Dwellings 77 



linked together; in one case three families joined their passages. Three late- 

 comers had to Isuild some distance away, though still along the same bank of 

 snow ; their huts were single, two of them facing south like all the rest, but the 

 third opening northwards, because only in that direction could snow be found 

 to build the passage. 



It is clear therefore that M. Mauss' description of the typical snow hut is 

 not applicable to this region. He says, "II est, d'ordinaire, multiple, composite; 

 c'est-£l-dire que deux ou trois iglous s'agglom^rent ensemble et viennent d^bou- 

 cher sur un m^me couloir; il est toujours excav6 en terre; il est toujours muni 

 d'un couloir dont le d6bouch6 est k demi souterrain; enfin, il contient, au mini- 

 mum, deux bancs de neige avec deux places de lampes." In the first place 

 single houses are as common as two-roomed huts, or huts joined in their pas- 

 sages. The entrance is by no means always half -underground ; often indeed 

 it is on exactly the same level as the surrounding field of snow, though since the 

 blocks of which it is built are generally cut out of its fioor, it usually lies about 

 a foot below that level.' Finally it is not true of these Eskimos that the hut 

 contains at least two platforms and two lamps, though this may be the usual 

 type in Hudson bay.^ 



The dance-house is not always built over the huts of the same family or 

 families. At the end of a day's migration the men are usually tired, and gladly 

 retire to rest as soon as their huts are finished and the women have prepared 

 a hasty meal. The dance-house is never built till the following day, or even 

 later. Someone, usually a man of influence, will take the initiative, and a friend 

 or relative will co-operate with him, nearly always, of course, the man over whose 

 house he proposes to build. A dance-house can never stand alone, at least not 

 in winter, because there would be no lamp to keep it warm; and it is preferable 

 to build it in front of a two-roomed house rather than of a single hut because 

 then there will be at least two lamps to heat it. 



There are two courses open to the Eskimo in March, when the sun begins 

 to climb higher in the sky and its warmth makes the snow-hut drip intolerably: 

 he may either move at once into his spring tent, or he may build a snow-hut as 

 before, but roof it over with skins instead of with a dome of snow. The latter 

 is the simpler method, but makes an uncomfortable dwelling because the roof 

 is apt to be low. Moreover at this season of the year the Eskimos are already 

 preparing to leave the ice and take to the land for the spring and summer, when 

 a tent is indispensable. Consequently most of them use their tents, though 

 sometimes when these have been cached some distance away the other method 

 must be resorted to for a few days. Hanbury mentions spring snow-huts 

 roofed with skins in the neighborhood of Baker lake.' Occasionally they are 

 constructed in the autumn also, when the snow is still too soft to cohere into a 

 dome. We built a hut of this type in Victoria island on October 14, 1915, 

 when travelling inland to pick up our summer caches. The walls settled some- 

 what in the night, and the roof sagged heavily through the weight of the falling 

 snow, so that by morning there was hardly a foot of space between the sleeping 

 platform and the skins above. The hut was comfortable enough as long as we 

 stayed in our sleeping bags, but when we tried to sit up and dress, the roof 

 refused to budge a single inch, and our plight was really a most amusing one. 



Each family chooses its own time for removing from a snow hut into a tent. 

 The change nearly always occurs at the end of a day's migration, for at this 

 season of the year no settlement lasts longer than two or three weeks. In 



•The ■warmth of the house is materially increased by making the entrance of the outer rassageway 

 slightly higher. The Eskimos are fully aware of this; a native told me that his hut was cold because it 

 •was built on a sloping bank and the entrance to the passage was lower than the level of the house. It 

 was early in the fall, and he could not remedy the defect, because nowhere else was the snow deep 

 enough to build. 



2Cf. Boas, Bulletin A.M.N.H., Vol. XV, pt. I, p. 9 et seq. and Fig. 140. 



'Hanbury, p. 75. 



