MURDOCH. ] CLOTHING. 109 
ble of the ancient Aleut and the elaborate lamp of the Point Barrow 
Eskimo are evidently the two extremes of the series of forms, but the 
intermediate patterns are still to be described. 
Fig. 50, No. 56492 [108], is a peculiar article of which only one specimen 
was collected. We were given to understand at the time of purchasing 
it that it was asort of socket or escutcheon to be fastened to the wall 
above a lamp to hold the blubber stick described above. No such 
escutcheons, however, were seen in use in the houses visited. The 
article is evidently old. It is a flat piece of thick plank of some soft 
wood, 11-4 inches long, 4:2 broad, and about 14 thick, very rudely carved 
into a human head and body without arms, with a large round hole 
about 14 inches in diameter through the middle of the breast. The eyes 
and mouth are incised, and the nose was in relief, but was long ago split 
off. There is a deep furrow all around the head, perhaps for fastening 
on a hood. 
CLOTHING. 
MATERIAL, 
The clothing of these people is as a rule made entirely of skins, though 
of late years drilling and calico are used for some parts of the dress 
which will be afterwards described. Petroff' makes the rather sur- 
prising statement that ‘a large amount of ready-made clothing finds its 
way into the hands of these people, who wear it in summer, but the ex- 
cessive cold of winter compels them to resume the fur garments formerly 
in general use among them.” Fur garments are in as general use at 
Point Barrow as they ever were, and the cast-off clothing obtained from 
the ships is mostly packed away in some corner of the iglu. We landed 
at Cape Smyth not long after the wreck of the Daniel Webster, whose 
crew had abandoned and given away a great deal of their clothing. 
During that autumn a good many men and boys wore white men’s coats 
or shirts in place of the outer frock, especially when working or loung- 
ing about the station, but by the next spring these were all packed 
away and were not resumed again except in rare instances in the sum- 
mer. 
The chief material is the skin of the reindeer, which is used in various 
stages of pelage. Fine, short-haired summer skins, especially those of 
does and fawns, are used for making dress garments and underclothes. 
The heavier skins are used for everyday working clothes, while the 
heaviest winter skins furnish extra warm jackets for cold weather, 
warm winter stockings and mittens. The white or spotted skins of the 
tame Siberian reindeer, obtained from the “ Nunatatmiun,” are espe- 
cially valued for full-dress jackets. We heard no mention of the use of 
the skin of the unborn reindeer fawn, but there is a kind of dark deer- 
skin used only for edgings, which appears to be that of an exceedingly 
young deer. This skin is extremely thin, and the hair so short that it 
is almost invisible. Siberian deerskins can always be recognized by 
! Report, ete., p. 125. 
