HABITATIONS.

The winter house (ĭ´glu).—

The permanent winter houses are built of wood126 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.

see caption

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.

see caption

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.

see caption

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 127—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,128 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.

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.129 (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).

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.130

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.131

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.”

see caption

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.132

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.133

see caption

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.134 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.135 (See Fig. 13.) Petitot136 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.137

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.138 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,139a “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.

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.”139b 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.140

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.141 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.142 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.143

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 account144 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.145

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.146

The tents on the sandspit at Plover Bay all face west. The same was observed by the Krause brothers at East Cape.147 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.

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 states148 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.

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,149 nor as a hotel for visitors, as in the Norton Sound region.150 Visitors are either entertained in some dwelling or build temporary snow huts for themselves.

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.151 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).”152 These buildings are numerous and particularly large and much used south of Bering Strait, where they are also used as steam bath houses.153

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.154

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,”155 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 house156.

see caption

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,157 on which are hung bulky articles—snowshoes and guns.158 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.159

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,160 and Hooper mentions sealskin tents at Cape Smyth and Point Barrow.161 Dr. Simpson gives a description of the skin tents at Point Barrow.162 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,163 while sealskins are still in use in Greenland and the east generally.164 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.”165 That they have not always been ignorant of tents is shown by the use of the word “topek” for a dwelling at Norton Sound.166

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.)

see caption

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,167 while at Cumberland Gulf two sets of poles connected by a ridgepole are used, those for the front being the shorter.168 The fashion at Iglulik is somewhat similar.169 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.

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.170

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.

see caption

Fig. 16.—Wooden bucket.

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.”171