Green Home

At Plymouth Plantation, MA and also Jamestown, VA you can tour English homes from around 1608 and 1620. In the same living museums, you can also tour homes built by Native Americans at about the time. I don't think we give the Native peoples enough credit! They developed a high-tech boat, the birch-bark canoe, that was light, fast, strong, rather easy to build and capable of carrying men and supplies for considerable distances on a network of lakes and wild rivers. When the going got tough or the paddlers wanted to go in a different direction, they carried the light-weight canoe on their shoulders. The Native Americans also built a variety of warm, comfortable homes that protected one to several families. Some homes were made from a frame of branches with reed mats or tree bark lashed in place with roots. Others were more substantial structures made of packed earth, animal hides, even logs and stone. Europeans never really adopted the Native style. Instead they spent much time and labor building the style of house they had occupied in England, France or Germany. . Tiny homes with huge walk-in hearths, stick and mud chimneys, massive timber-frames with waddle (woven sticks) and daub (mud) walls. Homes that were hot in the summer, drafty in the winter and easily set on fire. The log cabin home was introduced later in history. This Native American home is made of mats tied to a framework of saplings. A hole or two in the ceiling allowed smoke to escape. People slept on a thick mattress of furs piled on benches. All the materials were natural, recyclable, easy to collect and biodegradable.

Virginia Family Kidnaped by French

Several years ago, a woman phoned from West Virginia to order a cabin kit. She said the Franklin miniature log cabin looked much like an old cabin on her farm. She said her log cabin dated back to the French and Indian War. Her pioneer ancestors had built their log cabin home in a hollow, deep in the Appalachian mountains.
While her family was clearing their farm from the wilderness, France and England, Holland and Spain were at war in Europe. The war soon spilled over into North America.
British and Colonial troops started attacking French Canadian forts in the Ohio Valley. The French retaliated by sending war parties into New England and the South.
On one of these raids, the woman told me, a war party came to her ancestors' cabin. The father was away on business. The Indians quickly killed the hired hand and ransacked the cabin. The mother and her children (those old enough to travel) were taken captive and led off to Canada. The father, returning home a few hours later and learned what had happened.
Swiftly, he recruited a few neighbors and they began tracking the war party north.
When the mother and children arrived in Canada, a French family paid for their release and welcomed them into their home. The father, arriving in Canada, learned that his family was safe and sound. He gathered them up and led them back to their mountain home in West Virginia.
Here, the family has continued to reside for over 250 years.

Creole House

Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, located about 40 miles south of St. Louis, is an ancient French village built on the Mississippi River. Here, French merchants lived in the early 1700s. One style of log home they built is the Creole house. It is built of vertical log walls, held in place by a horizontal header and footer . The gaps between the logs are filled with rocks and clay. The hip roof is covered with reeds and a wide veranda surrounds the house. The veranda provides plenty of shade and helps keep the inside rooms cool in summer. A stone kitchen was built in the rear of this house. Many homes in the south had a "summer kitchen" that was separate from the main house. Obviously, a separate kitchen helped keep the living quarters cooler and also reduced the risk of a house fire. Just imagine the disastrous consequences of a house fire in the days before fire departments!