MCEDOCH.] SNOW HOUSES. 81 



nsual inner apartments only a species of bench of raised earth ran 

 round it).&quot; These buildings are numerous and particularly large and 

 much used south of Bering Strait, where they are also used as steam 

 bath houses. 2 



Snow houses (apiiya). Houses of snow are used only temporarily, as 

 for instance at the hunting grounds on the rivers, and occasionally by 

 visitors at the village who prefer having their own quarters. For 

 example, a man and his wife who had been living at Nuwiik decided in 

 the winter of 1882- 83 to come down and settle at Utkiavwlii, where 

 the woman s parents lived. Instead of going to one of the houses in 

 the village, they built themselves a snow house in which they spent 

 the winter. The man said he intended to built a wooden house the 

 next season. These houses are not built on the dome or beehive shape so 

 often described among the Eskimo of the middle region of Dr. Kink. 3 



The idea naturally suggests itself that this form of building is 

 really a snow tupek or tent, while the form used at Point Barrow is 

 simply the iglu built of snow instead of wood. When built on level 

 ground, as in the village, the snow house consists of an oblong room 

 about G feet by 12, with walls made of blocks of snow, and high enough 

 for a person to stand up inside. Beams or poles are laid across the top, 

 and OYer these is stretched a roof of canvas. At the south end is a 

 low narrow covered passage of snow about 10 feet long leading to a 

 low door not over 2i feet high, above which is the window, made, as 

 before described, of seal entrail. The opening at the outer end of the 

 passage is at the top, so that one climbs over a low wall of snow to 

 enter the house. 



At the right side of the passage, close to the house, is a small fire 

 place about 2 feet square and built of slabs of snow, with a smoke hole 

 in the top and a stick stuck across at the proper height to hang a pot 

 on. When the first fire is built in such a fireplace there is considerable 

 melting of the surface of the snow, but as soon as the fire is allowed 

 to go out this freezes to a hard glaze of ice, which afterwards melts 

 only to a trifling extent. Opposite to the door of the house, which is 

 protected by a curtain of canvas, corresponding to the Greenlandic 

 ubkuaK, &quot;a skin which is hung up before the entrance of the house,&quot; 4 

 the floor is raised into a banquette about 18 inches high, on which are 

 laid boards and skins. Cupboards are excavated under the banquette, 

 or in the walls, and pegs are driven into the walls to hang things on. 



1 Tents, etc., p. 136. 



y See references to Dall and IVtrofl 1 , above. 



8 Parry, 2nd Voy., p. HX) ami plate opposite; Franklin, 1st Exped. vol. 2, pp. 43-47. ground plan, p. 46; 

 Boas, &quot;Central Eskimo,&quot;pp. 539-553; Kuinlien. ( outributionH, etc., p. 31 ; Petitot, Monographic, etc., 

 p. xvii (a full description with a ground plan and section on p. xix), and all the popular accounts of 

 the Eskimo. 



4 Griinlanclsk Ordbog, p. 404; Kane s 1st (irinndl Exp.. p. 40, calls it a &quot;skin-covered door.&quot; Com 

 pare, also, the skin or matting bung over the entrance of the houses at Norton Sound, Dall, Alaska, p. 

 13, and the bear-skin doors of t lie Xuuataiiuiiuii aud other Kotzebue Sound natives, mentioned by l)r. 

 Simpson, op. cit., p. 259. 

 9 ETH G 



