Houses and Sweat-Houses
The houses of native California are difficult to classify except in summary fashion. The extreme forms are well differentiated, but are all connected by transitions.
From: Unknown To: 1922 C.E.
Location: California
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Elements of Culture in Native California by Alfred Louis Kroeber, 1922.
Houses
The houses of native California are difficult to classify except in summary fashion. The extreme forms are well differentiated, but are all connected by transitions. The frame house of the Yurok and Hupa is a definite type whose affinity with the larger plank house of the North Pacific coast is sufficiently evident. Southward and eastward from the Yurok this house becomes smaller and more rudely made.
Bark begins to replace the split or hewn planks, and before long a conical form made wholly of bark slabs is attained. This in turn, if provided with a center post, need only be covered with earth to serve as the simple prototype of the large semi-subterranean house of the Sacramento valley. Again, the bark is often partly replaced by poles and sticks. If these are covered with thatch, we have a simple form of the conical brush house. This in turn also attains the rectangular form characteristic of the perfect form of plank house, but in other cases is made oval or round and domed, as among the Chumash.
In this event it differs from the semi-subterranean house only in the lack of earth covering and its consequent lighter construction. A further transition is afforded by the fact that the earth house almost invariably has foliage of some kind as its topmost covering immediately below the earth surfacing. The brush house is often dug out a short distance. The Chumash threw the earth from the excavation up against the walls for a few feet. The earth covered house proper is only a little deeper and has the covering extending all the way over.
Neither shape, skeleton structure, nor materials, therefore, offer a satisfactory basis for the distinction of sharp types. A classification that would be of value would have to rest on minute analysis, preceded in many cases by more accurate information than is now available. Among numerous tribes the old types of houses have long since gone out of use. Among most of the remainder they have been at least partly modified, and the majority of early descriptions are too summary to be of great service.
Nor does a consideration of the distribution of house forms hold much present promise of fuller understanding. The earth covered house was made from the Modoc, Achomawi, and Yuki south to the Miwok; then again in the extreme part of southern California. The bark house is found chiefly among mountain tribes, but no very close correlation with topography appears.
The well fashioned plank house is definitely to be associated with the northwestern culture. The earth lodge of the Sacramento valley region is evidently connected with the Kuksu religion on one side, since the southward limits of distribution of the two appear to coincide. Northward, however, this form of house extends considerably beyond the cult. The southern earth lodge probably has the center of its distribution among the Colorant river tribes. It appears to have penetrated somewhat farther west than the religious influences emanating from this district.
From the Chumash to the southern valley Yokuts, communal houses were in use. Yet the larger specimens of the earth lodges of the Sacramento valley district must also have sheltered more people than we reckon to a family; and the same is true of the thatched houses of the Pomo.
As regards affiliations outside of California, there is the same uncertainty. Are we to reckon the semi-subterranean house of interior British Columbia as one in type with the Navaho hogan simply because the two are roofed with earth; or is the hogan essentially of the type of the plains tepee by reason of its conical shape and tripod foundation? Until such broader problems are answered, it would scarcely be sound to attempt a definitive classification of the dwellings of aboriginal California.
The separate hut for the woman in her periodical illness seems to be a northern Californian institution. Information is irregular, but the groups who affirm that they formerly erected such structures are the Yurok, Karok, Hupa; probably the other northwestern tribes; the Shasta and Modoc; the northern Maidu; and apparently the Pomo. The Yuki and Sinkyone deny the practice, but their geographical situation renders unconfirmed negative statements somewhat doubtful. South of the Golden Gate, there is no clear reference to separate huts for women except among the Luiseno, and the Yokuts specifically state that they did not build them.
The Sweat-House
The sweat-house is a typical Californian institution if there is any; yet it was not in universal use. The Colorado river tribes lacked it or any substitute; and a want of reference to the structure among a series of Shonhonean desert tribes, such as the Chemehuevi and the eastern Mono, indicates that these must perhaps be joined to the agricultural Yumans in this respect; although an earth sweat-house is reported from the Panamint. The non-use of the sweat-house among the Yuma and Mohave appears to be of rather weighty historical significance, since on their eastern side the edifice was made by the nomadic tribes of the Southwest, and a related type the kiva or estufa is important among the Pueblos.
The Californian sweat-house is an institution of daily, not occasional, service. It serves a habit, not a medicinal treatment; it enters into ceremony indirectly rather than specifically as a means of purification. It is the assembly of the men, and often their sleeping quarters. It thus comes to fulfill many of the functions of a club; but is not to be construed as such, since ownership or kinship or friendship, not membership, determines admission; and there is no act of initiation.
In line with these characteristics, the California sweathouse was a structure, not a few boughs over, which a blanket was thrown before entry. It was earth-covered; except in the northwest, where an abundance of planks roofed a deep pit. In either case a substantial construction was requisite. A center post was often set up: logs and poles at any rate had to be employed.
Warmth was produced directly by fire, never by steam generated by heated stones. While the smoke was densest, the inmates lay close to the floor. Women were never admitted, except here and there on special ceremonial occasions, when sweating became a subsidiary feature or was wholly omitted.
In general, the sweat-house was somewhat smaller than the living house. This holds of the northwestern tribes, the Yokuts, and the groups of southern California. In the region of the Kuksu religion, the dance house or ceremonial assembly chamber built much like the sweat-house elsewhere but on a far ampler scale has come to be known as "sweat-house" among both Indians and whites. It is not likely that this large structure ever really replaced the true sweat-house in and about the Sacramento valley.
The two may generally have existed side by side, as is known to have been the case among the Pomo and Patwin, but the smaller edifice have lost its proper identity in description under the unfortunate looseness of nomenclature; much as among tribes like the Yana, the Indians now speak of "sweat-houses" inhabited by families. Some careful because belated inquiries remain to be made to dispel the uncertainty in this matter. It would seem that in the Sacramento valley region there were three sizes of earth-covered structures: the large dance house, the moderately spaced living house, and the small sweat-house proper.
In extreme northeastern California the Plains form of sweathouse has obtained a foothold: a small dome of willows covered with mats, large enough for a few men to sit up in, heated by steam. This is established for the Modoc, while less complete descriptions suggest the same for the Shasta, Achomawi, and Washo; but among at least some of these groups the steam sweat-house is of modern introduction.
It is notable that there is no indication of any fusion or hybridization of the Californian and the Eastern types of sweat-house even in the region where they border. This condition is typical of cultural phenomena in native America, and probably throughout the world, as soon as they are viewed distributionally rather than in their developmental sequence. Civilizations shade by endless transitions. Their elements wander randomly, as it seems, with little reference to the circumstances of their origin. But analogous or logically equivalent elements exclude each other far more often than they intergrade.
Kroeber, A. L. Elements of Culture in Native California, University of California Press, 1922.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
