The Eastern Woodland Indians were not nomadic people and built their own home for shelter
from the elements. The type of dwellings that they built were known as longhouses. These
were long, rectangular dwellings with frames made from the wood from young trees or saplings
and covered with bark that was often sewn together. The Northeastern Woodland Indians used
animal skins, wood, and hay to construct their homes.
Longhouses varied in size and in the number of people that they could accomondate.
While some could provide shelter for as many as twenty families, some tribes,
like the Powhattan whose homes are shown here, were constructed to house a single
family.
One of the more widely shelter designs used by the Woodland Indians, beside the longhouse,
was the bark-covered wigwam. Wigwams were often shaped like a cone or, in some cases, a
domed structure. The framing for these houses were usually made from small flexible trees
or saplings that were firmly embedded in the ground in a circle. They were then bent
overhead into an arch where they were tied together with bark fibers, or rawhide.