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“Longhouse” means many things to the Haudenosaunee.

A longhouse is the term used to describe traditional, long, bark-covered houses in which the Haudenosaunee lived before colonization. Each longhouse provided shelter for many people. The people who lived in a longhouse were closely related and belonged to a certain clan or were married to a woman belonging to that clan.  If the family grew in number, the longhouse could be extended and made longer.  A longhouse was built by making a framework of tree saplings over which large slabs of elm bark were attached.  A doorway was located at both ends of the longhouse.  Animal skins could be hung in the doorways to keep out the wind and the cold.  There were no windows. 


Sleeping platforms were built along both sides of the inside of the longhouse.  People could hang skins as curtains for privacy.  Platforms were also built above the sleeping areas for storage.   Belongings could be stored under or over the sleeping platforms or hung from the rafters.  There were fire pits for cooking, heat and light along the length of the interior of the longhouse.  Openings in the roof above each fire pit allowed the smoke to escape.

 

 

The longhouse is also a metaphor, a visual symbol, for the social structure of the Haudenosaunee.  The symbolic longhouse has a doorway facing east and one facing west.  There are five smoke holes representing from east to west, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and the Seneca Nations.  The floor of this symbolic longhouse is Mother Earth.  The roof is the sky.  The rafters represent the laws of The Great Law of Peace which is the Constitution of the Haudenosaunee.  This symbolic longhouse is a reminder that the five individual nations are related and bound together by the Iroquois Confederacy.  Sometimes, this longhouse is drawn on top of a map of what is now known as New York State in order to show the relationship of the traditional territory of each nation.
Map showing the territory of the original Five Nations in 1650
Today, the Haudenosaunee live in all kinds of buildings.  They live in apartment houses, farm houses, short houses, tall houses, cabins, modular homes, mobile homes, big houses and little houses. Some live away from the reservations in tall, city skyscrapers
The Longhouse of today refers to a certain building in which the people attend meetings, ceremonies and social dances.