122 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 



and over&quot; on the hair side. All the, mantles seen were essentially of 

 the same pattern. The edge is sometimes cut into an ornamental 

 fringe, and the flesh side marked with a tew narrow stripes of red oeher. 

 This garment appears to be peculiar to northwestern America. No men 

 tion is to be found of any such a thing except in Mr. MacFarlaue s 

 MS. notes, where he speaks of a deerskin blanket &quot; attached with aline 

 across the shoulders in cold weather,&quot; among the Anderson liiver Es 

 kimo. We have no means at present of knowing whether such cloaks 

 are worn by the coast natives between Point Barrow and Kotzebue 

 Sound, but one was worn by one of the Nuiiata nmiun who were at 

 Nuwuk in the autumn of 1S81. 



Bain-frocks, The rain-frock (silfi fia) is made of strips of seal or wal 

 rus intestines about 3 inches broad, sewed together edge to edge. This 

 material is light yellowish brown, translucent, very light, and quite 

 waterproof. In shape the frock resembles a man s frock, but the hood 

 comes well forward and fits closely round the face. It is generally plain, 

 but the seams are nowadays sewed with black or colored cotton for orna 

 ment. The garment is of the same shape for both sexes, but the women 

 frequently cover the flesh side of a deerskin frock with strips of en trail 

 sewed together vertically, thus making a garment at once waterproof 

 and warm, which is worn alone in summer witli the hair side in. These 

 gut shirts are worn over the clothes in summer when it rains or when 

 the wearer is working in the boats. There are no specimens in the col 

 lection. 



The kaiak jacket of black sealskin, so universal in Greenland, is un 

 known at Point Barrow. The waterproof gut frocks are, peculiar to the 

 western Eskimo, though shirts of seal gut, worn between the inner and 

 outer frock, are mentioned by Egede (p. 130) and Crantz 1 as used in 

 Greenland in their time. Ellis also 2 says: &quot; Some few of them [i. e., the 

 Eskimo of Hudsons Strait] wear shifts of seals bladders, sewed to 

 gether in pretty near the same form with those in Europe.&quot; They have 

 been described generally under the name Icamle ika (said to be a Siberian 

 word) by all the authors who have treated of the natives of this region, 

 Eskimo, Siberians, or Aleuts. We saw them worn by nearly all the 

 natives at Plover Bay. One handsome one was observed trimmed on 

 the seams with rows of little red nodules (pieces of the beak of one of 

 the puffins) and tiny tufts of black feathers. 



The cotton frock, already alluded to as worn to keep the driving snow 

 out of the furs, is a long, loose shirt reaching to about midleg, with a 

 round hole at the neck large enough to admit the head. This is gener 

 ally of bright-colored calico, but shirts of white cotton are sometimes 

 worn when hunting 011 the ice or snow. Similar frocks are worn by the 

 natives at Pitlekaj. 3 



Vol. 1, p. 137. 



2 Voyage to ITuclHons Bay, p. 136. 



1 Nordenakiiild, Vega, vol. 2, p. 98. 



