1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 197 



THE HOUSES OF THE KWAKIUTL INDIANS,* BRITISH COLUMBIA. 



BY DR. FRANZ BOAS. 



No. 130414: of tbe Catalogue of the Ethnological Collections of the 

 U. S. National Museum is a model of a house from Fort Rupert, 

 British Columbia (Fig. 1). Though the model is very rough it is of con- 

 siderable interest, as it shows the carved posts which are characteristic 

 of these houses and as the figures in it represent one of the winter 

 dances in which masked men make their appearance. 



Fig. 1. Model of a Kwakiutl house, Fort Rupert, B. C. 130414. 



In the following pages I shall describe the plan of the Indian house 

 and the meaning of the posts according to observations made in British 

 Columbia, 1S86-'S7. Tbe model is a plain wooden house with a gable 

 roof, one side of which is moveable on hinges, thus allowing the student 

 to look into the interior. The door is covered with a curtain, and 

 windows admit the light. The pieces of wood forming the walls of the 

 house are nailed to a frame. This arrangement does not correspond to 

 the real arrangement of the Indian house, as will be seen by the follow- 



* In the present paper the alphabet of the Bureau of Ethnology lias been adopted. 

 The vowels are pronounced aa in Italian, the consonants as in English, with the 

 following exceptions and additions: 



c = tk in thin. 



tl = an explosive sound produced by lay- 

 ing the back of the tongue against the 

 palate and pressing forth the air on both 

 sides of the tongue. 



e = e in power. 



c = sh in shoe. 



q = ch in German bach. 



t[ = ch in German ich. 



3[ = guttural k, almost kr 



