Equipment and Maintenance of Buildings
The furnishings of Wampanoag houses were simple. This was necessary because of the Indians’ mobile life. All household equipment, including the covering of the house itself, had to be carried from camp to camp by the women of the household.
The interiors of houses were lined with bulrush matting. This was decorated with painting or “embroidery”.303 Beds were family-sized—about six to eight feet across.304 They were raised a foot to a foot and a half off the ground.305 Forked sticks were set into the ground to hold poles, across which planks were laid.306 Rush mats served as the mattress, and the sleepers covered themselves with skins, dressed with the hair left on.307 Such a bed served the entire family and any visitors they might have.
The remainder of the furnishings consisted mainly of the various containers used for storage, cooking, and food service.308 Cooking pots were sometimes made of clay, but if possible iron, brass, or copper kettles were obtained from the Europeans, since these were not so easily broken.309 Birch bark pails were used as water containers, while various sizes of bags and baskets served to store food.310 Carved wooden bowls, plates, and spoons were also part of the furniture, and some milling equipment probably occupied an indoor place.311
Indoor fires were always kept burning.312 Fuel was either what windfalls could be gathered or an occasional larger tree which was cut and dragged in to be fed into the fireplace by degrees.313 Over the fireplace, which was a simple hearth made of field stones, there was often a square frame of sticks, supported on forked branches.314 Pots were hung from this framework. There was almost always a pot of boiling food over the fire, or else there was meat suspended on a stick whose end was buried in the ground.315 Drying fish or meat was also kept in the house at times—to benefit from the fire when the weather outside was damp. Bundles of rushes, bast fiber, hemp, and the like for making mats and baskets probably would have about completed the inventory of household goods, save for personal possessions and tools.316