BUSHNELL] NATIVE VILLAGES AND VILLAGE SITES 95 
In many respects this general account confirms statements of the 
earlier writers, as well as giving details, and recording information 
not to be found in the older works. It is interesting to learn the 
manner in which large pieces of bark were prepared to serve over 
the lodge frame, and evidently bark was considered a much better 
covering than mats made of rushes. The narrative is of unusual 
interest, as it was prepared at a time when great changes were about 
to occur in the manners and conditions of the New England Indians. 
Soon was to begin the war with the southern tribes, King Philip’s 
War, so famed in history. 
Western Massachusetts was the home of the Housatonic or River 
Indians, later known as the Stockbridges. In the year 1736 several 
groups were settled on a tract of land set apart for their use by the 
Colonial government, the lands extending down the valley of the 
Housatonic, reaching to the present Great Barrington and neighbor- 
ing villages. A general view of the valley, in the southern part of 
the tract, is given in plate 3,b. The Housatonic, taken from an ancient 
village site on the right bank about 4 miles below Great Barrington, 
is showin 3 in plate 3,a. These Indians belonged to the Mahican con- 
federacy, tribes which, as already mentioned, occupied the upper 
Hudson valley and the adjacent country eastward. The region, rough 
and mountainous, remained thinly peopled long after other parts of 
New England were rather thickly populated. In the spring of 1743 
David Brainerd, ‘‘A missionary among the Jndians,”’ went to them. 
He arrived on the first day of April ‘‘at a Place called by them 
Kaunaumeek in the County of Albany, near about twenty Miles dis- 
tant from the City Eastward. The Place . .. was twenty Miles 
distant from any English Inhabitants . . . and also being too far 
distant from the Indians I therefor resolv’d to remove, and live 
with or near the J/ndians . . . Accordingly I removed soon after; 
and, for a Time, liv’d with them in one of their Wigwams.’’ (Pem- 
berton, (1), pp. 25-26.) 
In describing the habitations of these Indians a few years later it 
was said: 
— “A Wigwam is an Indian House, in building of which they take 
small flixible Poles and stick them into the Ground, round such a 
space as they intend for the Bigness of their House, whether greater 
or less: those Poles they bend from each Side, and fasten them 
together, making an Arch over Head: Then they fasten small Sticks 
to them, cutting the Poles at right Angles, which serve for Ribs. 
After which they cover the whole with Bark of Trees, leaving a Hole 
in the Top for the Smoak to go out, and at one or both Ends to go 
in and out.’”’ (Hopkins, (1), p. 11.) 
The same writer, on page 23, mentions a structure 50 or 60 feet 
in length, having fires burning within, and with 40 or more Indians 
