Mourt’s Relation, a compiled account of the authors: William Bradford and Edward Winslow; Early explorations on shore. Cape Cod. Finding a Native house. A round structure covered in mats made of cattails, high enough to stand in, a low entrance, an opening for a smoke, a fireplace within, cozy and comfy.
Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 1622, Part I (two years after landing at Plymouth Rock)
According to the Pilgrims’ records, they anchored in Cape Cod Bay on November 11, 1620, Old Style Julian. November 21, 1620, today’s Gregorian. Their timing was bad. It was late in the year and had to be cold. There had already been ice and snow.
About two weeks later, during their second exploration of Cape Cod, they came across two Native houses. The occupants were absent.
A Native House (Wampanoag) generated by Claude
The Native House
“Whilst we were thus ranging and searching,
[a party led by Captain Myles Standish including William Bradford and Edward Winslow, among others, about 16 men.]
two of the sailors, which were newly come on the shore, by chance espied two houses which had been lately dwelt in, but the people were gone. They, having their pieces and hearing nobody, entered the house and took out some things, and durst not stay but came again and told us. So some seven or eight of us went with them, and found how we had gone within a flight shot of them before.
The house
The houses were made with long young sapling trees, [possibly birch or cedar] bended and both ends stuck into the ground. They were made round, like unto an arbor, and covered down to the ground with thick and well wrought mats, and the door was not over a yard high, made of a mat to open. [The mats were made of what we commonly call cattails, woven together into squares and rectangles. See below.] The chimney was a wide open hole in the top, for which they had a mat to cover it close when they pleased.
One might stand and go upright in them.
In the midst of them were four little trunches [short pieces of wood, stakes,] knocked into the ground, and small sticks laid over, on which they hung their pots, and what they had to seethe [boil]. Round about the fire they lay on mats, which are their beds. The houses were double matted, for as they were matted without, so were they within, with newer and fairer mats.
In the houses we found wooden bowls, trays and dishes, earthen pots, handbaskets made of crabshells wrought together, also an English pail or bucket; it wanted a bail [the wire handle], but it had two iron ears. There was also baskets of sundry sorts, bigger and some lesser, finer and some coarser; some were curiously wrought with black and white in pretty works, and sundry other of their household stuff.
We found also two or three deer’s heads, one whereof had been newly killed, for it was still fresh. There was also a company of deer’s feet stuck up in the houses, harts’ horns, and eagles’ claws, and sundry such like things there was, also two or three baskets full of parched acorns, pieces of fish, and a piece of a broiled herring. We found also a little silk grass, and a little tobacco seed, with some other seeds which we knew not. Without was sundry bundles of flags, and sedge, bulrushes, and other stuff to make mats. There was thrust into a hollow tree two or three pieces of venison, but we thought it fitter for the dogs than for us.
Some of the best things we took away with us, and left the houses standing still as they were.”
Author’s Note. The following house is covered in sticks, other images show houses covered in bark. The account of Bradford and Winslow states that the homes were covered in mats made of cattail, a thick grass-like plant readily available in the marshes along Cape Cod.
One pictures the poet Mary Oliver on the Beech Forest Trail, Crossing the Swamp and composing The Arrowhead.
Here is the endlesswet thickcosmos, the centerof everything—the nuggetof dense sap, branchingvines, the dark burredfaintly belchingbogs…
…
Here is where the Indians once lived. Where Mary Oliver once found “an arrowhead by the river, glittering and pointed,”Who first said, “it’s mine,” then changed her mind.
Prepared for a history class at Wichita State University, taught by Dr. Robert M. Owens.
Not Round and not covered in grass mats
