_The winter house_ (_ĭ´glu_).--The permanent winter houses are built
of wood[N126] and thickly covered with clods of earth. Each house
consists of a single room, nearly square, entered by an underground
passage about 25 feet long and 4 to 4½ feet high. The sloping mound of
earth which covers the house, grading off insensibly to the level of
the ground, gives the houses the appearance of being underground,
especially as the land on which they stand is irregular and hilly.
Without very careful measurements, which we were unable to make, it is
impossible to tell whether the floor is above or below the surface of
the ground. It is certainly not very far either way. I am inclined to
think that a space at or near the top of a hillock is simply leveled
to receive the floor. In this case the back of the house on a hill
side, like some in Utkiavwĭñ, would be underground.
[Footnote N126: In some of the older houses, the ruins of which
are still to be seen at the southwest end of the village of
Utkiavwĭñ, whales’ bones were used for timbers. Compare Lyon
Journal, p. 171, where the winter huts at Iglulik are described as
“entirely constructed of the bones of whales, unicorns, walruses,
and smaller animals,” with the interstices filled with earth and
moss.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Plans of Eskimo-winter house.]
The passage is entered at the farther end by a vertical shaft about 6
feet deep in the center of a steep mound of earth. Round the mouth is
a square frame or combing of wood, and blocks of wood are placed in
the shaft to serve as steps. One or two houses in Utkiavwĭñ had ship’s
companion ladders in the shaft. This entrance can be closed with a
piece of walrus hide or a wooden cover in severe weather or when the
family is away. The passage is about 4 feet wide and the sides and
roof are supported by timbers of whalebone. On the right hand near the
inner end is a good-sized room opening from the passage, which has a
wooden roof covered with earth, forming a second small mound close to
the house, with a smoke hole in the middle, and serves as a kitchen,
while various dark and irregular recesses on the other side serve as
storerooms. The passage is always icy and dark.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Interior of iglu, looking toward door.]
At the inner end of the passage a circular trapdoor in the floor opens
into the main room of the house, close to the wall at the middle of
one end. The floor is at such a height from the bottom of the tunnel
that a man standing erect in the tunnel has his head and shoulders in
the room. These rooms vary somewhat in dimensions, but are generally
about 12 or 14 feet long and 8 or 10 feet wide. The floor, walls, and
roof are made of thick planks of driftwood, dressed smooth and neatly
fitted together, edge to edge. The ridgepole runs across the house and
the roof slopes toward each end. The two slopes are unequal, the
front, or that towards the entrance, being considerably the longer.
The walls are vertical, those at the ends being between 3 and 4 feet
high, while the sides run up to 6 or 7 feet at the ridgepole. The wall
planks run up and down, and those of the roof from the ridge to the
ends of the house, where there is a stout horizontal timber. In some
houses the walls are made of paneled bulkheads from some wrecked
whaler.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Interior of iglu, looking toward bench.]
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.”
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--House in Utkiavwĭñ.]
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.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Ground plan and section of winter house in
Mackenzie region.]
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.]
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Ground plan of large snow house.]
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.)
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Tent on the beach at Utkiavwĭñ.]
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.]