An account of 1749 reports that the settlement of our local Mahican Indians at Stockbridge had 53 Indian houses, a church, a schoolhouse and the houses of several white families settled with the Indians as models of civilized behavior and technology. Twenty of the Indian houses were built in English style. That of John Sergeant, the first missionary to the Indians, is now preserved on Main Street, Stockbridge, as a museum. But what did the 33 wigwams look like?

Most were dome‐shaped or Quonset‐shaped structures with a frame of poles bent in arches and with horizontal reinforcements along the sides. Some may have been A‐shaped or conical, and a few may have had perpendicular sides and pitched roofs. The covering was of large sheets of elm or birch bark, mats made of rushes or corn husks, large animal hides, or a mixture of all three. Traditionally, these were tied to the pole frame with the tough, flexible inner bark of elms, but with the help of their English neighbors, the Mahicans doubtless found it easier to nail the covering to the poles. They probably added canvas, blankets, cowhides, discarded rugs and scrap lumber to the other covering materials.

In size the wigwams ranged from 8 to 10 feet across to as much as 30. Some longhouses in the Northeast were as much as 350 feet in length, housing several families. Umpachene’s house near the Green River in North Sheffield was 60 feet long. Great Barrington’s earliest name, Great Wigwam, may reflect the memory of another such large structure.

Furnishings ranged from a few deerskins and mats on the earth floor to the elaboration of sleeping platforms, storage shelves and fine mats lining the inner walls. As European contacts continued, windows, bedsteads, washstands added to the comfort of a house still easy to build and simple to leave. To European eyes, the larger half of Stockbridge must have looked like a

shantytown, but clearly a majority of the Indians were reluctant to put in ‘civilized’ man‐hours of labor for more luxury than they felt was needful.