The only entrance was by a
small door at the gable end, cut out of the middle piece of timber,
twenty-nine and a half inches high, fourteen inches broad, and reaching
only eighteen inches above the earth. Before this hole is hung a mat; on
pushing it aside and crawling through, the descent is by a small wooden
ladder, made in the form of those used among us. One-half of the inside
is used as a place of deposit for dried fish, of which large quantities
are stored away, and with a few baskets of berries form the only
family provisions; the other half, adjoining the door, remains for the
accommodation of the family. On each side are arranged near the walls
small beds of mats placed on little scaffolds or bedsteads, raised from
eighteen inches to three feet from the ground; and in the middle of the
vacant space is the fire, or sometimes two or three fires, when, as is
usually the case, the house contains three families."
Houses very like these are built by the Ahts or Nootkas, a tribe of
Indians inhabiting parts of Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland.
A Nootka calls his house an ourt.
The good offices of Lewis and Clark, who were always ready to make
peace between hostile tribes, were again successful here. The Echeloots
received the white men with much kindness, invited them to their houses,
and returned their visits after the explorers had camped. Lewis and
Clark told the Echeloot chiefs that the war was destroying them and
their industries, bringing want and privation upon them.
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