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Native American houses

Native American Construction
The Native American’s of the North East lived in houses called Wigwams and Longhouses. A wigwam looks like a wagon top shaped structure. The sides of it are perpendicular to each other and ends. It also has a round roof. Stout poles set in the ground that are covered with bark or mats woven out of grass rushes keep the structure of the wigwam up. Doors are at each end of the building and also serve as the only windows for it. The materials they would use could be cut down from trees or planted and cut. They used a mixture sort of like how we make concrete to keep it together. The stout poles bend into the center of top of the roof. They build multiple ones. The wigwam is built by almost every tribe in the North East. The Longhouse is also built by most.

how the native americans kept their homes warm

The Wampanoag kept their houses warm by doing a few things. The first thing the Wampanoag did was they lived in different houses. The Native Americans lived in Wetu’s in the summer and long houses in the winter. Wetu’s are small round houses that have a fire pit in the middle. Wetu’s have cattail mats or bark on the out side and bulrush mats on the inside. Bulrush mats take longer to weave then cattail mats and are painted and are on the inside of the hut. In the winter the Wampanoag lived in long houses. Long houses are longer but thin kind or rectangular. Long houses had multiple fire pits and could hold multiple generations of the family. Long houses could be two stories high ad could be 150feet long. The Native Americans also put animal skins on the walls to keep the house warm and they used them as blankets. The Native Americans had many ways to keep their homes temperature warm.

What kind of buidings were Native Americans buried in

The Northeastern Native Americans had many ways to bury their dead. Some tribes buried their dead and others put them in mounds. The Mohegans had 16 acres of royal burial ground with grave stones and memorials to different people. The Mohegans also had a sacred fort where they buried people in the walls. The Abenaki Nation had a field with 40 mounds (these mounds were made of soil) with multiple people buried in each mound. And the Narragansetts had cemeteries. Some tribes were very similar in the way they disposed of their dead like many buried them. So that is how the Native Americans disposed of their dead.

the inside of indian houses and buildings

The north eastern Native Americans had few types of regularly used structures. They had a summer and a winter home, but other than that there were few buildings they used in daily life. In the Wappinger tribe, the chief’s house was bigger than the average one, but other than that few differences in size etc. of homes due to power or wealth occurred. There were also smaller special wigwams usually for women during their period, or “moon time”. The homes that most tribes used were called wigwams. Wigwams were round homes, with a wooden frame surrounded by bark or woven mats that were held there by rocks or saplings. They had a smoke hole and doors of mats or deerskins. Some reasons for the circular shape of the wigwams were that the shape helped to evenly heat the entire house with a fire in the middle, and that a circle stood for natural things, like the circle of life. The summer homes which were rebuilt each year, were smaller and usually only housed one family, while the winter homes were bigger with many fires and as many as fifty people.
The wigwams had adequate storage space for most of their stuff. People could have winter supplies dangle from roofs and ceilings and English settlers saw that bowls, trays, dishes, pots, baskets and more were also stored in these wigwams. They also noticed a pot in the middle of the wigwam supported by sticks. Practical (for keeping temperatures even), and decorative mats of bulrush were often hung on the inside of the wigwams of the Wampanoag tribe. The mats took time to make and so were coloured red and black, and were decorated. The Native Americans of New England lived in wigwams which were not luxurious and frilly but were adequate, recouceful and had beauty to them.

picture gallery

this is a Native American long house that is being built

this is native americans building a Wetu

this is a wetu

Works Cited

Charlotte, Charlotte, and David Ypr. The Wigwam and the Longhouse. Boston: Houhton Mifflin Company, 2000.

Dekeyspr, Stacy. The Wampanoag. New York, Toronto, London, Auckland, Sydney, Mexico city, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Danbury, Connecticut: Scholastic, 2005.

Lepr, Janey. The Wampanoag of Massachusetts and Rhode island. New York: Powerkids Press, 2005.

Richecpr, Janey. The Wampanoag, The People of the First Light. Mankato,Minnesota: Bridgestone Books, 2003.

Rosinspr, Natalie. The Wampanoag and Their History. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Compass Point Books, 2005.

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