The Lower Eastern Shore, 1608
"Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of reed covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foot and more by a hurdle of wood. On these round about the house, they lie heads and points one by the other against the fire: some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground: from six to twenty in a house."
- Captain John Smith, 1612
Native houses were made of impermanent materials and required constant maintenance. They were also labor intensive to build. A bent-wood framework was lashed together with at least a mile of hand-twisted twine before being covered with woven mats or bark. Preparing this twine was task allotted to women.
Some of the best plants for this purpose, such as Indian hemp, grow in first-year abandoned fields, the best time to harvest the stalks being when nature has dried them out—midwinter through early spring. The fibers in the stalks can then be easily removed, without the plants’ sticky sap interfering, and cleaned and separated, ready for hand-twining, which went on all year.