Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/67

Rh food for the household, the labor was divided quite unequally. It was manly for an Indian to hunt and fish, but the cultivation of the fields and gardens was wholly woman's work, as was the digging of clams and the procuring of all other shell fish. The cooking was also woman's prerogative, so that with the Indian the old couplet was not wholly inapt:

The Plymouth settlers described the houses of the Indians as follows: "They are made round, like an arbor, with long, young saplings stuck in the ground and bended over, covered down to the ground with thick and well wrought mats. The door, about a yard high, is made of a suspended mat. An aperture at the top served for a chimney, which is also provided with a covering of a mat to retain the warmth. In the middle of the room are four little crotches set in the ground supporting cross-sticks, on which are hung whatever they have to roast. Around the fire are laid the mats that serve for beds. The frame of poles is double matted; those within being fairer."

These frail houses were easily transported with their simple furnishings from place to place, wherever their business, hunting, fishing, or comfort might lead them. Their houses were removed to sheltered valleys or to dense swamps in the winter, and in the summer were pitched in the vicinity of their cultivated fields or fishing stations. Roger Williams says that on returning at night to lodge at one of them, which he had left in the morning, it was gone, and he was obliged to sleep under the branches of a friendly tree. It can be truthfully said of the Indians that they had no continuing city or abiding place, but like the Indians of the Northwest of our day, outside of reservations, wandered about from place to place as their physical necessities or caprice moved them. As they had no land titles, each family was at liberty to go and come, within tribal limits, with none to let or hinder. It is certain that there were fixed