182 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SURVEY IN ALASKA [eth. ann. m 



lation or its traces; the divisions represent the hunting grounds or 

 grounds claimed by each people, not an occupied territory. The data 

 will be given in south-to-north order. 



Nearly all the settlements in these regions are now, and have 

 evidently always been, on the shores of the seas and bays, as close 

 to the water as safety would permit. A few villages and sites occur 

 also, however, on inland lakes and rivers. The favored locations 

 have been an elevated flat near the mouth of a fresh-water stream 

 or the outlet of a lagoon, a sufficiently elevated spit projecting into 

 the sea, or an elevated bar between the sea and an inland lake. The 

 essentials were an elevated flat, a supply of fresh drinking water, 

 and a location favorable for fishing and hunting; if there was some 

 natural protection, so much the better. There were no inland settle- 

 ments except on the lakes and rivers. In a few cases, as at the 

 Kings and the Little Diomede Islands, very difficult locations were 

 occupied only because outweighed by other advantages. 



Caves throughout the occupied region north of the Aleutian chain 

 are absent, and there was therefore no cave habitation. 



None of the settlements were very large, though a few were much 

 larger than others. They ranged from one or two family camps 

 or houses to villages of some hundreds of inhabitants. A large ma- 

 jority of the settlements had from but two or three to approximately 

 a dozen families. 



There were two main types of dwellings, the semisubterranean 

 sod houses for the winter and the skin tents for summer. In some 

 places the two were near each other ; in others the summer dwellings 

 were in another and at times fairly distant locality. 



The ''zimniki" (in Russian) or winter houses were throughout 

 the region of one general type. They were fair-sized circular semi- 

 subterranean houses, made of driftwood and earth, and provided 

 with a semisubterranean entrance vestibule. Their remains are char- 

 acterized everywhere by a circular pit with a short straight trench 

 depression, the same pot-and-handle type as found along the Yukon. 

 Rarely for the construction of the houses, where driftwood did 

 not suffice, recourse was had to whale ribs and mandibles. The 

 " letniki," or summer houses, were constructed on the surface of 

 wood, sod and skins, or of whale ribs and skins, approaching on one 

 hand the summer huts of various continental tribes and on the other 

 the " yurts " of the north Asiatic peoples. The " kashims," or com- 

 munal houses, were built, much as on the Yukon, like the family 

 dwellings, but occasionally quadrilateral and much larger. Smaller 

 semisubterranean storage houses of driftwood and sod near the 

 winter dwellings were seemingly general. 



Ruins of stone dwellings, without mortar, are said to exist in 

 places on Norton Sound and Bay and on a lagoon near the western 



