sb. Also 7 wiggwamme, 8 wigwang, wigg-wham, whigwham, wigwaum, 9 weekwam. [a. Ojibwa wigwaum, wigiwam, var. of Algonkin weekuwom, wikiwam (Delaware wiquoam) lit. their house (cf. neek my house, keek thy house, week his house).] A lodge, cabin, tent or hut of the North American Indian tribes of the region of the Great Lakes and eastward, formed of bark, matting or hides stretched over a frame of poles converging at the top: corresponding to the TEPEE of other tribes.
1628. C. Levett, Voy. N. Eng., i. in Collect. Mass. Hist. Soc., Ser. III. VIII. 166. We built us our wigwam, or house, in one hour’s space.
1659. Gorges, America Painted to the Life, 38. This Sachem passing from one Wigwam to another, was shot through the arm with an arrow.
1722. Beverley, Hist. Virginia (ed. 2), 148. When they would erect a Wigwang, which is the Indian Name for a House, they stick Saplins into the Ground [etc.].
1821. T. Dwight, Trav., I. 117. They called a house weekwam, pronounced by their successors wigwam.
1855. Longf., Hiaw., Introd. 3. The curling smoke of wigwams.
1855. Lubbock, Preh. Times, xii. 42. The huts or wigwams are … of two kinds, one for summer, and the other for winter.
1893. Conan Doyle, Refugees, xxix. The great plains where the wooden wigwam gave place to the hide tee-pee.
b. Extended to similar structures among native tribes in other parts of the world.
1743. Bulkeley & Cummins, Voy. S. Seas, 37. They hawl’d their Canoes up, and built four Wigg-whams.
1793. W. Hodges, Trav. India, 66. The wigwams of the torpid, wretched, unsettled Pecherais on the frozen coast of Terra del Fuego.
1814. Scott, Wav., viii. A miserable wigwam, compiled of earth, loose stones, and turf.
1865. Lubbock, Preh. Times, viii. 228. The wigwam of the recent Mandan consisted of an outer layer of earth supported on a wooden framework.
c. Humorously applied to a house or dwelling in general; in U.S. slang to a large building (formerly often a temporary structure) used for political gatherings.
1818. Scott, Rob Roy, xxxiv. They … bore me … towards Mrs. MacAlpine’s. On arrival before her hospitable wigwam I found [etc.].
1884. Halliwell-Phillips, Hand-list Drawings Shaks., title-p., Preserved at Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton. That quaint wigwam on the Sussex Downs.
Hence Wigwam v. (nonce-wd.), intr. to erect wigwams or huts.
1906. Agnes C. Laut, in Harper’s Mag., April, 770/2. Having seen with his own eyes that the English fur traders were really wigwamming on the bay.
