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Now that you know more about igloos, longhouses and Haida houses, what did they have in common? How were they different?
- The most obvious thing that they had in common was that they were all shelters. However, igloos and Haida houses were winter shelters and longhouses were lived in all year round.
- Igloos and Haida houses had floors that were dug out of the snow or ground. The floors in a longhouse were level with the rest of the ground outside.
- Longhouses and Haida houses both had fires and some also had smoke holes. Igloos did not have large fires. The Inuit uses oil lamps, so there were no large smoke holes.
- Longhouses and Haida houses were made from trees. Igloos were made from snow.
- Longhouses and Haida houses had many families living in them. Igloos were much smaller and had only one family living in each of them.
- Igloos did not take nearly as much time to build as longhouses and Haida houses.
The shape of each type of shelter is different. What do you think the shape of the shelter meant to the people who lived in them?
The environment that you live in has a great effect on everything you do. The people in each culture that we have looked at made choices based on the environment around them. Inuit people had to learn how to build shelters out of snow because there were no trees. Huron and Haida people built their houses with trees, the resources that they had in their environment.
The kind of food they ate depended on what lived around them. A big resource for the Haida was fish because they lived right by the ocean. The Huron did not have to move often because they knew how to grow crops.
The kinds of games that they played depended on, among other things, how much space they had to play in. Huron and Haida had mild climates. They had wide open areas to play games that involved lots of people at a time. Inuit invented games that could be played by only a few people because they spent a great deal of time in small groups.
Can you think of some ways that your environment affects you?
