only problem: soon the settlers began building a “pale” such as the English
had built in Ireland. Getting behind a wall was almost the only protection
they had, since few knew how to use a gun.
Housing came next. The log cabin that is so firmly fixed in American
mythology was not those settlers’ choice—they tried to build houses like
those they had known in England. But they lacked many of the necessities.
At first, and for many years, they had no paint, brick, or plaster. Timber
they had in plenty, but it had to be shaped by hand with inefficient tools
made of soft iron that dulled or cracked easily. Moreover, the American
climate was more severe than the English. Out of necessity, the colonists
quickly improvised a partial solution: they dug a cellar, 6 or 7 feet deep,
into which they sunk their houses. Almost the only part that was visible
aboveground was the roof, covered with thatch, sod, or bark. The sur-
rounding earth acted as insulation to keep the house warmer in winter than
it would have been aboveground. Such “sod houses” would last three or
four years before rotting.
But sod houses had a serious disadvantage: in the marshy ground of
the first settlement at Jamestown, they were wet. As soon as possible, there-
fore, the settlers began to build aboveground. They did so by planting
upright poles, just slightly dressed logs, at the corners of an area usually no
more than 15 by 12 feet. Into these uprights they drove wooden pegs—iron
nails were too precious to use—that would hold roughly trimmed boards.
Over these boards they fixed thatch on which they smeared mud or clay.
These wattle-and-daub buildings resembled the huts of Irish and Scottish
peasants. They were not elegant, but as long as the inhabitants continued
smearing any cracks and fissures with mud, the houses kept out most of the
cold winds. Covering the bare earth floor with reeds kept it dry.
Houses were not only cold and dank but also dark. The entrance was a
low door, and there were no windows. As windows began to be introduced,
they were just gaps in the wall, which could be closed by shutters or cov-
ered by oiled paper to admit light but not too much wind. Glass did not
become available until much later in the seventeenth century; even then it
was still so rare and valuable that in his raid on Maryland in 1645, the
English pirate Richard Ingle removed every pane he could find.
The main source of warmth was human bodies. In a space measuring
112 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA