Adapting to the change of seasons, people gathered a diverse array of plants for food and harvested fish at Mashantucket. Four dioramas reflect daily life in each season in different time periods. Autumn showcases the bounty found in a typical cross-section of land. Dozens of plants, trees and animals are shown, and an accompanying computer interactive program locates them and describes each sample s function in daily life. An oral history program entitled The Four Seasons relays tribal members insights into contemporary seasonal activities.
Display cases filled with prehistoric tools and their modern counterparts are also on view.
Visitors can walk among chestnuts, oaks and maples, through wigwams, and past handcrafted figures shown in cooking, talking, weaving and working poses. Hundreds of sounds can be heard. These are accompanied by the smells of the woodlands and campfires. Visitors who wander into a palisaded fort dated 50 years later than the village notice new materials and household items illustrating the impact of European contact on village life. All figures were cast from Native American models, and the traditional clothing, ornamentation and wigwams were made by Native craftspeople.