MURDOCH] VILLAGES. 79 
Arrangement in villages.—The village of Utkiavwin occupies a narrow 
strip of ground along the edge of the cliffs of Cape Smyth, about 1,000 
yards long, and extending some 150 yards inland. The houses are 
scattered among the hillocks without any attempt at regularity and at 
different distances from each other, sometimes alone, and sometimes in 
groups of two contiguous houses, which often have a common cache 
frame. Nuwitk, from Dr. Simpson’s account! and what we saw in our 
hurried visits, is scattered in the same way over the knolls of Point 
Barrow, but has its greatest extension in an east and west direction. 
From Simpson’s account (ibid.) double houses appear more common at 
Nuwik than at Utkiavwin, and he even speaks of a few threefold ones. 
All the houses agree in facing south. This is undoubtedly to admit 
the greatest amount of light in winter, and seems to be a tolerably 
general custom, at least among the northern Eskimo.’ 
The custom of having the dwelling face south appears to be a deeply 
rooted one, as even the tents in summer all face the same way.° 
The tents on the sandspit at Plover Bay all face west. The same was 
observed by the Krause brothers at East Cape.‘ At Utkiavwin there 
are twenty-six or twenty-seven inhabited houses. The uninhabited are 
mostly ruins and are chiefly at the southwest end of the village, though 
the breaking away of the cliffs at the other end has exposed the ruins 
of a few other old houses. Near these are also the ruins of the buildings 
destroyed by the ice catastrophe described above (p.31). The mounds 
at the site of the United States signal station are also the ruins of 
old iglus. We were told that “long ago,” before they had any iron, 
five families who “talked like dogs” inhabited this village. They 
were called Ist/tkwamiun. Similar mounds are to be seen at Pernyi, 
near the present summer camp. About these we only learned that 
people lived there ‘“‘long ago.” We also heard of ruined houses on the 
banks of Kulugrua. 
Besides the dwellings there are in Utkiavwin three and in Nuwiik 
two of the larger buildings used for dancing, and as workrooms for the 
men, so often spoken of among other Eskimo. 
Dr. Simpson states® that they are nominally the property of some of 
the more wealthy men. We did not hear of this, nor did we ever hear 
the different buildings distinguished as ‘‘So-and-so’s,” as I am inclined 
to think would have been the case had the custom still prevailed. They 
are called ki/dyigi or ki/drigi (karrigi of Simpson), a word which cor- 
responds, mutatis mutandis, with the Greenlandic kagsse, which means, 
first, a circle of hills round a small deep valley, and then a circle of 
1Qp. cit., p. 256. 
2¥For example, I find it mentioned in Greenland by Kane, Ist Grinnell Exp., p. 40; at Iglulik by 
Parry, 2d Voy., p. 499; and at the mouth of the Mackenzie by Franklin, 2d Exp., p. 121, as well as 
by Dr. Simpson at Nuwik, op. cit., p. 256. 
3 Frobisher says the tents in Meta Incognita (in 1577) were “so pitched up, that the entrance into 
them, is alwaies South, or against the Sunne.’’ Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc., (1589) p. 628. 
4Geographische Blitter, vol. 5, p. 27. 
®Op. cit., p. 259. 
