The arrival of Europeans to the New World meant the introduction of architectural and craft traditions, plaster among them. Of course there were native peoples already present. Plastering was and continues to be an important craft for Native American traditional architecture. Clay and earth are the raw materials. The English and French populating the East coast would have found the thatched roofed huts with walls of “wattle & daub” earthen plaster over reeds utilized by the Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee similar to their own vernacular traditions. Likewise, the Spanish colonizing the West must have been amazed to see villages constructed of adobe and earthen plasters not unlike their “pueblos” back home.
One of the building techniques existing throughout North America prior to European settlement was the earth lodge, a central space with wattle and daub walls covered with a dome roof, having a smoke hole at the apex. The Navajo of the dessert Southwest developed a variation of the earth lodge called a “hogan,” featuring earthen floors and timber walls packed with a thick, clay-rich earthen plaster on the exterior. Hogans are extremely energy efficient benefiting from natural ventilation and evaporative cooling during hot days whereas just a small fire is needed to take advantage of the thermal mass properties of the earthen plaster, maintaining the interior warmth during long winters and cold nights.