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Wampanoag Dwellings





WAMPANOAG DWELLINGS



As early as 1524 Giovanni de Verazano recorded he saw dwellings of a circular shape, covered with mats which could be removed and transported to another location. In the villages shown in Champlain's map of Plymouth Harbor, the Indian dwellings stood apart from each other. Each dwelling stood on its own lot with its own cornfield and garden. The Indian word for a dwelling was weetu.

During their Second Exploration of the land on Cape Cod on December 1/10, 1620 the Pilgrims discovered two Indian dwellings which they examined. Edward Winslow gives us the following account: �The houses were made of yong Sapling trees, bended and both ends stuck into the ground; they were made round, like unto and Arbour, and covered downe to the ground with thicke and well wrought matts, and the doore was not over a yard high, made of a matt to open; the chimney was a wide open hole in the top, for which they had a matt to cover it close when they pleased; one might stand and goe upright in them��





Single Family Weetu Construction



To build a single dwelling the Wampanoag People cut limber, green saplings and set their larger ends in the ground two or three feet apart to outline the dwelling's circular ground plan. The smaller families might have had dwellings which were about 15 feet across. However, the size could vary according to the size of the family and its social status. William Wood reported: �Their houses are smaller in the summer...In winter they make some fifty or three score foot long,�

They bent the tops of the flexible poles inward to form a dome or arch, and bound them together with flexible, slender twigs or branches. To guard against the strain of New England's occasional raging storms, Thomas Morton reported, �...they bind them together with the Barke of Walnut trees, which is wondrous tuffe��

Click here to view a typical "Weetu Framework"

In writing about the Indians of southern New England, Daniel Gookin reported: �The best sort of their houses are covered very neetly, tight, and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies, at such seasons when the sap was up; and made into great flakes with weighty timber, when they are green; and so becoming dry, they will retain a form suitable for the use they prepare them for. The smaller sort of wigwams are covered with mats, they make from a kind of bulrush, which is also indifferent tight and warm, but not so good as the former.�

After the frame had been erected, the women covered the roof and sides with six to nine-foot strips of bark from the elm, chestnut, birch or oak, lapping them like great shingles, andsewing them together with a thread from evergreen tree roots. As Gookin noted, instead of bark for roofing, they might fasten mats which were woven from reeds, flags, sedge or, for lack of better material, cornstalks-all neatly sewed together �with needles made from the splinter bones of a crane's legge with thread of their Indian hempe.�

For winter the home needed two thicknesses of mats on both roof and sides, the interior one finely woven, perhaps decorated also. Winslow reported: "The houses were double matted, for as they were matted without, so were they within, with newer & fairer matts.� These rendered the whole dwelling watertight. It was kept clean with a cedar broom.

In his Key into the Language of America, Roger Williams elaborates: �The long poles, which commonly men get and fix, and then the women cover the house with mats, and line them with embroydered mats which the women make, and call them Munnota�bana, or Hangings, which amongst them make as faire a show as Hangings with us.�





Doorways



A low doorway on the southwest side with a drop mat or skin let the members of the family in and out; another could be opened to permit air flow to draw through from different directions when a draft was needed. To enter, the mat was lifted, then dropped into place again so the draft from the fire might not be spoiled.

Roger Williams explains: �Most commonly their houses are open, their doore is a hanging Mat, which being lifted up, falls downe of itself; yet many of them get English boards and nailes, and make artificial doores and bolts themselves, and others make lighter doores of Burch and Chesnut barke, which they make fast with a cord in the might time, or when they go out of town, and the last (that makes fast) goes out at the Chimney, which is a large opening in the middle of their house, called: Wunnauchic�mock��





The Fire Pit



In the middle of the dirt floor a circle of fire stones formed the hearth; beside it stood �four little crotchets set in the ground, supporting cross sticks, on which were hung what they have to roast� by hooks of twisted flexible, slender twigs or small branches. Once the fire was going well, a long log might have its end fed to the blaze night and day until consumed.

Edward Winslow's account tells us, �...in the midst of them [the dwellings] were foure little trunches knockt into the ground, and small stickes laid over, on which they hung their Pots, and what they had to seeth; round about the fire they lay on matts, which are their beds."

Though the dwelling was without windows, the smoke hole and the doorways when opened served to light it in daytime. At night, besides the fire burning, pine knots and split sticks of pitch pine would give light if needed.





The Smoke Hole



At the center of the single dwelling's roof was a smoke hole (wunnauchic�mock) about a foot and a half wide; in a long house there would be others at intervals. A small fire within would ordinarily keep the room comfortable-warmer than an English house, Wood says: �If smoke became bothersome, or if a wind spoiled the draft, a pull on a string would raise or lower a mat or skin overhead to windward of the smoke hole.� In damp, windy weather, to avoid a smoky interior the family might heat stones at a fire outside and carry them in to serve as radiators. [Round, tumbled river rocks held heat better than jagged ones, which lost heat faster at the corners and points.]

Click here to view a typical mat-covered Weetu suitable for summer.

Click here to view a typical bark-covered Weetu suitable for winter.





Multi-Family Dwelling Construction



In 1674, Daniel Gookin observed that the Indians' houses were �of several sizes according to their activity and ability; some twenty, some forty feet long, and broad. Some I have seen of sixty or hundred feet long. . .In the greater houses they make two, three, or four fires at a distance from one another.�

These long houses may have been the fall and winter dwellings which housed an extended family during the hunting season. For the long house, horizontal poles running lengthwise stiffened the sides a roof.





Furnishings of the Dwelling



Edward Winslow's account describes the furnishings of the Indian dwelling thus: �In the houses we found wooden Bowles, Trayes & Dishes, Earthen Pots, Hand baskets made of Crab shells, wrought together; also an English Paile or Bucket, it wanted a bayle, but it had two Iron eares: there was also Baskets of sundry sorts, bigger and some lesser, finer and some courser: some were curiously wrought with blacke and white in pretie workes, and sundry other of their household stuffe: we found also two or three Deeres heads, one whereof had bin newly killed, for it was still fresh; there was also a company of Deeres feete, stuck up in the houses, Harts hornes, and Eagles clawes, and sundry such like things there was: also two or three Baskets full of parched Acornes, peeces of fish, and a peece of broyled Herring. We found also a little silke grasse, and a little Tobacco seed, with some other seeds which wee knew not; without was sundry bundles of Flags, and Sedge, Bullrushes, and other stuffe to make matts��

The interior equipment was designed to carry a family through the season. Among the necessaries would be thread and sewing baskets, perhaps decorated, needles (sharp bones from animals and fowl, or slivers of shell, each with an eye drilled in one end), and fine thread which came from basswood inner fibers twisted hard, or the split roots of evergreen trees.

Every household would have a two or three-foot section of hardwood tree trunk hollowed out for the constant task of grinding corn. In this the women of the family ordinarily pounded the kernels, using a slender stone pestle shaped like an elongated cucumber. Alongside might be one or more low, bowl-shaped stone mortars, each also with a stone pestle shaped like a ball. In these, corn could be ground into flour.

Click here for Indian Dwelling Vocabulary.






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Last modified October 15, 2000
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