Dwellings 



71 



days after its construction the front walls of the two rooms were torn down 

 and a large cupola erected over them to form a dance-house for the community. 

 Where the wall of the dance-house joined his room Ikpakhuak made a bed of 

 willow-matting covered with an old sealskin for one of his dogs that had a litter 

 of pups. His family consisted of his wife Higilak, his nephew and adopted 

 son Haugak, (the son of Haviron in Fig. 17), Higilak's daughter (by a former 

 husband) Kanneyuk, who was about twelve years of age, and myself, since' 

 this was the family into which I was formally adopted. The other household 

 comprised Huputaun, his wife Uvillok, their baby boy Kotsik, and a little girl 

 Holoak, of about ten years. Apart from the hut itself the passage was interesting 

 because it had a T-shaped entrance, roofed over so that one side or the other 

 could be closed according to the direction of the wind. 



Fig. 20. A two-roomed dwelling opening on a dance-house 



So far we have seen two huts coalescing into a single two-roomed dwelling 

 with a dance-house over the forecourt, but nothing in the snow itself prevents 

 three or four huts from coalescing in the same way. The only difficulty lies 

 in the fact that the more numerous the huts that have to be joined together 

 the larger must be the forecourt or dance-house that connects them, and the 

 more difficult it is to construct when the only material that can be employed 

 is snow. Consequently, while the usual custom is to build the dance-house 

 over a two-roomed hut, one built over three rooms is not at all rare, but one 

 over four is very unusual. Still, all these types are found, since the Eskimos 

 are not bound by any rules in the matter and suit their own convenience. Fig. 

 21 represents a group of three huts where the passages all unite to make a common 

 entrance. They were built in March, 1915, about fifteen miles west of the 

 Liston and Sutton islands, whither the Eskimos had migrated for the sealing 



