Indian Longhouse and Wigwam construction

Today Ashley and I went to Jefferson Patterson Park to volunteer with the construction of the cattail reed longhouse and larger bark longhouse that Jeff Gottlieb has been supervising.. It's an amazing place, with several wigwams and longhouses. The weather was looking rather stormy/rainy, but it turned out well and we had no rain until later in the day.
The first thing we worked on was weaving cattail mats using a kind of loom. It seems like it would be a task that would take a long time, but it went rather quickly. It takes about 3 people to weave the mat with another person or more to gather reeds.
After weaving the mat you untie it and cut the strings holding it to the loom then place it on the longhouse. This is the fun part, you can climb on longhouse and wigwam frames. So, of course, I climbed up to help tie the mat to the frame. We made about 3 mats during the course of the day, then added the bark sheets to the roof of the longhouse. We finished up by working on adding bark sheets to the larger longhouse nearby.
The picture above was taken from on top of the completed bark longhouse. It shows the cattail and bark lodge, then the bark wigwam, and in the background is a side less longhouse which has 3 fire pits. You cant see it, but between the wigwam and the side less longhouse is a dugout canoe under construction.