Native American Homes Houses Used By Different Tribes

In the continent of North America, there were various types of tribes and each of them needed a housing type that suits them the best, depending on their lifestyle and their climate. Depending on their geographic features and the types of tribes the Native American homes are needed to be built differently. The different types of Native American homes were: Wigwah Homes, Longhouses, Tepees, Grass Houses, Wattle and Daub Houses, Chickees, Adobe Houses, Earthen Houses, Plank Houses, Igloos and Brush Shelters.

In the Abenaki tribal language Wigwam means houses. Wigwams, also known as wetus or birchbark houses were the Native American homes used by Algonquin Indians in the woodland regions. These houses were made of wooden frames and covered with woven mats and sheets of birchbark. The roof were shaped like a dome, cone or rectangle with an arched roof. Mostly the settles villages in the farming season possessed these types of Native American homes.


Some of the Iroquois tribes and their Algonquian neighbors used Longhouses types of Native American homes. They were almost similar to wigwams, but were much larger than them. Longhouses were 150 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 20 feet high whereas wigwams were usually 8-10 feet tall. There were sleeping space in raised platform and rooms were separated by mats & wood screens.

Tepees were tent like Native American homes used by Plains tribes. They were made of a cone-shaped wooden frame with a covering of buffalo hide. Initially they were about 12 feet high but soon after the Plains Indian Tribes acquired horses, they began building them twice as high. Grass houses are American Indian homes used in the Southern Plains by tribes such as the Caddos. They were similar to wigwams, but larger than wigwams and made with different materials – wooden frame bent into a beehive shape and thatched with long prairie grass.
The southeastern tribes used to stay in Wattle and daub houses.

These Native American homes were made by weaving rivercane, wood, and vines into a frame, then coating the frame with plaster. They had either grass thatched or bark shingled roofs. The Seminole Indian tribes in Florida used Chickees type Native American homes. These wall less houses consisted of thick posts supporting a thatched roof and a flat wooden platform raised several feet off the ground. The Pueblo Indians of Southwest used modular and multistoried Adobe pueblos.

Earthen houses refers to several types of Native American homes including Navajo hogans, Sioux earth lodges, subarctic sod houses, and Native American pit houses of the West Coast and Plateau. They had different designs irrespective of different tribes. The Nortwest Coast tribes used plankhouses, made of long, flat planks of cedar wood lashed to a wooden frame. Igloos were good houses for polar regions whereas Brush Shelters were used by migratory tribes. They are of different shapes and can be assembled quickly from easy to find materials. Native houses