83 



to give a better aim to the hunter, whose moist habitat preckided the use of 

 tlie bow with its hygrometric string of sinew. Doubtless, many of the small, 

 sharp pieces of sandstone which we found were used as files in finishing 

 then* bone and wooden implements and weapons. In fact, the number and 

 ^•ariety of the tools and implements used could only be illustrated l)y avery 

 large series of figures; hence I can only offer here, for this epoch, a brief 

 review. 



DWELLINGS. 



Whatever may have been the character of the huts or dwellings of the 

 more ancient islanders, they were at least of so temporary and perishable a 

 nature that they have left no traces in the shell-heaps. The first evidences 

 of pei-manent dwellings appear in the middle and upper Mammalian layers. 

 It is probable that at first they were comparatively small, and resembled the 

 present houses of the continental Innuit As the communities became 

 larger and the builders more skillful, larger houses were built, of the com- 

 nmnistic type characteristic of most American aborigines ; but the accumu- 

 lation of long logs for the support of the roof must have been in such cases 

 a work of years. In all the village-sites I have examined, a large propor- 

 tion of the houses were small and of the strict Innuit type, namely, with 

 a door at the side, and probably a hole in the roof for ventilation. The 

 houses were built with the floor somewhat below the level of the outside 

 soil, the walls of whale-ribs, sticks of wood, or upright stone walls, covered 

 outside with mats, straw, and finally turf Rude bone picks, for excavating, 

 were not uncommon in the shell-heaps. The roof was formed by arching 

 whale-ribs, or long sticks of drift-wood, matted, thatched, and turfed lilve 

 the sides, with a central aperture. A platform, somewhat raised, around the 

 sides of the house afforded a place for sitting and sleeping. Later, each 

 village had a large house, or kasJiini, which served as a common work-shop, 

 and a lodging for strangers, as well as for a town-hall for their discussions 

 and festivals. In all this, they agree precisely with the present Innuit. Still 

 later, in a period not very greatly antedating the historic, the Aleuts began 

 to build large communistic dwellings with features peculiar to themselves, 

 without doors, and entered by the hole in the roof, the inmates descending 

 on a notched log placed upright. These large yourts were divided, by par- 



