• Native American housing includes more than just tepees.teepee image by Mike & Valerie Miller from Fotolia.com
  
  A circle of tall tepees may be the image that automatically comes to mind when you think of Native Americans, but Native American housing is as varied as the many tribal cultures found throughout North America. The type of housing a tribe used was highly dependent on the climate of the area where they lived, as well as tribal lifestyle. Nomadic groups, who moved from place to place hunting and gathering resources had very different needs for shelter than agricultural tribes who settled and farmed one area for generations.
  
  

Longhouses

• Longhouses are large buildings traditionally used by the farming Iroquois and Algonquian tribes of the northeast to shelter many people. An entire clan or extended family, up to 60 or so people, would live in one longhouse, which could be up to 200 feet long and 20 feet high. Mats and screens divided the longhouse into separate living areas, while a raised platform provided a second-story sleeping area.
  
  

Wigwams

• Algonquian people built wigwams, a smaller version of the longhouse, in wooded areas. They built wooden frames and covered them with woven mats of birch bark, holding the bark in place with rope and strips of wood. Wigwams were typically circular or conically-shaped, with arched roofs up to 10 feet high, and built to last several months. Algonquians used wigwams in their winter hunting camps, since they were small and easy to build, and returned to their longhouses in the summer.
  
  

Tepees

• The Plains tribes used the iconic tepees, sometimes spelled tipi, for temporary housing. Forerunner to the modern tent, tepees were constructed of a conical wooden frame with a buffalo hide covering. As they moved from place to place, families carried their tepee poles and hides with them since wood was far more scarce on the plains than the woodlands of eastern North America.
  
  

Grass Houses

• The southern Plains tribes built grass houses to be comfortable in warmer climates. They made wooden frames bent into a conical or beehive shape and thatched with prairie grass. Grass houses could be up to 40 feet tall.
  
  

Wattle and Daub

• In the southeast, farming tribes such as the Cherokee built permanent houses of wattle and daub. They wove reeds, branches and vines onto a wooden frame, then coated the frame with plaster, which dried in the warm southern climate. The roof was thatched grass or bark shingles.
  
  

Pueblos

• The Pueblo tribes in the southwest built adobe houses called pueblos. Adobe is a mixture of clay and straw which is baked into bricks, which the Pueblos used to construct multi-story complexes that housed entire clans. As farmers, the Pueblos had no need to move and lived in these adobe complexes for many generations.