_Lamps (kódlö)._--Mention has already been made of the stone lamps or
oil-burners used for lighting and warming the houses, which, in Dr.
Simpson’s time, were obtained by trading from the “Kûñmû´dlĭñ,” who in
turn procured them from other Eskimo far to the east. These are flat,
shallow dishes, usually like a gibbous moon in outline, and are of two
sizes: the larger house lamp, 18 inches to 3 feet in length, and the
small traveling lamp, 6 or 8 inches long. The latter is used in the
temporary snow huts when a halt is made at night. In each house are
usually two lamps, one standing at each side, with the curved side
against the wall, and raised by blocks a few inches from the floor. In
one large house, that of old Yûksĭ´ña, the so-called “chief,” at
Nuwŭk, there were three lamps, the third standing in the right-hand
front corner of the house. The dish is filled with oil, which is
burned by means of a wick of moss fibers arranged along the outer
edge. Large lamps are usually divided into three compartments, of
which the middle is the largest, by wooden partitions called sä´potĭn
(corresponding to the Greenlandic saputit, “(1) a dam across a stream
for catching fish, (2) a dam or dike in general”), along which wicks
can also be arranged. The women tend the lamps with great care,
trimming and arranging the wick with little sticks. The lamp burns
with scarcely any smoke and a bright flame, the size of which is
regulated by kindling more or less of the wick, and is usually kept
filled by the drip from a lump of blubber stuck on a sharp stick
(ajû´ksûxbwĭñ) projecting from the wall about a foot above the middle
of the lamp.[N197]
[Footnote N197: Compare the custom noticed by Parry, at Iglulik,
of hanging a long thin strip of blubber near the flame of the lamp
to feed it (2d Voyage, p. 502). According to Petitot (Monographie,
etc., p. xviii), the lamps in the Mackenzie district are fed by a
lump of blubber stuck on a stick, as at Point Barrow.]
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Stone house lamp. 1/4]
In most houses there is a long slender stick (kukun, “a lighter”),
which the man of the house uses to light his pipe with when sitting on
the banquette, without the trouble of getting down, by dipping the end
in the oil of the lamp and lighting this at the flame. The sticks used
for trimming the wick also serve as pipe-lighters and for carrying
fire across the room in the same way.[N198] No food, except an
occasional luncheon of porridge or something of the sort, is now
cooked over these lamps. Two such lamps burning at the ordinary rate
give light enough to enable one to read and write with ease when
sitting on the banquette, and easily keep the temperature between 50°
and 60° F. in the coldest weather. In the collection are three house
lamps, two complete and one merely a fragment, and three traveling
lamps.
[Footnote N198: Compare Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 119: “The
wooden pins she uses to trim the wick . . . are used when required
as a light or torch . . . to light pipes, etc. In the same way
other pins dipped in train-oil are used” (Pitlekaj), and foot-note
on same page: “I have seen such pins, also oblong stones, sooty at
one end, which, after having been dipped in train-oil, have been
used as torches . . . in old Eskimo graves in northwestern
Greenland.”]
[Illustration: FIG. 48.--Sandstone lamp. 3/8]
Fig. 47 (No. 89879) [872] is a typical house lamp, though rather a
small specimen. It is carved out of soft gray soapstone and is 17
inches long. The back is nearly vertical, while the front flares
strongly outward. The back wall is cut down vertically inside with a
narrow rounded brim and the front curves gradually in from the very
edge to the bottom of the cavity, which is 1½ inches deep in the
middle. The posterior third of the cavity is occupied by a flat,
straight shelf with a sloping edge about 0.7 inch high. About a third
of one end of the lamp has been broken off obliquely and mended, as
usual, with stitches. There are two of these neatly countersunk in
channels. The specimen has been long in use and is thoroughly
incrusted with oil and soot. No. 89880 [1731] (Fig. 48) is peculiar,
from the material of which it is made. This is a coarse, gritty stone,
rather soft, but much more difficult to work than the soapstone. It is
rudely worked into something the same shape as the type, but has the
cavity but slightly hollowed out, without a shelf, and only a little
steeper behind than in front. The idea at once suggests itself that
this lamp, which is very old and sooty, was made at Point Barrow and
was an attempt to imitate the imported lamps with stone obtained from
the beds reported by Lieut. Ray in Kulugrua. There is, of course, no
means of proving this supposition. There is no mention of any material
except soapstone being made into lamps by the Greenlanders or other
eastern Eskimo, but the lamps from Kadiak and Bristol Bay in the
National Museum are made of some hard gray stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Traveling lamp. 3/8]
Fig. 49, No. 56673 [133], is a traveling lamp, and is a miniature of
the large lamp, No. 89879 [872], 8.7 inches long, 4.2 wide, and 1 inch
high, also of soapstone and without a shelf. The front also is
straighter, and the whole more roughly made. No. 89882 [1298] is
another traveling lamp, also of soapstone, and made of about half of a
large lamp. It has been used little if at all since it was made over,
as the inside is almost new while the outside is coated with soot and
grease. It is 6.3 inches long. No. 89881 [1209] is a miniature of No.
89880, 8.1 inches long, and is made of the same gritty stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Socket for blubber holder. 3/8]
Suitable material is not at hand for the proper comparison of the
lamps used by the different branches of the Eskimo race. All travelers
who have written about the Eskimo speak of the use of such lamps,
which agree in being shallow, oblong dishes of stone. Dr.
Bessels[N199] figures a lamp of soapstone from Ita, Smith Sound,
closely resembling No. 89880, and a little lamp in the Museum from
Greenland is of essentially the same shape, but deeper. The same form
appears at Hudson Strait in the lamps collected by Mr. L. M. Turner,
while those used at Iglulik are nearly semicircular.[N200] South of
Kotzebue Sound lamps of the shape so common in the east are used, but
these, Mr. Turner informs me, are never made of soapstone, but always
of sandstone, shale, etc. The people of Kadiak and the Aleuts
anciently used lamps of hard stone, generally oval in shape, and
sometimes made by slightly hollowing out one side of a large round
pebble.[N201] Such a rough lamp was brought by Lieut. Stoney,
U.S. Navy, from Kotzebue Sound. No such highly finished and elaborate
lamps as the large house lamps at Point Barrow are mentioned except by
Nordenskiöld, who figures one from Siberia.[N202] This lamp is
interesting as the only one described with a ledge comparable to the
shelf of No. 89879. Lamps from the region between Point Barrow and
Boothia Felix are especially needed to elucidate the distribution and
development of this utensil. The rudely hollowed pebble of the ancient
Aleut and the elaborate lamp of the Point Barrow Eskimo are evidently
the two extremes of the series of forms, but the intermediate patterns
are still to be described.
[Footnote N199: Naturalist, September, 1884, p. 867, Fig. 2.]
[Footnote N200: Parry, Second Voyage, Pl. opposite p. 548, Fig.
2.]
[Footnote N201: See Dall, Alaska, p. 387; and Petroff Report,
etc., p. 141. See also the collections of Turner and Fischer from
Attu and Kadiak.]
[Footnote N202: Vega, vol. 2, p. 23, Fig. _b_ on p. 22, and
diagrams, p. 23.]
Fig. 50, No. 56492 [108], is a peculiar article of which only one
specimen was collected. We were given to understand at the time of
purchasing it that it was a sort of socket or escutcheon to be
fastened to the wall above a lamp to hold the blubber stick described
above. No such escutcheons, however, were seen in use in the houses
visited. The article is evidently old. It is a flat piece of thick
plank of some soft wood, 11.4 inches long, 4.2 broad, and about 1½
thick, very rudely carved into a human head and body without arms,
with a large round hole about 1¼ inches in diameter through the middle
of the breast. The eyes and mouth are incised, and the nose was in
relief, but was long ago split off. There is a deep furrow all around
the head, perhaps for fastening on a hood.