72 



THE POINT HARROW ESKIMO. 



language sufficiently to be used as the radical iu compound words such 

 as &quot;tiba xutikiVktufiu,&quot; &quot;I have a supply of tobacco.&quot; There is no 

 evidence that anything else was smoked before the introduction of 

 tobacco, and no pipes seen or collected appear older than the time when 

 we know them to have had tobacco. 1 



HABITATIONS. 



The winter house ( //). The permanent winter houses are built of 

 wood 2 and thickly covered with clods of earth. Kach house consists of 

 a single room, nearly square, entered by an underground passage about 

 25 feet long and 4 to 4 feet high. The sloping mound of earth which 



^^ 



VERTICAL SECTION. 

 Flo. 9. Plans of Eskimo winter house. 



covers the house, grading off insensibly to the level of the ground, gives 

 the houses the appearance of being underground, especially as the land 

 on which they stand is irregular and hilly. Without very careful 

 measurements, which we were unable to make, it is impossible to tell 

 whether the floor is above or below the surface of the ground. It is 

 certainly not very far either way. I am inclined to think that a space 



1 Since the above was written, the word for pipe, &quot;kninyB,&quot; has been found to be of Siberian origin. 

 See the writer s article &quot;On the Siberian origin of some customs of the Western Eskimos &quot; (Amer 

 ican Anthropologist, vol. 1, pp. 325-336). 



