<P> At the time of first European contact the Iroquois lived in a small number of large villages scattered throughout their territory . Each nation had between one and four villages at any one time, and villages were moved approximately every five to twenty years as soil and firewood were depleted . These settlements were surrounded by a palisade and usually located in a defensible area such as a hill, with access to water . Because of their appearance with the palisade, Europeans termed them castles . </P> <P> Within the villages the inhabitants lived in longhouses . In 1653, Dutch official and landowner Adriaen van der Donck described a Mohawk longhouse in his Description of New Netherland . </P> <P> Their houses are mostly of one and the same shape, without any special embellishment or remarkable design . When building a house, large or small,--for sometimes they build them as long as some hundred feet, though never more than twenty feet wide--they stick long, thin, peeled hickory poles in the ground, as wide apart and as long as the house is to be . The poles are then bent over and fastened one to another, so that it looks like a wagon or arbor as are put in gardens . Next, strips like split laths are laid across these poles from one end to the other....This is then well covered all over with very tough bark....From one end of the house to the other along the center they kindle fires, and the area left open, which is also in the middle, serves as a chimney to release the smoke . Often there are sixteen or eighteen families in a house...This means that often a hundred or a hundred and fifty or more lodge in one house . </P> <P> A castle might contain twenty or thirty longhouses . In addition to the castles the Iroquois also had smaller settlements which might be occupied seasonally by smaller groups, for example for fishing or hunting . </P>

What were the long term effects of the seven years war