418 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



spring of 1911, but several I remembered I did not see. In- 

 quiries brought out the fact that two of those with whom I had par- 

 ticularly associated had died, but that most who were not now here 

 in Minto Inlet were supposed to be in Prince Albert Sound. It 

 seems that about a year ago the group of about two hundred and 

 twenty people found by me in the Sound in 1911 had divided into 

 two nearly equal sections, one remaining in the Sound and the 

 other coming north into Minto Inlet and amalgamating with the 

 twenty or thirty people whom in my previous books I have spoken 

 of as a separate group.* I now learned that from their own point 

 of view they always were the same people and that any one bears 

 the name of Minto Inlet or of Prince Albert Sound according to 

 which of these districts he inhabits any particular year. 



Our welcome was as warm and friendly as it could possibly be, 

 and nearly that noisy. Little children jumped up so as to be able 

 to touch our shoulders and men and women stroked and shook 

 and handled us in every friendly way. According to their custom 

 of hospitality, we were asked as to the size of house wanted and 

 whether it was to be built right in the village or some distance 

 outside. We chose a site about a hundred yards away and the 

 house was promptly erected without our touching a hand to any- 

 thing. Our dogs, however, although perfectly friendly, were so 

 much larger than any the people were used to that we had to un- 

 hitch them ourselves and tie them up. Even after realizing the 

 friendliness of the dogs, the Eskimos seemed to stand in a good 

 deal of awe of them and gave them a wide berth, rather, appar- 

 ently, through respect than fear. 



This village was a single row of houses built under a cutbank, 

 probably because this was the only locality where snow deep and 

 hard enough for cutting into blocks could be secured. In the 

 evening when it had become dark the glowing windows had a most 

 cheerful appearance from without. The houses all faced the sea — 

 southwest or west. The windows were set into the dome above the 

 doors and were of translucent lake ice, commonly about eighteen 

 inches square, and those not square had their longer diameter up 

 and down. Some of the houses were single domes but others were 

 constructed by building two or three domes so that they inter- 

 sected and then cutting out the intervening walls. Whether the 

 house consisted of one, two or three domes, there was usually but 

 one entrance. This was through an alleyway, in some cases six 



*See "My Life With the Eskimo," pp. 279 ff. and "Anthropological 

 Papers of the Stefansson-Anderson Expedition," pp. 29-30. 



