68 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



top of the rooms (at the sides of the house?), in a corner room, or in 

 lockers under the bench. These lockers were equipped with wooden 

 doors hung on heavy leather hinges. One informant spoke of sleeping 

 cubicles under the bench. Not all houses, however, had spaces 

 below the bench; sometimes this area was not even excavated. If 

 there were a shaman in the household, one small room was reserved 

 for his use. This was called the "drum room," probably because 

 here he kept the less dangerous part of his equipment, and here he 

 might perform some of his cures. 



Windows of bear gut sewn with porpoise sinew were mentioned, 

 and probably served to admit some light to the small rooms. In 

 addition, stone lamps were used for illumination. Beds in the rooms 

 were described as made of piles of ryegrass(?), 2 feet thick, held in 

 place by boards at the sides. On top of this mattress were laid 

 feather beds (copied from the Whites), commercial blankets, and robes 

 of fur or of swanskin. Other furnishings in the houses included 

 wooden boxes used for storage and as seats, cooking boxes, baskets, 

 urine boxes, and pegs in the walls from which articles were hung. 



Informants agreed that the walls of these houses were almost 

 always made of vertical planks, usually set into the ground. One 

 house in Controller Bay had a frame or sill of timbers around the 

 bottom, grooved to hold the lower end of the wall planks, but this 

 seems to have been an unusual featm-e. The upper ends of the wall 

 planks on each side fitted into a square grooved beam at the eaves. 

 Informants disagreed, however, as to whether these two eaves beams 

 were supported entkely by the wall planks, or whether they were 

 held up by posts in the four corners of the house. Such corner posts 

 were said to have been notched at their upper ends to receive the 

 eaves beams. These posts were probably necessary in large houses, 

 but may have been omitted in the small ones. 



Informants also differed in describing the construction of the gable 

 ends of the house. One man, who was perhaps thinking of a rather 

 recent style, influenced by White men's houses, said that beams were 

 laid across the front and back of the house, resting on top of the eaves 

 beams at the sides. These crossbeams were grooved below for a 

 lower tier of vertical wall planks, and also above for an upper tier in 

 the gable ends. The upper ends of the second tier fitted into grooves 

 in the pair of rafters that formed the gable. This high, steep-pitched 

 roof would have been like that of the modern lineage houses of frame 

 construction erected in the early decades of the present centmy, in 

 which commercial lumber and ordinary doors and windows were used, 

 and we think that the informant is confusing this modern style with 

 the older one. Other informants maintained that the gabled roof of 

 the old house was almost flat, and that only a single tier of vertical 



