48 



OUR ARCTIC PROVIISrCE. 



ing the trees and dressing the timbers necessary ; when these logs 

 and planks are finally hewn into shape (everything in this line is 

 done with axes and the little adze-like hatchets so often described), 

 they are tumbled into the water and towed around to the contem- 

 plated site of the new edifice. The great size of the beams and 

 l^lanks used in a big Indian rancherie make it imperative that a 

 large number of hands co-operate in the work. The erection, 

 therefore, of such a structure in all its stages, the cutting and hew- 

 ing in the woods, the launching and towing of the timbers to the 

 foundations, and their subsequent elevation and fitting, forms the 

 occasion of a regular gathering, or "bee," that generally calls in 

 whole detachments from neighboring villages, which is always the 



Section Showing Arrangement of Interior of a Rancherie. 



precursor to a grand " potlatch," or giving away of the portable 

 property of the savage for whom the labor is undertaken. 



Some of the larger houses have required the repeated assem- 

 bling of a whole tribe, and the lapse of two or three years of time 

 ere comj)letion in all details, because the Siwash for Avhom the work 

 has been done has regularly exhausted his available resources on 

 each occasion, and has needed this interval, longer or shorter as it 

 may have been, in which to accumulate a fresh stock of suitable 

 l^roperty, especially blankets, with which to reward a renewed and 

 continued effort. Dancing and gambling relieve the monotony of 

 the labor, which, however, seldom ever is suffered to occupy more 

 than two or three hours of each day, and is conducted in a perfect 

 babel of guttural talk and noise, and the exultant shouting of the 



