The Wampanoag and other New England Indians built sturdy, comfortable house known as a wigwam. Thomas Morton, writing in 1637, describes them:

They gather poles in the woods and put the great end of them in the ground, placing them in form of a circle or circumference; and bending the tops of them in form of an arch, they bind them together with the bark of walnut trees, which is wonderous tough, so that they make the same round on the top for the smoke of their fire to ascend and pass through.  These they cover with mats, some made of reeds and some of long flags, or sedge, finely sowed together with needles made of the splinter bones of a crane's leg, and with threads made of their Indian hemp, which there groweth naturally.  Leaving several places for doors, which are covered with mats which may be rolled up and let down again at their pleasures, they make use of the several doors according as the wind fits. ... Their lodging is made in three places of the house about the fire: they lie upon planks commonly about a foot or 18 inches above the ground, raised upon rails that are borne up upon forks.  They lay mats under them, and coats of deerskin, otters, beavers, raccoons and of bears' hides, all which they have dressed and converted into good leather with the hair on for their coverings.  And in this manner they lie as warm as they desire.  ... [T]hey are willing that anyone shall eat with them.  Nay, if anyone shall come into their houses, and there fall asleep, when they see him disposed to lie down they will spread a mat for him, of their own accord, and lay a roll of skins for a bolster, and let him lie.  If he sleep until their meat be dished up, they will set a wooden bowl of meat by him that sleepeth, and wake him, saying Cattup keen Mechkin, that is, "if you be hungry, there is meat for you", ... such is their humanity.

Roger Williams, writing in 1643, recorded some observations about the New England Indian foods:

• Sautaash  are these ("hurtle-berries") currants, dried by the natives, and so preserved all the year, which they beat to powder, and mingle it with their parched meal, and make a delicate dish which they call sautauthig; which is as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English.
• They also make great use of their strawberries, having such abundance of them, making strawberry [corn]bread, and having no other food for many days.
• Ewachim-neash (corn); Scannemeneash (seed corn); Wompiscannemeneash (white-seed corn).  There be divers sorts of corn, and of the colors.  The women set or plant, weed, and hill, and gather and barn all the corn, and fruits of the field: yet sometimes the man himself (either out of love to his wife, or care for his children, or being an old man) will help the woman which (by the custom of the country) they are not bound to.  The Indian women to this day (notwithstanding our hoes) do use their natural hoes of shells and wood.
• Askutasquash, their vine apples, which the English from them call squashes, about the bigness of apples of several colors, a sweet, light, wholesome, refreshing.
• Kaukont tuock - crow.  These birds, although they do the corn also some hurt, yet scarce will one native amongst a hundred will kill them because they have a tradition, that the crow brought them at first an Indian grain of corn in one ear, and an Indian or French bean in another, from the Great God Kautantowwit's field in the Southwest, from whence they hold came all their corn and beans.

Wampanoag woman and child walking through the stubble of the previous harvest's corn field.

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