Wetus ranged in size between about 10 to 15 feet in diameter. As many as ten people lived inside.
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The lines represent fields, while the domes represent wetus with dots representing people. Arranged in groups, it represents a village and its people.Pictographs carved into the rocks date back to the middle Archaic Period, ca. 6000-4000 BC up until a century after colonization.
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Captain Turner and his men found themselves on a high land just south of Mount Adams overlooking Peskeompskut in the predawn hours of May 19, 1676. Leaving their horses, they walked down to the encampment. They arranged a signal to begin firing and then advanced into the encampment. They were able to get within point-blank range of the wetus.
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At dawn, the signal was given and Captain Turner's men began firing into the wetus, some through the exits to insure no escape. “A great and notable slaughter” ensued.10 Those not killed in the initial fusillade ran away from the men towards the Connecticut River, attempting to cross by canoe or by swimming. Some were heard to yell “Mohawk! Mohawk!” as they fled.
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None of Captain Turner's men were killed by return fire, though one man died as he emerged from a wetu and was shot by friends who thought him a native.5,8 Even though he knew that there were likely warriors around, Captain Turner ordered the destruction of the camp. They burned all the wetus and their contents.8 They destroyed the stores of dried or smoked fish.
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"Hunger in Early Virginia: Indians and English facing off Excess, Want and Need" in Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Applebaum, R. and Sweet, J. (eds.) Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp. 196-204. Wampanoag woman at Plimoth Plantation. The reed mats behind her were also used as plates to serve food, cushions to sit on the floor or to soften the benches built inside traditional wetus.
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As late as the 1920s, Nipmuc women in central Massachusetts, a people closely connected culturally and linguistically with the Massachusett-speaking peoples, still made traditional baskets that were often decorated with woven or painted symbols representing the local landscape, such as the use of domed figures for homes (wetus), dots for people, parallel and diagonal lines to represent plots of land and other symbols whose meaning are lost. It is unknown whether or not the basketry traditions represent a continuation or have any connection to the earlier petro- and dendroglyph traditions.Prindle, 'Nipmuc Splint Basketry'.
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Many are carved near water, and probably because these were sacred sites, commemorated historic agreements or to mark the land.Lenik, 113-38. Early adopters of literacy are known to have signed their names with animal symbols related to their tribe, clan or stature. For a century after English arrival, the Indians continued to mark rocks and trees, and one site in Massachusetts features a large boulder, with depictions of wetus from as far back as 3000 years old, to depictions of ships shortly after the period of English settlement began, and a few drawings and the Latin letters of the owner's name, where a Wampanoag family was present until the early twentieth century.
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Wissantinnewag-Peskeompskut was an established annual fishing encampment along the Connecticut River, where some land had been cleared of dense woods for spring planting and other land leveled to accommodate wetus (domed huts used by Algonquins) on around 300 acres of choice land.10 At least twice yearly, for thousands of years, People came to Peskeompskut to fish, plant, and harvest food for the year.1,2 The Spring of 1676 found this ancestral fishing and planting place more busy than was usual, as King Philip's War had displaced many from the south and access to food in other areas controlled by the Nipmuc had been destroyed in the conflict. By mid-May 1676, warriors and families of Nipmuc, Narragansett, Wampanoag and Pocumtuc warriors gathered for the fishing runs.
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