■mm 
KEEPING WARM 
In summer, Eskimos traditionally 
lived in caribou-skin tents. These 
provided ample shelter from rain 
and storms. The kayak, which was 
important for hunting, is made of 
depilated caribou skins. 
skins. In winter the entire structure was 
covered with an ample layer of snow. A 
window was made by sewing together 
the translucent, parchmentlike intes- 
tines of a bearded seal, and stone slabs 
were used to pave the entrance: a long, 
low passageway that sloped upward to 
the hut. This entrance was the essential 
and ingenious feature of all Eskimo 
houses, whatever their design. Since 
warm air is lighter than cold air, none 
of it escaped downward through the 
entrance. Conversely, only enough cold 
air entered the building to replace the 
stale, hot air that seeped out of the vent 
in the top' of the house, thus providing 
gentle ventilation without draft. “This 
kind of hut,” said Boas, “is very warm, 
light, and comfortable.” Such qag- 
maqs , made with wooden frames and 
canvas covers instead of skins, were still 
used in a few isolated camps on south- 
ern Baffin Island until the early 1970s. 
In the western Arctic where drift- 
wood was plentiful, house frames were 
built of timber and thickly covered with 
sod and snow. In 1827, Lt. Edward 
Belcher of the British expedition ship 
Blossom visited a native home at Point 
Hope, Alaska, and was “much surprised 
to find so much neatness, cleanliness 
and comfort in the great apartment.” 
But he found the temperature in the 
house “very oppressive.” 
These one-room houses were nearly 
perfectly insulated and were warm even 
in the coldest weather. “The typical 
Eskimo house in the afternoon and 
evening (when lamps burned high to 
cook supper),” said Stefansson, “resem- 
bled a sweat bath,” and the people in it 
sat stripped to the waist, sweltering. At 
night all lamps but one were doused to 
bring the temperature down to 50° or 
60° and “both sexes and all ages slept 
completely naked, under light robes.” 
About half the room was taken up by a 
raised sleeping platform built of stones 
and covered with dried heath or moss. 
On top of this layer, caribou furs were 
spread — usually the long-haired skins of 
early winter, the first layer hair-down, 
the second hair-up — to form a warm, 
soft, deep-pile mattress. In two or more 
kudliks — shallow, crescent-shaped 
lamps carved of soapstone with wicks 
made of a mixture of dried, rubbed moss 
and the bolls of cotton grass — seal oil or 
whale oil burned with one- to two-inch- 
high flames, providing both heat and 
light. Above these lamps the Eskimos 
cooked their meals, usually meat and fat 
and occasionally fish, in “pannes cutte 
and made of stone very artificially,” as 
George Best in 1578 described the Eski- 
mos’ soapstone cooking pots shaped like 
miniature sarcophagi. 
As long as hunting was good, oil for 
the Eskimos’ lamps was never a prob- 
lem. Since the Eskimos consumed about 
six parts of meat to one part of fat, seals 
and whales provided much more fat 
than the people and their sled dogs 
could possibly eat, and the surplus 
fueled the lamps. Fire was not a prob- 
lem either. The Eskimos had both the 
fire drill, a device that produced fire by 
friction, and firestones, iron pyrites 
which were struck together to create 
sparks. With either method, they used 
as tinder the slightly oiled down of wil- 
low catkins upon a bed of dry moss. It 
rarely took more than three to five min- 
utes to kindle a flame. 
In those parts of the north where 
whales and, hence, whalebones were 
rare and driftwood was equally scarce, 
the Eskimos built their winter homes of 
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