472 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



Alaska. The most northerly examples I have been able to find in 

 the literature are structures observed by Portlock in Prince William 

 Sound, Alaska, in the year 1789. The main facts about these houses 

 can be summed up by saying that they are always rectangular; are 

 always made of split planks; and always contain in the center a 

 pit or excavation in which the family lived. 



IVlien I first looked at the detailed construction of the plank 

 houses in the various parts of this region I received an impression 

 of great confusion. It seemed as if every tribe had a different type 

 of dwelling, and some of them two or three. Boas long ago pointed 

 out that the Haida and Tlingit have one type of house, with three 

 roof beams on each side of the central line, while the Tsimshian and 

 Kwakiutl have another type, with two such beams. To differences 

 in size I have already made reference. The shape of the roof also 

 diii'ers markedly.^^ 



When all the facts were plotted on a map, however, a certain 

 amount of system appeared amid this medley. For example, over a 

 tremendous extent of the coast the houses are all of a gabled form, 

 except in a small area about Puget Sound and the mouth of Fraser 

 River where they have a flat or " shed " roof, with a single pitch 

 in place of the gable. In the case of the gabled houses the end 

 of the house is toward the beach ; in the case of the flat-roofed house 

 one long side of the structure parallels the beach. In the north 

 and the south there is characteristically one entrance. In the central 

 area there is often a series of openings along the front side with the 

 addition of at least one opening in the rear and still other openings in 

 the ends. The houses of the central area are also of simpler construc- 

 tion than the others. In connection, too, with all gabled houses there 

 is a curious way of giving every house a name. This is not true of 

 the flat-roofed houses. Among the Yurok the names of houses 

 are mostly commonplace. They include such expressions as " at 

 the end of the row," "near the creek," "in the middle," "above the 

 others," "in rear of the village," "set away from the river," "facing 

 the ocean," and other simple descriptive names. I have given else- 

 where a list of these Yurok house names." Some of them are a lit- 

 tle more ambitious. We find occasionally such names as "big house," 

 "biggest house," "house of feather -plume trees," "where they dance," 

 "where there is sound of dancing." Among the Yurok the thing has 

 taken such a peculiar turn that personal names are supplanted by de- 

 scriptive expressions based on the names of houses. I have not heard 

 of such a custom in any other part of the world. On the northern 



"T. T. Waterman and Ruth Greincr : Indian Houses of Puget Sound (Indian Notes 

 and Monographs), Museum of the Amer. Indian, licye Foundation, New Yorli, 1921. 



^' T. T. Waterman : Yurok Geography, Univ. of California Pubis, in Amer. Archaeol. 

 and Ethnol., vol. 16, 1920, p. 208. 



