FUR SEALS AND OTHER LIFE, PRIBILOF ISLANDS, 1914. 



143 



frame houses, small though they were, seemed like palaces. Even now they make very 

 comfortable dwellings for small families. The)' are of one story, about 12 feet by 20 

 feet, usually with an inclosed side hall or "calidor" through which is the single entrance. 

 Windows at the front and back, and sometimes on the side opposite the entrance, light 

 them fairly well. Most of them have been kept in fair repair, but in many instances the 

 floors, sills, or roofs are defective. 



The native populations of the two islands are distributed in households of the fol- 

 lowing numbers : 



Number and size of households on Pribilof Islands, IQI4. . 



It is evident that the houses, even though they are provided with a calidor and 

 divided into two rooms, are too small for many of the families. A few of them have 

 been enlarged and have a third room, but there is still entirely too much crowding for 

 proper considerations of comfort, sanitation, or morals. The most striking instance of 

 overcrowding was met with on St. George, where a house of four rooms, the largest 

 room being 11 by 12 feet, the smallest 7 by 11 feet, contained a man, his wife, and 12 

 children. The children were 8 girls, aged in years as follows: 18, 16, 9, 7, 6, 4, 2, and 

 8 months; and 3 boys, aged 12, 10, and 5. This family had been assigned the largest 

 native house in the village, but it was obviously much too small. 



The principle of meeting the needs of the various families by assigning to the large 

 ones the larger houses seems to have been carried out with reasonable fullness on both 

 St. Paul and St. George. The Government will, however, be obliged from time to time 

 to undertake rather extensive repairing and rebuilding and it is suggested that under 

 such circumstances greater variety be introduced into the new construction so that 

 famiUes of different sizes can be better accommodated than in the more nearly uniform 

 houses at present available. 



HYGIENE AND SANITATION. 



The native houses are as a rule overcrowded and filthy, and in all cases they are 

 unprovided with water and are poorly ventilated. They reproduce all the conditions 

 of congested tenements in our worst city slums except that outside their doors there is 

 an unlimited supply of uncontaminated fresh air. 



On St. George the water for village use is in part hauled from wells and in part 

 taken in the midst of the village from a pipe which leads by gravity from a pond behind 

 the settlement. On St. Paul the water has heretofore been hauled entirely from wells 

 half a mile from the village. During the past year large storage tanks have been 

 erected on the village hill and spring water is pumped into these by way of the radio 

 station and is to be delivered by pipes at several points in the village. For cooperation 

 in installing and maintaining this system the village is indebted to the Navy Depart- 

 ment. At the time of inspection Quly, 1914) this system was only partly installed 

 and the water in the tanks was much discolored by the new wood. This state of affairs 

 had brought the system into some disfavor with the natives, but there is no reason to 

 S4.'512°— S. Doe. 9S0, 63-3 10 



