268  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
ing  the  prehistoric  house  types  of  the  Arctic  coast  of  Alaska.  The 
present  indications,  however,  point  to  its  prototype  having  been  the 
whale  bone  house  of  the  Thule  culture,  which  on  being  transplanted 
to  a  region  where  wood  was  available,  took  this  particular  form,  re- 
taining the  gabled  roof  and  platform  arrangement  that  had  come  to 
be  characteristic  of  eastern  Eskimo  houses  generally. 
Speculation  has  also  centered  on  the  Mackenzie  house.  Mathiassen 
and  Birket-Smith  both  regard  it  as  a  modification  of  the  Point  Barrow 
house.  Mathiassen  (1927,  vol.  2,  pp.  151,  152)  says:  "The  modern 
Mackenzie  house,  with  the  peculiar  cross  form,  must  presumably  be 
regarded  as  being  a  locally-restricted  variant  of  the  usual  four-sided 
Alaskan  house  (Point  Barrow),  presumably  arising  out  of  a  joining 
together  of  several  of  these."  Birket-Smith  (1929,  vol.  2,  p.  46), 
rejecting  Steensby's  theory  which  sought  the  origin  of  the  Mackenzie 
house  in  that  of  the  Gilyak,  expresses  the  same  opinion :  "  In  this 
case  it  seems  to  be  much  more  reasonable  to  regard  the  Mackenzie 
house  as  having  originated  through  building  together  three  smaller, 
rectangular  houses  of  the  Point  Barrow  type  in  the  same  manner  as 
the  Eskimos  further  to  the  east  often  build  their  snow  houses  together. 
This  view  ....  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  in  northern  Alaska  there 
are  also  houses  which  obviously  have  come  about  by  building  two 
together." 
No  evidence  is  oft'ered  in  support  of  the  view  that  the  Mackenzie 
house  represents  a  joining  together  of  several  houses  of  Point  Barrow 
type ;  apparently  the  facts  that  they  are  both  wooden  structures  and 
that  one  is  square  and  the  other  built  in  the  form  of  a  cross  are  suffi- 
cient reasons  for  considering  them  related  in  this  particular  manner. 
The  houses  in  northern  Alaska  referred  to  by  Birket-Smith  as  having 
resulted  from  two  being  built  together  are  those  mentioned  by  Simpson 
(1875,  p.  258)  from  Kotzebue  Sound.  It  is  true  that  Simpson  ad- 
vanced this  explanation,  but,  again,  no  reasons  were  given  in  support 
of  it.  Such  an  explanation  of  the  origin  of  the  Mackenzie  house  is 
open  to  serious  objection.  If  it  represents  a  grouping  of  several  Point 
Barrow  houses,  it  should  be  possible  to  point  to  certain  features  of 
the  latter  that  were  carried  over  in  the  process  of  combination.  This 
can  be  done  in  the  case  of  the  snow  houses  mentioned  by  Birket-Smith 
and  also  of  the  large  rectangular  houses  of  Greenland  which  Steensby 
(1916,  pp.  322-324)  considers  to  have  resulted  from  the  building  to- 
gether of  a  row  of  smaller  houses.  Here  the  secondary  forms  repre- 
sent merely  enlargements  of  the  smaller  original  forms  and  do  not 
dififer  from  them  in  any  im^xjrtant  structural  feature.  But  this  is  not 
the  case  with  the  Mackenzie  and  Point  Barrow  houses,  which,  as  we 
