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Many groups in the eastern woodlands spoke one of the Iroquoian languages. They all lived inland, away from the coast, mainly in what is now New York and Pennsylvania.
Some lived as far north as what is now Canada. For the Iroquois, there was safety in numbers. A village was home to hundreds of people, sometimes as many as a thousand people. They lived in large structures called longhouses, which were owned by the women living in them. A longhouse was about 20 feet wide and 50 to 150 feet long. That’s half the length of a football field. As many as 20 families might live in a longhouse. The whole village was protected by a palisade, or fence of logs, about 20 feet tall. Outside the palisade, a short distance from the village, were fields where food was grown. Nearby would be a source of water such as a river, stream, lake, or pond.
