Cherokee Architecture

Most people who lived in the Cherokee nation lived in houses that were just for one family. These houses were usually circular. They were made of branches bent into a circular shape and then plastered with mud (the frame was a lot like the frame of a Ute wickiup, but these were different because they were covered with mud and partly sunk into the ground like Pueblo pit houses).

These houses usually had a stone hearth in the middle to cook on and to keep the house warm.

Cherokee towns all had a meeting house or council house as well as people's own houses. The meeting house was also round, with a big hearth in the middle, but it was much bigger than ordinary houses. These meeting houses were often built on top of earth mounds.

Cherokee towns also had solid fortification walls around them built of thick logs placed upright next to each other all the way around the village, with a wooden walkway at the top that men could walk around on to shoot arrows out at their attackers.

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