84 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
tanmiun traders, and the whalemen, and are joined later in the season 
by the trading parties returning from the east, all of whom stop for ¢ 
few days at Pernyai. On returning to the village also, in September, 
the tents are pitched in dry places among the houses and occupied till 
the latter are dry enough to live in. Tents are used in the autumnal 
deer hunts, before snow enough falls to build snow houses. In the spring 
of 1883, when the land floe was very heavy and rough off Utkiaywin, 
all who were going whaling in the Utkiavwin boats went into camp 
with their families in tents pitched on the crown of the beach at Imék 
pan, whence a path led off to the open water. 
The tents are nowadays always made of cloth, either sailcloth obtained 
from wrecks or drilling, which is purchased from the ships. The latter 
is preferred as it makes a lighter tent and both dark blue and white are 
used. Reindeer or seal skins were used for tents as lately as 1854. 
Elson saw tents of sealskin lined with reindeer skin at Refuge Inlet,! 
and Hooper mentions sealskin tents at Cape Smyth and Point Barrow.? 
Dr. Simpson gives a description of the skin tents at Point Barrow.’ 
Indeed, it is probable that canvas tents were not common until after the 
great “wreck seasons” of 1871 and 1876, when so many whaleships 
were lost. The Nunatanmiun at Pernyt had tents of deerskin, and I 
remember also seeing one sealskin tent at the same place, which, it is 
my impression, belonged to aman from Utkiavwin. Deerskin tents are 
used by the Anderson River natives,! while sealskins are still in use in 
Greenland and the east generally.2 The natives south of Kotzebue 
Sound do not use tents, but have summer houses erected above ground 
and described as ‘“ generally log structures roofed with skins and open 
in front.”6. That they have not always been ignorant of tents is shown 
by the use of the word “topek” for a dwelling at Norton Sound.? 
The tents at Point Barrow are still constructed in a manner very sim- 
ilar to that described by Dr. Simpson (see reference above). Four orfive 
poles about 12 feet long are fastened together at the top and spread out 
so as to form a cone, with a base about 12 feet in diameter. Inside of 
these about 6 feet from the ground is lashed a large hoop, upon which 
are laid shorter poles (sometimes spears, umiak oars, ete.). The canvas 
cover, which is now made in one piece, is wrapped spirally round this 
1 Beechey’s Voyage, p. 315. 
2 Tents, etc., pp. 216, 225. 
SOp. cit., p. 260. 
4 MacFarlane MSS. and Petitot, Monographie, ete., p.xx, ‘‘des tentes coniques (tuppepk) en peaux de 
renne.”’ 
5 See Rink, Tales, ete., p.7 (‘‘skins" in this passage undoubtedly means sealskins, as they are more 
plentiful than deerskins among the Greenlanders, and were used for this purpose in Egede's time—Green, 
land, p. 117; and Kumlien, op. cit., p.33.). _Ineast Greenland, according to Holm, ‘‘OmSommeren bo Angs- 
magsalikerne i Telte, der ere betrukne med dobbelte Skind og have Tarmskinds Forheng.” Geogr. Tids., 
vol. 8, p. 89. In Frobisher’s deseription of Meta Incognita (in 1577), he says: ‘Their houses are tents 
made of seale skins, pitched up with 4 Firre quarters, foure square, meeting at the toppe, and the skinnes 
sewed together with sinewes, and layd thereupon.” Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc. (1589), p.628. See also Boas, 
“Central Eskimo.” 
6 Petroff, op. cit., p. 128. 
7Dall, Alaska, p. 13. 
