These devices were generally derived from the dreams of the Amerindians, being some mythical monster or other hideous animal, whose description had been handed down from their ancestors.

A large camp of such tents, pitched regularly on a level plain, had a fine effect at a distance, especially when numerous bands of horses were seen feeding in all directions.
The "lodges" or long houses made of poles, fir branches, moss, &c., wherein, among the Iroquois, Algonkin, and Siou peoples, several families made a common habitation, are described here and there in the course of the narrative.

The houses of the coast tribes of British Columbia were bigger, more elaborate, and permanent, and in this region the natives had acquired some idea of carpentry, and had learnt to make planks of wood by splitting with wedges or hewing with adzes.
One of these British Columbian houses was measured, and found to be seventy feet long by twenty-five feet wide; the entrance in the gable end was cut through a plank five and a half feet wide, and nearly oval.

A board suspended on the outside answered for a door; on the other side of the broad plank was rudely carved a large painted figure of a man, between whose legs was the passage.

But other houses on the Pacific coast, visited by Cook or Vancouver, are said to have been large enough to accommodate seven hundred people.