1914] Northwestern Den6s and Northeastern Asiatics 157 



George Kennan makes the same distinction with regard to the homes 

 of the Kamtchadales^ and G. Sarytschew in connection with those of 

 the Tchuktchis.2 In fact, all the authors on northeastern Asia make 

 the same distinction. 



Now this applies equally well to the Western Den^s, Carriers anH 

 Tsilkotins, whose summer and winter houses I have described in my 

 "Notes ... on the Western Denes",'^ and the navigator Marchand 

 noticed himself this similarity between the technology of peoples of the 

 Old and the New W^^rlds when he wrote that "the distinction between 

 the winter and summer habitations of the Queen Charlotte Islanders 

 recalls to mind the custom of the Kamtschadales who have their halagans 

 for summer and their jour ts for winter".^ 



Even farther west in the same immensity of Siberia, a late traveller 

 saw, in the valley of Lake Baikal, "clusters of tents exactly like Red 

 Indian tents. They belonged to the aborigines, Buriat Mongols, who 

 are vanishing before the Muscovites as the Redskins are vanishing 

 before the Saxons".^ 



Speaking of the Carrier villages I wrote, twenty-two years ago, 

 that they were generally situated "on the north banks of lakes, so as 

 to have the benefit of the sun's rays from the opposite side",® and that 

 the houses that formed them had no other chimney than an aperture 

 in the roof. But Wrangell tells us that those of the sedentary Tchuk- 

 tchis are built in such a way that "the low entrance is always turned 

 to the south", and that "at the top there is a hole for the smoke to 

 escape".^ 



I have described in the above mentioned work the native American 

 ladder, "that is, a log notched at the proper stepping intervals". This 

 is apparently a very small, yet significant, detail, since it requires the 

 higher culture of the Pueblo Indians to think, in connection with that 

 household necessity, of two sticks v/ith cross-pieces. We find a counter- 

 part of the former among the Gilaks of Siberia, as R. J. Bush tells us 

 when he states that the platforms round their houses "are reached by 

 rude steps cut in a log".* 



1 "Tent Life in Siberia", p. 153, New York, 1910. 



^ "Account of a Voyage of Discovery", Vol. II, p. 49. 



3 Trans. Can. Institute, Vol. IV, pp. 185-89. 



^Quoted by Swan, "The Haidah Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands", p. 12. 



^ John Foster Fraser, "The Real Siberia", p. 137; London, 1904. 



* "Notes", p. 184. 



' Op. cit., pp. 358-59. 



* "Reindeer, Dogs and Snow-Shoes", p. 103. 



