Chapter V: Introduction (4)

In the front of the house over the trapdoor there are no planks for a space of about 2 feet. The lower part of this space is filled in with short transverse beams, so as to leave a square hole close to the ridge. This hole has a stout transverse beam at the top and bottom and serves as a window. When the house is occupied it is covered by a translucent membrane made of strips of seal entrail sewed together and stretched over two arched sticks of light wood--whalebone was used in Dr. Simpson’s time[N127]--running diagonally across from corner to corner. The window is closed with a wooden shutter when the house is shut up in winter, but both apertures are left open in summer. Just above the window, close to the ridgepole, is a little aperture for ventilation. Across the back of the room runs a platform or banquette, about 30 inches high in front and sloping back a little, which serves as a sleeping and lounging place. It is about 5 feet wide, and the front edge comes nearly under the ridgepole. It is made of thick planks running across the house, and supported at each end by a horizontal beam, the end of which projects somewhat beyond the bench and is supported by a round post. At each side of the house stands a lamp, and over these are suspended racks in the shape of small ladders for drying clothing,[N128] etc. Deerskin blankets for the bed, which are rolled up and put under the bench when not in use, and a number of wooden tubs of various sizes--I counted nine tubs and buckets in one house in Utkiavwĭñ--complete the furniture.

[Footnote N127: Op. cit., p. 256.]

[Footnote N128: Compare Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 46: “Small lattice
shelves * * * on which moccasins * * * are put to dry.” Plover
Bay. See also plate to face p. 160 Parry’s Second Voyage.]

Two families usually occupy such a house, in which case each wife has her own end of the room and her own lamp, near which on the floor she usually sits to work. Some houses contain but one family and others more. I knew one house in Utkiavwĭñ whose regular occupants were thirteen in number, namely, a father with his wife and adopted daughter, two married sons each with a wife and child, his widowed sister with her son and his wife, and one little girl. This house was also the favorite stopping-place for people who came down from Nuwŭk to spend the night. The furniture is always arranged in the same way. There is only one rack on the right side of the house and two on the left. Of these the farther from the lamp is the place for the lump of snow. In this same corner are kept the tubs, and the large general chamber pot and the small male urinal are near the trap door. Dishes of cooked meat are also kept in this corner. This leaves the other corner of the house vacant for women visitors, who sit there and sew. Male visitors, as well as the men of the house when they have nothing to do, usually sit on the edge of the banquette.

In sleeping they usually lie across the banquette with their feet to the wall, but sometimes, when there are few people in the house, lie lengthwise, and occasionally sleep on the floor under the banquette. Petitot says that in the Mackenzie region only married people sleep with their heads toward the edge of the banquette. Children and visitors lie with their heads the other way.[N129] (See Fig. 9, ground plan and section of house, and Figs. 10 and 11, interior, from sketches by the writer. For outside see Fig. 12, from a photograph by Lieut. Ray).

[Footnote N129: Monographie, etc., p. xxiii.]

At the back of the house is a high oblong scaffolding, made by setting up tall poles of driftwood, four, six, or eight in number, and fastening on cross pieces about 8 or 10 feet from the ground, usually in two tiers, of which the lower supports the frames of the kaiaks and the upper spears and other bulky property. Nothing except very heavy articles, such as sledges, boxes, and barrels, is ever left on the ground. A man can easily reach this scaffold from the top of the house, but it is high enough to be out of reach of the dogs. The cross pieces are usually supported on crotches made by lashing the lower jaw of a walrus to the pole, so that one ramus lies along the latter. Scaffolds of this sort, usually spoken of as “caches” or “cache frames,” are of necessity used among the Eskimos generally, as it is the only way in which they can protect their bulky property.[N130]

[Footnote N130: See for instance, Crantz, History of Greenland,
vol. 1, p. 141; Franklin, 1st Exped., vol. 2, p. 194 (Coppermine
River); 2d Exped., p. 121 (Mouth of the Mackenzie, where they are
made of drift logs stuck up so that the roots serve as crotches to
hold the cross pieces); Hooper, Tents, etc., pp. 48, 228, and 343
(Plover Bay, Point Barrow, and Toker Point); J. Simpson, op. cit.,
p. 256 (Point Barrow); Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 92
(Pitlekaj).]

Around Norton Sound, however, they use a more elaborate structure, consisting of a regular little house 6 feet square, raised 6 to 10 feet from the ground on four posts.[N131]

[Footnote N131: Dall, Alaska, p. 13.]

Belonging to each household, and usually near the house, are low scaffolds for the large boats, rows of posts for stretching lines of thong, and one or more small cellars or underground rooms framed with whales’ bones, the skull being frequently used for a roof, which serve as storehouses for blubber. These may be called “blubber rooms.”

These winter houses can only be occupied when the weather is cold enough to keep the ground hard frozen. During the summer the passageways are full of water, which freezes at the beginning of winter and is dug out with a pickax. The people of Utkiavwĭñ began to come to us to borrow our pickax to clean out their iglus about September 24, 1882, and all the houses were vacated before July 1, both seasons.

This particular form of winter house, though in general like those built by other Eskimo, nevertheless differs in many respects from any described elsewhere. For instance, the Greenland house was an oblong flat-roofed building of turf and stones, with the passageway in the middle of one side instead of one end, and not underground. Still, the door and windows were all on one side, and the banquette or “brix” only on the side opposite the entrance. The windows were formerly made of seal entrails, and the passage, though not underground, was still lower than the floor of the house, so that it was necessary to step up at each end.[N132]

[Footnote N132: Egede, Greenland, p. 114; Crantz, History of
Greenland, vol. 1, p. 139; Rink, Tales and Traditions, p. 7.]

A detailed description of the peculiar communal house of the East Greenlanders, of which, there is only one at each village, will be found in Capt. Holm’s paper in the Geografisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, pp. 87-89. This is the long house of West Greenland, still further elongated till it will accommodate “half a score of families, that is to say, 30 to 50 people.” John Davis (1586) describes the houses of the Greenlanders “neere the Sea side,” which were made with pieces of wood on both sides, and crossed over with poles and then covered over with earth.[N133]

[Footnote N133: Hakluyt, Voyages, etc. (1589), p. 788.]

At Iglulik the permanent houses were dome shaped, built of bones, with the interstices filled with turf, and had a short, low passage.[N134] No other descriptions of permanent houses are to be found until we reach the people of the Mackenzie region, who build houses of timbers, of rather a peculiar pattern, covered with turf, made in the form of a cross, of which three or all four of the arms are the sleeping rooms, the floor being raised into a low banquette.[N135] (See Fig. 13.) Petitot[N136] gives a very excellent detailed description of the houses of the Anderson River people. According to his account the passageway is built up of blocks of ice. He mentions one house with a single alcove like those at Point Barrow.[N137]

[Footnote N134: Lyon, Journal, p. 171.]

[Footnote N135: See Fig. 13, ground plan and section, copied from
Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. XXIII.]

[Footnote N136: Monographie, etc., p. XXI.]

[Footnote N137: See also Franklin, 2d Exped., p. 121 (Mouth of the
Mackenzie), and pp. 215 and 216 (Atkinson Island, Richardson.
A ground plan and section closely resembling Petitot’s are given
here); and Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 243 (Toker Point).]

We have no description of the houses at the villages between Point Barrow and Kotzebue Sound, but at the latter place was found the large triple house described by Dr. Simpson, and compared by him with that described by Richardson, though in some respects it more closely resembles those seen by Hooper.[N138] This house really has a fireplace in the middle, and in this approaches the houses of the southern Eskimo of Alaska. According to Dr. Simpson,[N139] “a modification of the last form, built of undressed timber, and sometimes of very small dimensions, with two recesses opposite each other, and raised a foot above the middle space, is very common on the shores of Kotzebue Sound,” but he does not make it plain whether houses like those used at Point Barrow are not used there also.

[Footnote N138: See ante.]

[Footnote N139: Op. cit., p. 258.]

This form of house is very like the large snow houses seen by Lieut. Ray at hunting camps on Kulugrua. Dr. Simpson describes less permanent structures which are used on the rivers, consisting of small trees split and laid “inclining inward in a pyramidal form towards a rude square frame in the center, supported by two or more upright posts. Upon these the smaller branches of the felled trees are placed, and the whole, except the aperture at the top and a small opening on one side, is covered with earth or only snow.”[N139b] These buildings, and especially the temporary ones described by Dr. Simpson, used on the Nunatak, probably gave rise to the statement we heard at Point Barrow that “the people south had no iglus and lived only in tents.” The houses at Norton Sound are quite different from the Point Barrow form. The floor, which is not planked, is 3 or 4 feet under ground, and the passage enters one side of the house, instead of coming up through the floor, and a small shed is built over the outer entrance to the passage. The fire is built in the middle of the house, under the aperture in the roof which serves for chimney and window, and there is seldom any banquette, but the two ends of the room are fenced off by logs laid on the ground, to serve as sleeping places, straw and spruce boughs being laid down and covered with grass mats.[N140]

[Footnote N139b: Op. cit., p. 258.]

[Footnote N140: Dall, Alaska, pp. 13 and 14, diagram on p. 13.]

The houses in the Kuskokwim region are quite similar to those just described, but are said to be built above ground in the interior, though thy are still covered with sods.[N141] There are no published accounts of the houses of the St. Lawrence islanders, but they are known to inhabit subterranean or partly underground earth-covered houses, built of wood, while the Asiatic Eskimo have abandoned the old underground houses, which were still in use at the end of the last century, and have adopted the double-skin tent of the Chukches.[N142] In addition to the cases quoted by Dall, Capt. Cook speaks of finding the natives of St. Lawrence Bay in 1778 living in partly underground earth-covered houses.[N143]

[Footnote N141: Petroff, Report, etc., p. 15.]

[Footnote N142: See Dall, Cont. to N. A. Ethn., vol. 1, p. 105.
Mr. E. W. Nelson tells me, however, that the village at East Cape,
Siberia, is composed of real iglus.]

[Footnote N143: Third Voyage, vol. 2, p. 450.]

_Arrangement in villages._--The village of Utkiavwĭñ occupies a narrow strip of ground along the edge of the cliffs of Cape Smyth, about 1,000 yards long, and extending some 150 yards inland. The houses are scattered among the hillocks without any attempt at regularity and at different distances from each other, sometimes alone, and sometimes in groups of two contiguous houses, which often have a common cache frame. Nuwŭk, from Dr. Simpson’s account[N144] and what we saw in our hurried visits, is scattered in the same way over the knolls of Point Barrow, but has its greatest extension in an east and west direction. From Simpson’s account (ibid.) double houses appear more common at Nuwŭk than at Utkiavwĭñ, and he even speaks of a few threefold ones. All the houses agree in facing south. This is undoubtedly to admit the greatest amount of light in winter, and seems to be a tolerably general custom, at least among the northern Eskimo.[N145]

[Footnote N144: Op. cit., p. 256.]

[Footnote N145: For example, I find it mentioned in Greenland by
Kane, 1st Grinnell Exp., p. 40; at Iglulik by Parry, 2d Voy.,
p. 499; and at the mouth of the Mackenzie by Franklin, 2d Exp.,
p. 121, as well as by Dr. Simpson at Nuwŭk, op. cit., p. 256.]

The custom of having the dwelling face south appears to be a deeply rooted one, as even the tents in summer all face the same way.[N146]

[Footnote N146: Frobisher says the tents in Meta Incognita
(in 1577) were “so pitched up, that the entrance into them, is
alwaies South, or against the Sunne.” Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc.,
(1589) p. 628.]

The tents on the sandspit at Plover Bay all face west. The same was observed by the Krause brothers at East Cape.[N147] At Utkiavwĭñ there are twenty-six or twenty-seven inhabited houses. The uninhabited are mostly ruins and are chiefly at the southwest end of the village, though the breaking away of the cliffs at the other end has exposed the ruins of a few other old houses. Near these are also the ruins of the buildings destroyed by the ice catastrophe described above (p. 31). The mounds at the site of the United States signal station are also the ruins of old iglus. We were told that “long ago,” before they had any iron, five families who “talked like dogs” inhabited this village. They were called Isû´tkwamiun. Similar mounds are to be seen at Pernyû, near the present summer camp. About these we only learned that people lived there “long ago.” We also heard of ruined houses on the banks of Kulugrua.

[Footnote N147: Geographische Blätter, vol. 5, p. 27.]

Besides the dwellings there are in Utkiavwĭñ three and in Nuwŭk two of the larger buildings used for dancing, and as workrooms for the men, so often spoken of among other Eskimo.

Dr. Simpson states[N148] that they are nominally the property of some of the more wealthy men. We did not hear of this, nor did we ever hear the different buildings distinguished as “So-and-so’s,” as I am inclined to think would have been the case had the custom still prevailed. They are called kû´dyĭgi or kû´drĭgi (karrigi of Simpson), a word which corresponds, mutatis mutandis, with the Greenlandic kagsse, which means, first, a circle of hills round a small deep valley, and then a circle of people who sit close together (and then, curiously enough, a brothel). At Utkiavwĭñ they are situated about the middle of the village, one close to the bank and the others at the other edge of the village. They are built like the other houses, but are broader than long, with the ridgepole in the middle, so that the two slopes of the roof are equal, and are not covered with turf, like the dwellings, being only partially banked up with earth.

[Footnote N148: Op. cit., p. 259.]

The one visited by Lieut. Ray on the occasion of the “tree dance” was 16 by 20 feet and 7 feet high under the ridge, and held sixty people. In the fall and spring, when it is warm enough to sit in the kû´dyĭgi without fire and with the window open, it is used as a general lounging place or club room by the men. Those who have carpentering and similar work to do bring it there and others come simply to lounge and gossip and hear the latest news, as the hunters when they come in generally repair to the kû´dyĭgi as soon as they have put away their equipments.

They are so fond of this general resort that when nearly the whole village was encamped at Imêkpûñ in the spring of 1883, to be near the whaling ground, they extemporized a club house by arranging four timbers large enough for seats in a hollow square near the middle of the camp. The men take turns in catering for the club, each man’s wife furnishing and cooking the food for the assembled party when her husband’s turn comes. The club house, however, is not used as a sleeping place for the men of the village, as it is said to be in the territory south of Bering Strait,[N149] nor as a hotel for visitors, as in the Norton Sound region.[N150] Visitors are either entertained in some dwelling or build temporary snow huts for themselves.

[Footnote N149: Petroff, Report, etc., p. 128.]

[Footnote N150: Dall, Alaska, p. 16.]

The kû´dyĭgi is not used in the winter, probably on account of the difficulty of warming it, except on the occasions of the dances, festivals, or conjuring ceremonies. Crevices in the walls are then covered with blocks of snow, a slab of transparent ice is fitted into the window, and the house is lighted and heated with lamps. Buildings of this sort and used for essentially the same purposes have been observed among nearly all known Eskimo, except the Greenlanders, who, however, still retain the tradition of such structures.[N151] Even the Siberian Eskimo, who have abandoned the iglu, still retained the kû´dyĭgi until a recent date at least, as Hooper saw at Oong-wy-sac a performance in a “large tent, apparently erected for and devoted to public purposes (possibly as a council room as well as a theater, for in place of the usual inner apartments only a species of bench of raised earth ran round it).”[N152] These buildings are numerous and particularly large and much used south of Bering Strait, where they are also used as steam bath houses.[N153]

[Footnote N151: See Rink, Tales and Traditions, p. 8; also
Geografisk Tidskrift, vol. 8, p. 141. Speaking of buildings of
this sort, Dr. Rink says: “Men i Grønland kjendes de vel kun af
Sagnet. Paa Øer Disko vil man have paavist Ruinen af en saadan
Bygning, som besynderlig nok særlig sagdes at have været benyttet
til Festligheder af erotisk Natur.” Boas, “The Central Eskimo,”
passim; Lyon, Journal, p. 325 (Iglulik); Richardson, in Franklin’s
2d Exp., pp. 215-216 (Atkinson Island); Petitot, Monographie,
etc., xxx; “_Kêchim_, ou maison des assemblées;” Beechey, Voyage,
p. 268 (Point Hope); Dall, Alaska, p. 16 and elsewhere; Petroff,
Rep. p. 128 and elsewhere.]

[Footnote N152: Tents, etc., p. 136.]

[Footnote N153: See references to Dall and Petroff, above.]

_Snow houses_ (_apúya_).--Houses of snow are used only temporarily, as for instance at the hunting grounds on the rivers, and occasionally by visitors at the village who prefer having their own quarters. For example, a man and his wife who had been living at Nuwŭk decided in the winter of 1882-’83 to come down and settle at Utkiavwĭñ, where the woman’s parents lived. Instead of going to one of the houses in the village, they built themselves a snow house in which they spent the winter. The man said he intended to build a wooden house the next season. These houses are not built on the dome or beehive shape so often described among the Eskimo of the middle region of Dr. Rink.[N154]

[Footnote N154: Parry, 2nd Voy., p. 160 and plate opposite;
Franklin, 1st Exped. vol. 2, pp. 43-47, ground plan, p. 46; Boas,
“Central Eskimo,” pp. 539-553; Kumlien, Contributions, etc.,
p. 31; Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. xvii (a full description
with a ground plan and section on p. xix), and all the popular
accounts of the Eskimo.]

The idea naturally suggests itself that this form of building is really a snow _tupek_ or tent, while the form used at Point Barrow is simply the iglu built of snow instead of wood. When built on level ground, as in the village, the snow house consists of an oblong room about 6 feet by 12, with walls made of blocks of snow, and high enough for a person to stand up inside. Beams or poles are laid across the top, and over these is stretched a roof of canvas. At the south end is a low narrow covered passage of snow about 10 feet long leading to a low door not over 2½ feet high, above which is the window, made, as before described, of seal entrail. The opening at the outer end of the passage is at the top, so that one climbs over a low wall of snow to enter the house.

At the right side of the passage, close to the house, is a small fireplace about 2½ feet square and built of slabs of snow, with a smoke hole in the top and a stick stuck across at the proper height to hang a pot on. When the first fire is built in such a fireplace there is considerable melting of the surface of the snow, but as soon as the fire is allowed to go out this freezes to a hard glaze of ice, which afterwards melts only to a trifling extent. Opposite to the door of the house, which is protected by a curtain of canvas, corresponding to the Greenlandic ubkuaĸ, “a skin which is hung up before the entrance of the house,”[N155] the floor is raised into a banquette about 18 inches high, on which are laid boards and skins. Cupboards are excavated under the banquette, or in the walls, and pegs are driven into the walls to hang things on. As such a house is only large enough for one family, there is only one lamp, which stands at the right-hand side of the house[N156].

[Footnote N155: Grønlandsk Ordbog, p. 404; Kane’s 1st Grinnell
Exp., p. 40, calls it a “skin-covered door.” Compare, also, the
skin or matting hung over the entrance of the houses at Norton
Sound, Dall, Alaska, p. 13, and the bear-skin doors of the
Nunatañmiun and other Kotzebue Sound natives, mentioned by Dr.
Simpson, op. cit., p. 259.]

[Footnote N156: Compare Dr. Simpson’s description, op. cit.,
p. 259.]

At the hunting grounds, or on the road thither in the winter, a place is selected for the house where the snow is deeply drifted under the edge of some bank, so that most of the house can be made by excavation. When necessary, the walls are built up and roofed over with slabs of snow. Such a house is very speedily built. The first party that goes over the road to the hunting ground usually builds houses at the end of each day’s march, and these serve for the parties coming later, who have simply to clear out the drifted snow or perhaps make some slight repairs. On arriving at the hunting ground they establish themselves in larger and more comfortable houses of the same sort; generally for two families. Lieut. Ray, who visited these camps, has drawn the plan represented in Fig. 14. There is a banquette, _a_, at each end of the room, which is much broader than long (compare the form of house common at Kotzebue Sound, mentioned above, p. 78), but only one lamp, on a low shelf of snow, _b_, running across the back of the room and excavated below into a sort of cupboard. There are also similar cupboards, _c_, at different places in the walls, and a long tunnel, _f_, with the usual storerooms, _i_, and kitchen, _h_, from which a branch tunnel often leads to an adjoining house. The floor is marked _d_, the entrance to the tunnel _g_, and the door _e_. The house is lighted by the seal-gut windows of the iglu brought from the village.

On going into camp the railed sled is stuck points down into the snow and net-poles, or ice-picks, thrust through the rails, making a temporary cache frame,[N157] on which are hung bulky articles-- snowshoes and guns.[N158] Small storehouses of snow or ice are built to contain provisions. In the autumn, many such houses are built in the village, of slabs of clear fresh-water ice about 4 inches thick cemented together by freezing. These resemble the buildings of fresh-water ice at Iglulik, described by Capt. Lyon.[N159]

[Footnote N157: Compare the woodcut on p. 406, vol. 1, of Kane’s
2d Exp., where two sleds are represented as stuck up on end with
their “upstanders” meeting to form a platform--Smith Sound.]

[Footnote N158: Firearms can not be carried into a warm room in
cold weather, as the moisture in the air immediately condenses on
the cold surface of the metal.]

[Footnote N159: Journal, p. 204; see also the plate opposite
p. 358 of Parry’s 2d Voyage.]

Other temporary structures of snow, sometimes erected in the village, serve as workshops. One of these, which was built at the edge of the village in April, 1883, was an oblong building long enough to hold an umiak, giving sufficient room to get around it and work, and between 6 and 7 feet high. The walls were of blocks of snow and the roof of canvas stretched over poles. One end was left open, but covered by a canvas curtain, and a banquette of snow ran along each side. It was lighted by oblong slabs of clear ice set into the walls, and warmed by several lamps. Several men in succession used this house for repairing and rigging up their umiaks, and others who had whittling to do brought their work to the same place.

Such boat shops are sometimes built by digging a broad trench in a snowbank and roofing it with canvas. Women dig small holes in the snow, which they roof over with canvas and use for work-rooms in which to dress seal skins. In such cases there is probably some superstitious reason, which we failed to learn, for not doing the work in the iglu. The tools used in building the snow houses are the universal wooden snow-shovel and the ivory snow-knife, for cutting and trimming the blocks. At the present day saws are very much used for cutting the blocks, and also large iron knives (whalemen’s “boarding knives,” etc.) obtained from the ships.

_Tents_ (_tupĕk_).--During the summer all the natives live in tents, which are pitched on dry places upon the top of the cliffs or upon the gravel beach, usually in small camps of four or five tents each. A few families go no farther than the dry banks just southwest of the village, while the rest of the inhabitants who have not gone eastward trading or to the rivers hunting reindeer are strung along the coast. The first camp below Utkiavwĭñ is just beyond the double lagoon of Nunava, about 4 miles away, and the rest at intervals of 2 or 3 miles, usually at some little inlet or stream at places called Sê´kqluka, Nakĕ´drixo, Kuosu´gru, Nună´ktuau, Ĭpersua, Wă´lăkpa (Refuge Inlet, according to Capt. Maguire’s map, Parl. Rep. for 1854, opp. p. 186), Er´nĭvwĭñ, Sĭ´ñaru, and Sa´kămna. It is these summer camps seen from passing ships which have given rise to the accounts of numerous villages along this coast. There is usually a small camp on the beach at Sĭ´nnyû and one at Imê´kpûñ, while a few go to Pernyû even early in the season.

As the sea opens the people from the lower camps travel up the coast and concentrate at Pernyû, where they meet the Nuwuñmiun, the Nunatañmiun traders, and the whalemen, and are joined later in the season by the trading parties returning from the east, all of whom stop for a few days at Pernyû. On returning to the village also, in September, the tents are pitched in dry places among the houses and occupied till the latter are dry enough to live in. Tents are used in the autumnal deer hunts, before snow enough falls to build snow houses. In the spring of 1883, when the land floe was very heavy and rough off Utkiavwĭñ, all who were going whaling in the Utkiavwĭñ boats went into camp with their families in tents pitched on the crown of the beach at Imêkpûñ, whence a path led off to the open water.

The tents are nowadays always made of cloth, either sailcloth obtained from wrecks or drilling, which is purchased from the ships. The latter is preferred as it makes a lighter tent and both dark blue and white are used. Reindeer or seal skins were used for tents as lately as 1854. Elson saw tents of sealskin lined with reindeer skin at Refuge Inlet,[N160] and Hooper mentions sealskin tents at Cape Smyth and Point Barrow.[N161] Dr. Simpson gives a description of the skin tents at Point Barrow.[N162] Indeed, it is probable that canvas tents were not common until after the great “wreck seasons” of 1871 and 1876, when so many whaleships were lost. The Nunatañmiun at Pernyû had tents of deerskin, and I remember also seeing one sealskin tent at the same place, which, it is my impression, belonged to a man from Utkiavwĭñ. Deerskin tents are used by the Anderson River natives,[N163] while sealskins are still in use in Greenland and the east generally.[N164] The natives south of Kotzebue Sound do not use tents, but have summer houses erected above ground and described as “generally log structures roofed with skins and open in front.”[N165] That they have not always been ignorant of tents is shown by the use of the word “topek” for a dwelling at Norton Sound.[N166]

[Footnote N160: Beechey’s Voyage, p. 315.]

[Footnote N161: Tents, etc., pp. 216, 225.]

[Footnote N162: Op. cit., p. 260.]

[Footnote N163: MacFarlane MSS. and Petitot, Monographie, etc.,
p. xx, “des tentes coniques (_tuppeρk_) en peaux de renne.”]

[Footnote N164: See Rink, Tales, etc., p. 7 (“skins” in this
passage undoubtedly means sealskins, as they are more plentiful
than deerskins among the Greenlanders, and were used for this
purpose in Egede’a time--Greenland, p. 117; and Kumlien, op. cit.,
p. 33.). In east Greenland, according to Holm, “Om Sommeren bo
Angsmagsalikerne i Telte, der ere betrukne med dobbelte Skind og
have Tarmskinds Forhæng.” Geogr. Tids., vol. 8, p. 89. In
Frobisher’s description of Meta Incognita (in 1577), he says:
“Their houses are tents made of seale skins, pitched up with 4
Firre quarters, foure square, meeting at the toppe, and the
skinnes sewed together with sinewes, and layd thereupon.”
Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc. (1589), p. 628. See also Boas, “Central
Eskimo.”]

[Footnote N165: Petroff, op. cit., p. 128.]

[Footnote N166: Dall, Alaska, p. 13.]

The tents at Point Barrow are still constructed in a manner very similar to that described by Dr. Simpson (see reference above). Four or five poles about 12 feet long are fastened together at the top and spread out so as to form a cone, with a base about 12 feet in diameter. Inside of these about 6 feet from the ground is lashed a large hoop, upon which are laid shorter poles (sometimes spears, umiak oars, etc.). The canvas cover, which is now made in one piece, is wrapped spirally round this frame, so that the edges do not meet in front except at the top, leaving a triangular space or doorway, filled in with a curtain of which part is a translucent membrane, which can be covered at night with a piece of cloth. A string runs from the upper corner of the cloth round the apex of the tent and comes obliquely down the front to about the middle of the edge of the other end of the cloth. The two edges are also held together by a string across the entrance. Heavy articles, stones, gravel, etc., are laid on the flap of the tent to keep it down, and spears, paddles, etc., are laid up against the outside. (See Fig. 15, from a photograph by Lieut. Ray.)

Inside of the tent there is much less furniture than in the iglu, as the lamp is not needed for heating and lighting, and the cooking is done outdoors on tripods erected over fires. The sleeping place is at the back of the tent, and is usually marked off by laying a log across the floor, and spreading boards on the ground. Not more than one family usually occupy a tent. The tents at the whaling camp mentioned above were, at first, fitted out with snow passages and fireplaces like a snow hut, and many had a low wall of snow around them, but these had all melted before the camp was abandoned.

These tents differ considerably in model from those in use in the east, though all are made by stretching a cover over radiating poles. For example, the tents in Greenland have the front nearly vertical,[N167] while at Cumberland Gulf two sets of poles connected by a ridgepole are used, those for the front being the shorter.[N168] The fashion at Iglulik is somewhat similar.[N169] Small rude tents only large enough to hold one or two people are used as habitations for women during confinement, and for sewing rooms when they are working on deerskins in the autumn. Tents for the latter purpose are called “su´dliwĭñ,” the place for working.

[Footnote N167: Egede, Greenland, p. 117; Crantz, vol. 1, p. 141;
Rink, Tales, etc., p. 7.]

[Footnote N168: Kumlien, op. cit., p. 33.]

[Footnote N169: See Parry’s 2nd Voyage, p. 271 and plate opposite.
Compare also Chappell, “Hudson Bay,” pp. 75-77, figure on p. 75.]

HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS.

FOR HOLDING AND CARRYING FOOD, WATER, ETC.

_Canteens_ (_i´mutĭn_).--None of the canteens, the use of which has been described above (under “Drinks”), were obtained for the collection. They were seen only by Lieut. Ray and Capt. Herendeen, who made winter journeys with the natives. They describe them as made of sealskins and of small size. I find no published mention of the use of such canteens among the Eskimo elsewhere, except in Baffin Land.[N170]

[Footnote N170: “When out traveling, they mostly carry their water
supply in a seal’s stomach, prepared for the purpose.” Kumlien,
op. cit., p. 41. Compare also Hall, Arctic Researches, p. 584.]

_Wallets, etc._--Food and such things are carried in roughly made bags of skin or cloth, or sometimes merely wrapped up in a piece of skin or entrail, or whatever is convenient. Special bags, however, are used for bringing in the small fish which are caught through the ice. These are flat, about 18 inches or 2 feet square, and made of an oblong piece of sealskin, part of an old kaiak cover, doubled at the bottom and sewed up each side, with a thong to sling it over the shoulders.

_Buckets and tubs._--Buckets and tubs of various sizes are used for holding water and other fluids, blubber, flesh, entrails, etc., in the house, and are made by bending a thin plank of wood (spruce or fir) round a nearly circular bottom and sewing the ends together. These are probably all obtained from the Nunatañmiun, as it would be almost impossible to procure suitable wood at Point Barrow. The collection contains four specimens--two tubs and two buckets.

No. 56764 [370] (Fig. 16) will serve as a type of the water bucket (kûtau´ɐ). A thin strip of spruce 8 inches wide is bent round a circular bottom of the same wood 10¼ inches in diameter. The edge of the latter is slightly rounded and fits into a shallow croze one-fourth inch from the lower edge of the strip. The ends of the strip overlap 3½ inches and are sewed together with narrow strips of whalebone in two vertical seams of short stitches, one seam close to the outer end, which is steeply chamfered off and painted red, and the other 1.6 inches from this. Both seams are countersunk in shallow grooves on the outer part. The bucket is ornamented with a shallow groove running round the top, and a vertical groove between the seams. These grooves and the seam grooves are painted red. The bail is of stout iron wire fastened on by two ears of white walrus ivory cut into a rude outline of a whale, and secured by neat lashings of whalebone passing through corresponding holes in the ear and the bucket. The bucket has been some time in use.

No. 56763 [369] is a bucket with a bail, and very nearly of the same shape and dimensions. It has, however, a bail made of rope yarns braided together, and the ears are plain flat pieces of ivory. Buckets of this size, with bails, are especially used for water, particularly for bringing it from the ponds and streams. The name “kûtauɐ” corresponds to the Greenlandic kátauaĸ, “a water-pail with which water is brought to the house.”[N171]

[Footnote N171: Grønl. Ordbog., p. 135.]

No. 89891 [1735] (Fig. 17), which is nearly new, is a very large tub (ilulĭ´kpûñ, which appears to mean “a capacious thing”) without a bail, and is 11 inches high and 20 in diameter. The sides are made of two pieces of plank of equal length, whose ends overlap alternately and are sewed together as before. The bottom is in two pieces, one large and one small, neatly fastened together with two dowels, and is not only held in by having its edge chamfered to fit the croze, but is pegged in with fourteen small treenails. The seams, edges, and two ornamental grooves around the top are painted red as before.

No. 89890 [1753] is smaller, 9.7 inches high and 14.5 in diameter. It has no bail, and is ornamented with two grooves, of which the lower is painted with black lead. The bottom is in two equal pieces, fastened together with three dowels. This is a new tub and has the knotholes neatly plugged with wood. There are a number of these tubs in every house. They are known by the generic name of imusiáru (which is applied also to a barrel, and which means literally “an unusual cup or dipper,” small cups of the same shape being called i´musyû), but have special names signifying their use. For instance, the little tub about 6 inches in diameter, used by the males as a urinal, is called kúvwĭñ (“the place for urine.”) One of these large tubs always stands to catch the drip from the lump of snow in the house, and those of the largest size, like No. 89891 [1735], are the kind used as chamber pots.

Vessels of this sort are in use throughout Alaska, and have been observed among the eastern Eskimo where they have wood enough to make them. For instance, the Eskimo of the Coppermine River “form very neat dishes of fir, the sides being made of thin deal, bent into an oval form, secured at the ends by sewing, and fitted so nicely to the bottom as to be perfectly water-tight.”[N172] There are specimens in the Museum from the Mackenzie and Anderson Rivers, described in the MacFarlane MS. as “pots for drinking with, pails for carrying and keeping water, and also as chamber pots. Oil is also sometimes carried in them in winter.”

[Footnote N172: Franklin, 1st Exp., vol. 2, p. 181.]

In some places where wood is scarce vessels of a similar pattern are made of whalebone. Vessels “made of whalebone, in a circular form, one piece being bent into the proper shape for the sides,” are mentioned by Capt. Parry on the west shore of Baffins Bay,[N173] and “circular and oval vessels of whalebone” were in use at Iglulik.[N174] This is the same as the Greenlandic vessel called pertaĸ (a name which appears to have been transferred in the form pĭ´túño to the wooden meat bowl at Point Barrow), “a dish made of a piece of whalebone bent into a hoop, which makes the sides, with a wooden bottom inserted.”[N175] Nordenskiöld speaks of vessels of whalebone at Pitlekaj, but does not specify the pattern.[N176] Whalebone dishes were used at Point Barrow, but at the present day only small ones for drinking-cups are in general service. One large dish was collected. (Fig. 18. No. 89850 [1199]).

A strip of whalebone 4¼ inches wide is bent round a nearly circular bottom of cottonwood so as to form a small tub. The edges of the bottom are chamfered to fit a shallow croze in the whalebone. The overlapping ends of the whalebone are sewed together with a strip of whalebone in long stitches. This dish is quite old and impregnated with grease. Vessels of this kind are uncommon, and it is probable that none have been made since whalebone acquired its present commercial value. They were very likely in much more general use formerly, as when there was no such market for whalebone as at present it would be cheaper to make tubs of this material than to buy wooden ones. In corroboration of this view it may be noted that Dr. Simpson does not mention woodenware among the articles brought for sale by the Nunatañmiun.[N177] The small whalebone vessels will be described under drinking cups, which see.

[Footnote N173: First Voy., p. 286.]

[Footnote N174: Second Voy., p. 503.]

[Footnote N175: Grønl. Ordbog., p. 293.]

[Footnote N176: Vega, vol. 2, p. 124.]

[Footnote N177: Op. cit., p. 266.]

_Meat bowls._--(Pĭ´tûño, see remarks on p. 88.) Large wooden bowls are used to hold meat, fat, etc., both raw and cooked, which are generally served on trays. These are of local manufacture and carved from blocks of soft driftwood. The four specimens collected are all made of cottonwood, and, excepting No. 73570 [408], have been long in use and are thoroughly impregnated with grease and blood.

No. 89864 [1322] (Fig. 19) will serve as the type. This is deep and nearly circular, with flat bottom and rounded sides. The brim is ornamented with seven large sky-blue glass beads imbedded in it at equal intervals, except on one side, where there is a broken notch in the place of a bead.

Another, No. 89863 [1320], is larger and not flattened on the bottom, and the brim is thinner. It is also provided with a bail of seal thong, very neatly made, as follows: One end of the thong is knotted with a single knot into one of the holes so as to leave one long part and one short part (about 3 inches). The long part is then carried across and through the other hole from the outside, back again through the first hole and again across, so that there are three parts of thong stretched across the bowl. The end is then tightly wrapped in a close spiral round all the other parts, including the short end, and the wrapping is finished off by tucking the end under the last turn. The specimen shows the method of mending wooden dishes, boxes, etc., which have split. A hole is bored on each side of the crack, and through the two is worked a neat lashing of narrow strips of whalebone, which draws the parts together.

In No. 89865 [1321], which has been split wholly across, there are six such stitches, nearly equidistant, holding the two parts together. This bowl is strengthened by neatly riveting a thin flat “strap” of walrus ivory along the edge across the end of the crack. These three bowls are of nearly the same shape, which is the common one. The new bowl (No. 73570 [408]) is of a less common shape, being not so nearly hemispherical as the others, but shaped more like a common milk pan. It is ornamented with straight lines drawn in black lead, dividing the surface into quadrants. These were probably put on to catch the white man’s eye, as the bowl was made for the market. Dishes of this description are common throughout Alaska (see the National Museum collections) and have been noted at Plover Bay.[N178]

[Footnote N178: Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 147.]

FOR PREPARING FOOD.

_Pots of stone and other materials (u´tkuzĭñ)._--In former times, pots of soapstone resembling those employed by the eastern Eskimo, and probably obtained from the same region as the lamps, were used for cooking food at Point Barrow, but the natives have so long been able to procure metal kettles directly or indirectly from the whites (Elson found copper kettles at Point Barrow in 1826)[N179] that the former have gone wholly out of use, and at the present day fragments only are to be found. There are four such fragments in the collection, of which three are of the same model and one quite different.

No. 89885-6 [1559] (Fig. 20) is sufficiently whole to show the pattern of the first type. It is of soft gray soapstone. A large angular gap is broken from the middle of one side, taking out about half of this side, and a small angular piece from the bottom. From the corner of this gap the pot has been broken obliquely across the bottom, and mended in three places with stitches of whalebone made as described under No. 89865 [1321]. One end is cut down for about half its height, and the edge carried round in a straight line till it meets the gap in the broken side. This end appears to have been pieced with a fresh piece of stone, as there are holes for stitches in the edge of the whole side and in the upper edge of the broken side. There are also two “stitch holes” at the other side of the gap, showing how it was originally mended. A low transverse ridge across the middle of the whole end was probably an ornament. Holes for strings by which the pot was hung up are bored one-fourth to one-half inch from the brim. Two of these are bored obliquely through the corners, which are now broken off. The holes in the sides close to the corners were probably made to take the place of these. The pot is neatly and smoothly made, and the brim is slightly rounded. It shows signs of great age, and is blackened with soot and crusted with oil and dirt.[N180]

[Footnote N179: Beechey’s Voyage, p. 572.]

[Footnote N180: This specimen was broken in transportation, and
the pieces received different Museum numbers. It is now mended
with glue.]

Nos. 89886 [680] and 89868 [1096] are much less complete. They are the broken ends of pots slightly smaller than the above, but of precisely the same pattern, even to the ornamental transverse ridge across the end.[N181] The string holes are bored through the corners as before, and in both pots are holes showing where they have been mended by whalebone stitches, fragments of which are still sticking in one pot. This method of mending soapstone vessels by sewing is mentioned by Capt. Parry as practiced at Iglulik.[N182]

[Footnote N181: Compare these pots with the two figured in Parry’s
2d Voyage (plate opposite p. 160). The smaller of these has a
ridge only on the end, but on the larger the ridge runs all the
way round. The plate also shows how the pots were hung up. See
also Fig. 1, plate opposite p. 548.]

[Footnote N182: 2d Voyage, p. 502.]

No. 89883 [1097] (Fig. 21) is a small pot of a quite different shape, best understood from the figure. Round the edge are eight holes for strings nearly equidistant. The outside is rough, especially on the bottom. One of the sides is much gapped, and the acute tip has been broken off obliquely and mended with a stitch of whalebone. The care used in mending these vessels shows that they were valuable and not easily replaced. I can find no previous mention of the use of stone vessels for cooking on the western coast, and there are no specimens in the National Museum collections. The only Eskimo stone vessels are a couple of small stone bowls from Bristol Bay. These are very much the shape of the wooden bowls above described, and appear to have been used as oil dishes and not for cooking, as the inside is crusted with grease, while the outside is not blackened. On the other hand, stone cooking pots are very generally employed even now by the eastern Eskimos, and have been frequently described.[N183] The close resemblance of the pots from Point Barrow to those described by Capt. Parry, taken in connection with Dr. Simpson’s statement[N184] that the stone lamps were brought from the east, renders it very probable that the kettles were obtained in the same way. The absence of this utensil among the southern Eskimo of Alaska is probably due to the fact that being inhabitants of a well wooded district they would have no need of contrivances for cooking over a lamp.

[Footnote N183: I need only refer to Crantz, who describes the
“bastard-marble kettle,” hanging “by four strings fastened to the
roof, which kettle is a foot long and half a foot broad, and
shaped like a longish box” (vol. 1, p. 140); the passage from
Parry’s 2d Voyage, referred to above; Kumlien, op. cit., p. 20
(Cumberland Gulf); Boas, “Central Eskimo,” p. 545; and Gilder,
Schwatka’s Search, p. 260 (West Shore of Hudson Bay).]

[Footnote N184: Op. cit., pp. 267-269.]

I obtained three fragments of pottery, which had every appearance of great age and were said to be pieces of a kind of cooking-pot which they used to make “long ago, when there were no iron kettles.” The material was said to be earth (nu´na), bear’s blood, and feathers,[N185] and appears to have been baked. They are irregular fragments (No. 89697 [1589], Fig. 22) of perhaps more than one vessel, which appears to have been tall and cylindrical, perhaps shaped like a bean-pot, pretty smooth inside, and coated with dried oil or blood, black from age. The outside is rather rough, and marked with faint rounded transverse ridges, as if a large cord had been wound round the vessel while still soft. The largest shard has been broken obliquely across and mended with two stitches of sinew, and all are very old and black.

[Footnote N185: Compare the cement for joining pieces of soapstone
vessels mentioned by Boas (“Central Eskimo,” p. 526) consisting of
“seal’s blood, a kind of clay, and dog’s hair.”]

Beechey (Voyage, p. 295) speaks of “earthen jars for cooking” at Hotham Inlet in 1826 and 1827, and Mr. E. W. Nelson has collected a few jars from the Norton Sound region, very like what those used at Point Barrow must have been. Choris figures a similar vessel in his Voyage Pittoresque, Pl. III (2d), Fig. 2, from Kotzebue Sound. Metal kettles of various sorts are now exclusively used for cooking, and are called by the same name as the old soapstone vessels, which it will be observed corresponds to the name used by the eastern Eskimo. Light sheet-iron camp-kettles are eagerly purchased and they are very glad to get any kind of small tin cans, such as preserved meat tins, which they use for holding water, etc., and sometimes fit with bails of string or wire, so as to use them for cooking porridge, etc., over the lamp. They had learned the value of these as early as Maguire’s time,[N186] as had the people of Plover Bay in 1849.[N187]

[Footnote N186: See Further Papers, etc., p. 909.]

[Footnote N187: Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 57.]