Wampanoag Homes--Cassidy

Wampanoag Homes

The Wampanoag people lived in varied places along Rhode Island

and southeast Massachusetts, usually near forests and rivers. The

houses were always built in a village-type format, always in the

spring, and by both men and women.

There were two types of homes—one was called “Wetu”, which

was the smaller kind of house that had a capacity of one family

and it had a cattail covering (cattails are a plentiful plant that

grows by marshes) on the outside. The second one was

called “Nushweety”, and it was bigger, could house more people

and it had a big sheet of bark on the outside. Both houses still had

the same qualities.

The houses were always a round shape, had a chimney (they

carved a hole in the roof). The frame of the house was built with

saplings, 40 to 200 depending how big or small the house was, and

the sap always helped men bend the saplings.

Cattails were a key part in Wampanoag homes. The women

would took care of the cattails, sun-drying them and then boiling

them to drain all the sap out. Then they would weave/sew them

double-sided to insulate and weatherproof the houses.

Wampanoag Indians slept on mats, and used clay pots and

wooden bowls. Every time a house became useless, they took it

down and built another one.