WOODEN STRUCTURES, While wood was un doubtedly used largely by the prehistoric tribes of America for habitations as well as for imple ments. utensils. etc., eomparatively little of the material remains for study. in certain large tumuli described by Thomas. remains of wooden structures were found under such conditions as to indicate that earth was heaped over a house or stout wigwam in such manner as to form a lofty mound; the stumps of prehistode piles, probably used either to support palafittes (o• pile dwell ings) or as adjuncts to large fish weirs. were found by Cresson in Delaware Inver, near Clay wont; in the prehistoric Casa Grande of Arizona, as well as in neighboring pueblos of prehistoric origin, upper floors and roofs were supported on joists and rafters consisting of round cedar or pine poles, which must in some instances have been transported over ninny miles of desert from the wooded mountains; in even the must impos ing and massive temples of Yucatan and Peru. wooden lintels were introduced—and the decay of these was one of the factors in hastening the doWnfall of these noble structures. These in
stances of the use of wood are quite in accord with the large employment of this material among the tribesmen found by the first invaders; and the two records—unwritten and written— coincide not only as to the use of the material, but as to the primitive modes through which it was reduced to serviceable condition by aid of crude stone tools and fire. Closely connected in aboriginal thought with the fixed home was the floating habitation, also commonly of wood or bark; the greater water-craft, callable of navi gating all parts of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of :Mexico, are known through the descriptions of Columbus and his companions, as well as from models found by Cushing in the peat-beds of western Florida ; while fragments of birch bark from the mounds of Wisconsin, and bits of cane from the great shell-mound of Seriland, are among the indications that the pre-Columbian warrior paddled the light canoe or propelled the graceful balsa just as do his descendants of the fifteenth generation.