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Excerpt from Museum Stories for Children, Vol. 18: February-April, 1932 When white people first came to live in North America, they found that houses of many kinds had been built by Indians of forest, plain, seaside, and desert. Generally, the Indians had used whatever materials were most plentiful and convenient in the regions in which they lived. In the eastern woodlands, the common type of house had a frame of poles covered with sheets of bark from large trees, or with mats made of rushes. Such houses were called Wigwams, and were of many shapes and sizes. Usually there was only one room, even when several families shared a house. Beds were made on platforms along the walls, and the fireplace was in the middle of the oor, with a smokehole in the roof above it. The Iroquois Indians had long wigwams with a door at each end. A passageway connected the doors, and the space on either side was divided into rooms, one for each family in the house. Fireplaces were in the middle of the passageway, one for each four families. The Iroquois called themselves People of the Long House. Along the Missouri and Platte Rivers, large earth lodges were used by Indians who raised corn, beans and squashes, and who lived in the same place from year to year. An earth lodge had a strong frame of posts and beams, covered with earth and sod. Each house looked like a hill, or even, with smoke coming out of the hole in the roof, like a little volcano. The Wichita Indians of Kansas lived in dome shaped houses of poles covered with a thatch of dried grass. The Wichita were farmer people, who traded with their hunter neighbors, exchanging corn and beans for meat and hides. Most tribes of the western plains depended on hunting for their food. As they followed the buffalo herds from pasture to pasture, they needed shelters which they could take with them. These tribes used tipis. A woman who needed a new tipi first prepared buffalo hides for the cover. Then she invited her friends to