[236] “Their houses, which they call wigwams, are built with poles pitcht into the ground of a round form for most part, sometimes square. They bind down the tops of their poles, leaving a hole for smoak to go out at, the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their wigwams with mats made of rushes painted with several colors. One good post they set up in the middle that reaches to the hole in the top, with a staff across before it; at a convenient height, they knock in a pin upon which they hang their kettle. Beneath that they set up a broad stone for a back which keepeth the post from burning. Round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep whilst their women dress their victuals. They have commonly two doors, one opening to the south, the other to the north, and, according as the wind sets, they close up one door with bark and hang a deers skin or the like before the other. Towns they have none, being always removing from one place to another for conveniency of food, sometimes to those places where one sort of fish is most plentiful, other whiles where others are. I have seen half a hundred of their wigwams together in a piece of ground and they show prettily; within a day or two or a week they have been all dispersed.” (Josselyn’s _Voyages_, p. 126). See also Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 144.
[237] Giving in his _Key_ (p. 48) the Indian combination of words signifying “let us lay on wood,” Roger Williams adds: “This they do plentifully when they lie down to sleep winter and summer, abundance they have and abundance they lay on: their fire is instead of our bed-clothes. And so, themselves and any that have any occasion to lodge with them, must be content to turn often to the fire, if the night be cold, and they who first wake must repair the fire.” Elsewhere he says: “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes.” See also Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 150.
When Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow were sent on their mission to Massasoit, in June, 1621, they say of their entertainment on the night they arrived at his lodge: “Late it grew, but victuals he offered none; for indeed he had not any, being he came so newly home. So we desired to go to rest: he layd us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks layd a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” (_Mourt_, p. 45). Two nights of this entertainment sufficed for the embassadors who “feared we should either be light-headed for want of sleep, for what with bad lodging, the savages barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,) lice and fleas within doors, and musketos without, we could hardly sleep all the time of our being there.” (_Ib._, p. 46) Another observer remarked of the New England Indians: “Tame cattle they have none, excepting Lice, and Dogs of a wild breed” (Josselyn’s _Voyages_, p. 127); and to the same effect Roger Williams notes (_Key_, p. 74): “In middle of summer, because of the abundance of fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they [the Indians] will fly and remove on a sudden to a fresh place.”