When Shufitz, Kalleh, my wife, Sue and I visited the Tippacanoe Battlefield museum, they had some depictions of indigenous tribes' dwellings. That got me to wondering why we use "teepee" and "wigwam," words taken from original languages, but have no words that I know of for the other typical dwelling, the longhouse. More cultures used them than used teepees, yet I know of no indigenous peoples' names for them. Why?

BTW, they seem to bear considerable resemblance to Norse and early Nordic English halls. Might there be a connection? Was Beowulf really an Iroquois?

Geoff, I wonder if it's because teepees and wigwams were more specific to the to native Americans, while the longhouse seems more general (built by people in Asia, Europe and North America).

Longhouses were the native homes I learned about as a kid from an Iroquois area. It might be that the native name for them did not get borrowed into English because pioneers would only see them if they went into a long-established native vlllage. Pioneers on the wagon trail must have run into the homes used by nomadic tribes more often, and words used on the wagon trail might have been likely to spread rapidly.

At a guess, teepees and wigwams were new to the European settlers, whereas longhouses resembled (even if superficially) buildings they were already familiar with.

That was my point, as well, arnie.

Found this interesting bit on what the Iroquois actually called themselves. Some part of the name means 'longhouse':

quote:

Iroquois is an easily recognized name, but like the names of many tribes, it was given them by their enemies. The Algonquin called them the Iroqu (Irinakhoiw) "rattlesnakes." After the French added the Gallic suffix "-ois" to this insult, the name became Iroquois. The Iroquois call themselves Haudenosaunee meaning "people of the long house."