321 



several families to live together in one house. The individual 

 will not be so much subject to chance in the way of bad 

 hunting luck, as the housemates go share and share alike, 

 while it is also more economic as regards light and warmth. 

 Again from a social point of view life is certainly more 

 pleasant when several families are gathered together in one 

 house. 



Thus among the Point Barrow Eskimo as a rule two 

 families, and often more, live together in one house ^). 



Similarly, in the stone houses of the Central Eskimo 

 there live two or three families together. In their snow- 

 houses there always live two families, and two snow-houses 

 have often the same passage-way, so that, properly speaking, 

 four families live together ^j. 



\mong the Smith Sound Eskimo we frequently find that 

 two stone huts are built so close to one another that by 

 means of a wide opening in the common partition wall they 

 are joined into one^). And finally the West Greenlanders 

 used always to live several families in the same house ^), and 

 the East Greenlanders do so to this very day. 



But in order that several families may be able to find 

 room in one stone house, it must be fairly large. But in this 

 case a comparatively large rafterwork will be required for the 

 construction of the roof, whereas for a small house only a 

 few rafters will be necessary; in fact rafters can be dispensed 

 with altogether, and the house can be built entirely of stone. 

 Examples of this latter are the old Eskimo stone houses on 

 Lake Hazen in Grinnell Land''), the stone houses in 



') Ethnological results of the Point Barrow Expedition by John Murdoch. 



P. 72. 

 *) The Central Eskimos by Dr. Franz Boas. P. 639. 

 *) E. Astrup. Blandt Nordpolens .Naboer. P. 235. 

 *) H. Egede. Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustratlon. P. 63. 

 *) Greely. Three years of Arctic Service. Vol. I. P. 379—380. 



