94 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [eunn. 69 
The preceding quotations describe the native dwelling encountered 
by the colonists who reached New England during the first half of 
the seventeenth century. They were the small dome-shaped mat 
or bark covered structure, usually constructed to accommodate one 
family, seldom more, but in later years a larger type of dwelling 
appears to have been built. Nevertheless it is often quite difficult 
to understand the exact meaning of the early narratives, and some 
who wrote during the first years of the century may have seen long, — 
extended dwellings standing in the various native villages along the 
coast. Daniel Gookin, writing from ‘‘ Cambridge, in N. E. Dec. 7th, 
1674,” gave a general account of the dwellings of the New England 
Indians as they were at that time. He said: 
“Their houses, or wigwams, are built with small poles fixed in the 
ground, bent and fastened together with barks of trees oval or. 
arbour-wise on the top. The best sort of their houses are covered 
very neatly, tight, and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their 
bodies, at such seasons when the sap is up; ad made into great 
flakes with pressures of weighty timbers, when they are green; and 
so becoming dry, they will retain a form suitable for the use they 
prepare them for. The meaner sort or wigwams are covered with 
mats, they make of a kind of bulrush, which are also indifferent 
tight and warm, but not so good as the former. These houses they 
make of several sizes, according to their activity and ability; some 
twenty, some forty feet long, and broad. Some I have seen of 
sixty or a hundred feet long, and thirty feet broad. In the smaller 
sort they make a fire in the centre of the house; and have a lower 
hole on the top of the house, to let out the smoke. They keep the 
door into the wigwams always shut, by a mat falling thereon, as 
people go in and out. This they do to prevent air coming in, which 
will cause much smoke in every windy weather. If the smoke beat 
down at the lower hole, they hang a little mat in the way of a skreen, 
on the top of the house, which they can with a cord turn to the wind- 
ward side, which prevents the smoke. In the greater houses they 
make two, three, or four fires, at a distance one from another, for 
the better accommodation of the people belonging to it. I have 
often lodged in their wigwams; and have found them as warm as 
the best English houses. In their wigwams they make a kind of 
couch or mattresses, firm and strong, raised about a foot high from | 
the earth; first covered with boards that they split out of trees; and 
upon the boards they spread mats generally, and some times bear 
skins and deer skins. They are large enough for three or four 
persons to lodge upon: and one may either draw nearer or keep at 
a more distance from the heat of the fire, as they please, for their 
mattresses are six or eight feet broad.’”” (Gookin, (1), pp. 149-150.) 
