122 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
and over” on the hair side. All the mantles seen were essentially of 
the same pattern. The edge is sometimes cut into an ornamental 
fringe, and the flesh side marked with a few narrow stripes of red ocher. 
This garment appears to be peculiar to northwestern America. Nomen- 
tion is to be found of any such a thing except in Mr. MacFarlane’s 
MS. notes, where he speaks of a deerskin blanket ‘attached with a line 
across the shoulders in cold weather,” among the Anderson River Es- 
kimo. We have no means at present of knowing whether such cloaks 
are worn by the coast natives between Point Barrow and Kotzebue 
Sound, but one was worn by one of the Nunata‘tmiun who were at 
Nuwitk in the autumn of 1881. 
Rain-frocks.—The rain-frock (silti/ta) is made of strips of seal or wal- 
rus intestines about 5 inches broad, sewed together edge to edge. This 
material is light yellowish brown, translucent, very light, and quite 
waterproof. In shape the frock resembles a man’s frock, but the hood 
comes well forward and fits closely round the face. It is generally plain, 
but the seams are nowadays sewed with black or colored cotton for orna- 
ment. The garment is of the same shape for both sexes, but the women 
frequently cover the flesh side of a deerskin frock with strips of entrail 
sewed together vertically, thus making a garment at once waterproof 
and warm, which is worn alone in summer with the hair side in. These 
gut shirts are worn over the clothes in summer when it rains or when 
the wearer is working in the boats. There are no specimens in the col- 
lection. . 
The kaiak jacket of black sealskin, so universal in Greenland, is un- 
known at Point Barrow. The waterproof gut frocks are peculiar to the 
western Eskimo, though shirts of seal gut, worn between the inner and 
outer frock, are mentioned by Egede (p. 130) and Crantz' as used in 
Greenland in their time. Ellis also” says: “Some few of them {i. e., the 
Eskimo of Hudsons Strait] wear shifts of seals’ bladders, sewed to- 
gether in pretty near the same form with those in Europe.” They have 
been described generally under the name kamleika (said to be a Siberian 
word) by all the authors who have treated of the natives of this region, 
Eskimo, Siberians, or Aleuts. We saw them worn by nearly all the 
natives at Plover Bay. One handsome one was observed trimmed on 
the seams with rows of little red nodules (pieces of the beak of one of 
the puffins) and tiny tufts of black feathers. 
The cotton frock, already alluded to as worn to keep the driving snow 
out of the furs, is a long, loose shirt reaching to about midleg, with a 
round hole at the neck large enough to admit the head. This is gener- 
ally of bright-colored calico, but shirts of white cotton are sometimes 
worn when hunting on the ice or snow. Similar frocks are worn by the 
natives at Pitlekaj.’ 
1Vol. 1, p. 137. 
2 Voyage to Hudsons Bay, p. 136. 
3 Nordenskiéld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 98. 
