The fortified towns of the Hurons were all on the side exposed to
Iroquois incursions. The fortifications of all this family of tribes
were, like their dwellings, in essential points alike. A situation was
chosen favorable to defence,--the bank of a lake, the crown of a
difficult hill, or a high point of land in the fork of confluent rivers.
A ditch, several feet deep, was dug around the village, and the earth
thrown up on the inside. Trees were then felled by an alternate process
of burning and hacking the burnt part with stone hatchets, and by similar
means were cut into lengths to form palisades. These were planted on the
embankment, in one, two, three, or four concentric rows,--those of each
row inclining towards those of the other rows until they intersected.
The whole was lined within, to the height of a man, with heavy sheets of
bark; and at the top, where the palisades crossed, was a gallery of
timber for the defenders, together with wooden gutters, by which streams
of water could be poured down on fires kindled by the enemy. Magazines
of stones, and rude ladders for mounting the rampart, completed the
provision for defence. The forts of the Iroquois were stronger and more
elaborate than those of the Hurons; and to this day large districts in
New York are marked with frequent remains of their ditches and
embankments.

[ There is no mathematical regularity in these works. In their form,
the builders were guided merely by the nature of the ground. Frequently
a precipice or river sufficed for partial defence, and the line of
embankment occurs only on one or two sides. In one instance, distinct
traces of a double line of palisades are visible along the embankment.
(See Squier, Aboriginal Monuments of New York, 38.) It is probable that
the palisade was planted first, and the earth heaped around it. Indeed,
this is stated by the Tuscarora Indian, Cusick, in his curious History of