"Our Villages were located in rich alluvial river valleys, which gave access to lakes or the Great Sea downstream or to the upstream life of hill and mountain. These alluvial valleys later buried many villages, enfolding and sheltering them from inquisitive Euro-Americans. The villages were clusters of wigwams, perhaps arranged about larger council houses and dance grounds. I do not know of any above-ground evidence of what our ancient houses looked like. ...The historic wigwam of Wôbanakik is a cone, a widely distributed and probably archaic dwelling. Postholes of our ancient wigwams are not inconsistent with this type of residence. Each wigwam could hold up to fifteen people and was probably as conical frame of flexible saplings covered with birch, elm, or softwood bark. The ten- to sixteen-foot-diameter framework used three-inch main posts and smaller horizontal members bound together with basswood, hickory, or elm lashings. Coverings were sewn on with thinner wadabal (spruce root ties). Each wigwam had a central hearth to provide light and heat for domestic activities and a central smokehole that could be closed with a flexible mat during foul weather.
... Furniture was sparse, and little was needed in the wigwams and extended houses. Cattail mats called anhahkoganal were woven with basswood wefts after their late summer harvest. These mats provided comfort and privacy. Other furniture consisted of aromatic spruce braches covered with hides and staked to the earth. Covered with soft oswadagen (hides tanned with the fur on), these provide comfortable, insulating bedding. The outsides of the buildings could be painted with family crests or decorative symbols.
The cramped wigwams and apartments were but privacy or sleeping areas in the summer, when most activities took place outside. But people often retreated to the dim, smoky interiors during bad weather. During the long winter months our ancestors lived inside, venturing outside for hunting and fuel wood gathering. These were times for productive activity and time for telling stories. The cramped interiors required strict rules for personal and family space. Each person had his or her inviolate space, and one needed to ask permission before entering it. The central hearth was communal, but the periphery was private space, not to be violated.
...Cooking over the fire included roasting, sometimes with a rotisserie, and using heated boiling-stones transferred from the fire to stone, skin, or bark cookpots. Sewing tailored clothing was made possible by eyed needles. We had tailored solid-hide and woven-hide shirts and woven vegetal fiber/animal hair garments. Cordage, basketry, and textiles were made all year round. Woodcarving was perfected during this time but only dimly known through a ten-inch bowl recovered in Quobaug Lake, Massachusetts.
...Neighbors exchanged gossip, stories, and information inside the village, often visiting each other by night by the light of birch-bark torches. At other times they banded together to hunt, fish or gather wild foods. Neighboring villages met for ceremonies marking the annual cycle of Aki, the Earth, or the birth, death, or puberty of a young Alnôba. Each village had its own hunting and fishing territory, but quarried were for the use of all villages. During the spring fish-run harvest or the fall hunting, the village would be deserted, everyone moving to temporary camps close to the fish or game. There, the bounty of the land would be processed and brought back to the main village to be hung or cached in bark-lined storage pits. My grandfather said that a pit on an island in the stream was the best cache, since most land-dwelling pests couldn't get to it, though dogs and raccoons have been known to swim for a cache. By and large, village life went smoothly; those who had more gave to those who were less fortunate, both within and among villages; strife and ware were almost unknown, although famine was a constant companion."
Quoted from Fred M. Wiseman, The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation, pp. 33-37.
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