Book excerpt: Although the log cabin is widely believed to be the one expression of indigenous American architecture, it is, in fact, of European origin, having been first introduced in the New World by Swedes and Finns who settled the lower Delaware Valley in the seventeenth century. Log buildings were unknown to the English colonists of Jamestown, Plymouth, and St. Marys, or the Dutch founders of New Amsterdam, who built the kinds of dwellings they had known in their homelands. Because it was perfectly adapted to the needs and resources of pioneers as they advanced the American frontier south and west through forests and across mountains, the log house became the means whereby a man could keep moving and yet maintain a home and family, and much of America's historycan be traced in the cabins left behind in the westward trek.-- book jacket