d€ Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUT AT BAY AREA, ALASKA 69 



planks was used at the front and back. The upper ends of these 

 planks fitted directly into the grooved rafters of the gable. The 

 Controller Bay house is said to have had a huge curved beam to form 

 the gable end, but, again, this seems to have been a unique feature. 



In addition to the usual style of house with vertical wall planks 

 there is a tradition of a different "sidewise" construction, apparently 

 involving horizontal wall planks. This may have been a prerogative 

 of the Tl'uknaxAdi sib of southeastern Alaskan origin, since one of 

 their lineage houses has been traditionally named "Sidewise House." 

 (Drucker, 1950, Trait 317, reports this from the Chilkat.) 



The doorway was a round or oval hole cut in the gable end of the 

 house that faced the water. It was several feet above the ground 

 outside, so that a pair of steps was necessary to reach it from outside, 

 and about eight steps led down to the excavated floor. Some houses 

 might have a raised porch across the front of the house. The door 

 itself was of wood, and could be secured on the inside with a wooden 

 bar. The front wall of the houses was not decorated at Yakutat, 

 except for one house built in 1918 at Lost Eiver and ornamented with 

 the painted carvings of two brown bear paws. There was usually no 

 totem pole in front; the only one mentioned was at Diyaguna'Et. 

 The corner posts did not rise above the level of the roof and were not 

 decorated. These features seem to be characteristic of southeastern 

 Alaska. 



The roof of the larger house was supported not only by the two 

 beams at the eaves but by two great ridgepoles that rested in the 

 notched ends of four large posts. The latter stood at the inner 

 corners of the bench, that is, well inside the walls of the house. The 

 ridgepoles reached the front and back walls but did not protrude 

 beyond them. These posts were not round, but were convex on one 

 side and hollowed out on the other. In a lineage house two or all 

 four might be carved and painted on the convex surface with totemic 

 crests (shark, raven, bear, moon, and so forth), reflecting the name of 

 the house. The posts might further be decorated with inlays of bone, 

 ivory, or metal (copper or "silver"), and with human hair. When a 

 new lineage house was built, the decorated posts would be salvaged 

 from the old one. In the most recent of the old-style houses these 

 old posts were not used to support the roof, but were set up as decora- 

 tive shells in front of the functional posts. 



Informants disagreed as to whether intermediate beams, in addition 

 to the twin ridgepoles and the two at the eaves, were necessary for 

 the roof, and also how these beams were supported if they were used. 

 According to one man, a pair of intermediate beams rested on posts 

 at the front and back of the house. (This seems unlikely, since 

 Drucker, 1950, Trait 312, reports this construction only from the 



