and made the bark into shingles which was used as the outer layer of the longhouse. Building a longhouse was a difficult processes without modern day machines, but the Iroquois were still able to build a structurally sound longhouse due to teamwork and cooperation. A longhouse could home over 20 families at a time. When a man got married he would move into his wives longhouse and their children would become part of her clan. The Iroquois made their towns and villages on hills or mounds so when it rained the village would drain easily. They also made a fence out of wooden pegs called a Palisade around their village this was mainly for defense against rival tribes.