de Lnguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 71 



fire in the center of the house. In this, large k)gs were burned, behig 

 fed slowly into the blaze. The fire also served for cooking. One 

 informant said that the fireplace was a shallow pit filled with clean 

 sand. Another described the hearth as raised G to 12 inches above the 

 floor, with plank sides and a filling of rocks and crushed shells. The 

 rocks radiated heat after the fire was allowed to go out, and the shells 

 were for looks. While most of our informants spoke only of a single 

 fireplace, two others said that a large house might have two hearths, 

 one on each side of the center of the house. Another man said that 

 after all the fish had been smoked and put away, the fire in the center 

 was extinguished and two fires, one on each side, were lighted for extra 

 warmth in the autmnn. This was called "pushing the fire to the side 

 of the house." However, one of our best informants insisted that 

 double hearths were used only in the smokehouses for curing fish, and 

 we believe, therefore, that these reports of twin fireplaces refer to 

 houses that were used both as dweUings and as smokehouses, and not 

 to the regular winter residences. 



The floor of a large house was covered with planks, whereas in a 

 small house a part of the floor might be left bare, especially if the owner 

 could not afford to plank it completely. 



The sweat bath was sometimes in a room in the front of the house, 

 sometimes in an annex to the house, and sometimes in an entirely 

 separate structm-e. It might or might not have its own fireplace 

 where the rocks were heated. The roof of the bathhouse was said to 

 have been made of bark. There was a small hole for ventilation (in 

 the roof?), called the "eye" of the house. The bathhouses of chiefs 

 were large, apparently as big as House 8, because these served as 

 meeting places for the prominent men of the village. The various 

 house chiefs would take turns in giving sweat baths in the evenings. 

 The men would discuss village affairs, tell stories or myths, and re- 

 count adventures. Sometimes people slept in the bathhouses. The 

 older women, too, used to make communal sweat bathing a social event. 



Behind the houses were usually one or more cache houses for pro- 

 visions (see below) . 



Some villages were surrounded bj'- fortifications built of posts set 

 close together, with only one narrow opening left for entrance and 

 exit. After the natives had obtained guns some of the sealing camps 

 were fortified with stone walls in which holes were left to shoot 

 through. 



At hunting camps the Yakutat people erected huts of bark or of 

 "shakes," that is, small planks. Those photographed by the Har- 

 riman Alaska Expedition in 1899 at the sealing camps above Point 

 Latouche (see Grinnell, 1901, vol. 1, pp. 159, 161, 163, and pi. opp. 

 p. 160) were built like small gable-roofed houses, about the size of the 



