Building a Wigwam These newlyweds are literally setting up house together; they're building a new wigwam, an oval-shaped house made of bent saplings and a protective covering. Everyone in our village lives in this same type of house, which is relatively small but perfectly adequate for our needs.  This couple has nearly finished building the framework of saplings that is the underpinning of the house. The saplings are driven into the ground on one end, then bent and lashed to one another with tough plant fiber. The framework is then covered, either by sheets of bark or cattail mats, and that covering is held in place by a final layer of smaller saplings lashed on top. We leave openings for a door and, at the very top of the roof, a smokehole, which vents the smoke from the hearth inside. We don't have any windows; but then, we spend very little time indoors, except to sleep, so we don't need a lot of light. All we need to complete the house is a deerskin to cover the doorway and a sheet of bark or a mat to prevent the wind and rain from coming in the smokehole. Behind the Scenes with Curator Steve Cook When Europeans arrived in southern New England, they were astonished to see that Native people painted themselves; like the wealthy dames of France, one observer wrote, who wore elaborate makeup on their faces. For Native people, red and black were the most common colors, but also white and yellow. Both men and women wore paint; not all over, necessarily, and not everyday, but for certain occasions and at certain times of life. The woman in this scene, who's wearing paint on her shoulders and face, is newly married. Unmarried and newly-married women probably wore paint more often than other women, because being painted was seen as being dressed up; you're showing off a little and trying to look good. You might also wear paint the first time you met someone from another village, to make a good impression. For women, the paint was usually limited to a little on the shoulders, the cheeks, and the center part in your hair. Nothing too elaborate. Men, on the other hand, often painted their shoulders, knees, face, chest; sometimes almost their entire bodies, especially when they went off to war. The paints were made from mineral pigments, earth pigments; the red, for example, comes from red oxide, which is just naturally-occurring iron rust. The pigments were mixed with rendered fat, bear or deer fat, which is almost like Vaseline, and applied with one or two fingers; like finger painting.