Serra Museum Education Program
Water ~ Barter ~ Shelter ~ Food ~ Dig Box ~ City Life ~ Mission & Rancho Life

Building Houses for Shelter

Even though San Diego doesn't get very cold, people have always wanted a place to get out of the wind to sleep. For the Kumeyaay, building a new house was easy. They just needed to find the right kinds of branches and grasses to make a house, and when that one got dirty, they just burned it down and made a new one. As the Kumeyaay moved to different places to be close to food and water, they made new houses as they needed them.

When Spanish settlers came, they also wanted to sleep out of the sun and wind. The Spanish were used to a different kind of house in Spain. They also had another reason for wanting sturdy shelters: they were afraid of the Kumeyaay and wanted a strong wall to keep the Kumeyaay out of their private places. The Spanish needed to use things they could find easily to build their houses, so they made bricks from mud, straw and water. These bricks were called adobe.

When the American settlers came to San Diego, they wanted wood houses to look like the houses they had left behind on the east coast of the United States. San Diego didn't have many trees, so trees had to be chopped down other places and taken to San Diego Bay to be made into boards. The houses were made from these wood boards.

       

1. Look at the three houses shown and answer the questions.
2. Which is easier to get ~ brush and branches, mud for adobe bricks, or wood cut from trees? Do you think it would be easier to make a house from adobe bricks, or of wood?
3. Which kind of house is easiest to clean? What happens to your garbage in a brush hut, an adobe house, and a wood house? Where do you keep your clothes and food? Which kind of house would you want to live in?
4. Summers in San Diego are sometimes very hot. Which house would keep your family most cool?

Kumeyaay families lived in brush huts. Sometimes aunts and uncles and cousins all lived together in one hut. Every day men, women and children worked hard to find enough food and water for all of them to eat and drink. How is the Kumeyaay life different from the way your family lives and works? How is it the same?

Adobe walls are made of mud and straw. If there is a bad storm and it rains a lot, the walls can get very wet. What happens to mud and dirt when it gets wet? Do you think it would be very clean or very messy to live in an adobe house? Isn't it a good thing we don't get much rain in Southern California if we are going to build our houses from mud?