NO.    I  ARCHEOLOGY    OF    ST.    LAWRENCE    ISLAND — COLLINS  281 
Bay  and  continues  as  the  typical  form  of  entrance  in  the  Eskimo  area, 
as  it  is  also  in  many  parts  of  Asia.  The  fact  that  the  Old  Bering  Sea 
houses  had  an  entrance  passage  indicates  that  it  was  a  very  early  if 
not  an  original  feature  of  Western  Eskimo  houses,  and  not  as  Birket- 
Smith  has  assumed,  one  that  was  "  taken  from  earlier  types  for  prac- 
tical reasons." 
Birket-Smith  has  expressed  what  seems  to  be  the  most  tenable 
hypothesis  as  to  the  chronological  order  of  the  various  house  types 
when  he  says  (1929,  vol.  2,  p.  54)  : 
....  the  earth  lodge  with  the  entrance  passage  is  the  oldest,  then  comes  the 
earth  lodge  with  entrance  through  the  roof,  and  youngest  is  the  square  plank 
house. 
But  instead  of  placing  the  semisubterranean,  square  to  rectangular 
house  of  the  Western  Eskimos  with  the  latest  of  these,  i.  e.,  the  plank 
houses  of  the  Northwest  Coast,  as  Birket-Smith  has  done,  I  would 
relate  them  (with  the  exception  of  the  Point  Barrow  house)  to  the 
first  group,  the  semisubterranean  earth  lodge  with  entrance  passage. 
Birket-Smith  has  made  a  somewhat  better  case  for  the  assumed  rela- 
tionship between  the  Northwest  Coast  and  Eskimo  houses  by  selecting 
the  Point  Barrow  house  as  an  example,  rather  than  the  more  typical 
form  occurring  south  of  Bering  Strait.  For  both  the  Point  Barrow 
house  and  a  number  of  the  plank  houses  of  the  Northwest  Coast 
possess  one  feature  in  common — a  gabled  roof.  But  even  this  is  a 
superficial  resemblance,  for  in  the  houses  of  the  Tlingit,  Tsimshian, 
Kwakiutl,  etc.,  the  roof  beam  or  beams  extend  from  front  to  back, 
and  the  roof  slopes  from  this  down  to  the  side  walls;  whereas  in 
the  Point  Barrow  house  the  roof  beam  is  placed  transversely  making 
the  roof  slope  toward  the  front  and  back.  As  pointed  out  above  this 
particular  form  of  gabled  roof  and  the  single  wide  platform  at  the 
rear  are  the  two  features  which  bring  the  Point  Barrow  house  into 
relationship  with  those  of  the  Eastern  Eskimo,  and  make  it  appear 
as  probably  a  recent  form,  a  reproduction  in  wood  that  has  retained 
the  roof  structure  and  platform  arrangement  of  its  whale  bone  or 
stone  prototype  in  the  East.  On  the  other  hand,  the  very  fact  that  the 
Northwest  Coast  houses  are  gabled,  whereas  the  Eskimo  houses  below 
Bering  Strait  have  a  flat  or  somewhat  vaulted  roof  supported  by  four 
central  uprights,  is  one  of  the  strongest  arguments  against  these  two 
types  being  closely  related. 
In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  noted  the  distribution  of  Western 
Eskimo  house  types  and  have  attempted  to  point  out  their  relation  to 
other  Eskimo  houses  and  to  those  of  neighboring  tribes  in  north- 
