Part 9

Fig. 6_a_ (No. 56737 [10], from Utkiavwĭñ) has an iron bowl, noticeable for the ornamentation of the shank. The metal work has all been done with the file except the fitting of the saucer to the shank. This has evidently been heated and shrunk on. Three pipes have bowls of smoothly ground stone. No. 89289 [1582] (Fig. 6_b_ from Utkiavwĭñ) is of rather soft greenish gray slate. No. 89290 [864] is of the same shape, but of hard greenish stone, while the third stone pipe (No. 89291 [834], from Utkiavwĭñ), of gray slate, is of quite a different pattern. Three of the series have bowls of reindeer antler, lined with thin sheet brass, and one a bowl of walrus ivory, lined with thin copper. (See Fig. 6_c_, Nos. 89285 [954], 89286 [915], and 89287 [1129].)

Antler and stone pipes of this pattern and rather small are usually carried by the men out of doors, while the more elaborate metal pipes, which are often very large and handsome (I have seen some with a saucer at least 3 inches in diameter) are more frequently used in the house and by the women. The stem is usually 1 foot or 13 inches long, though pipes at least 18 inches long were seen.

To most pipes are attached pickers, as in the type specimen. The picker is in all cases of metal, usually iron or steel, but sometimes of copper (see the pickers attached to pipes above). When not in use the point is tucked under the lashing on the stem. The pipes are readily taken apart for cleaning.

No. 89292 [1752] (Fig. 7) is an extemporized pipe made in a hurry by a man who wished to smoke, but had no pipe.

It is simply a rough willow stick, slightly whittled into shape, split and hollowed out like a pipestem. It is held together by a whipping of sinew thread and a lashing of deerskin thong, fastened by a slip-knot at one end, the other being tucked in as usual. A small funnel-shaped hole at one end serves for a bowl, and shows by its charred surface that it has been actually used. This pipe was bought from one of the “Nunatañmiun,” who were in camp at Pernyû in 1883, and shows its inland origin in the use of the deerskin thong. A coast native would have used seal thong.

The pipe is carried at the girdle, either with the stem thrust inside the breeches or in a bag attached to the belt. No. 56744 [55] (Utkiavwĭñ) is the only specimen of pipe bag in the collection. It is a long, narrow, cylindric bag, made of four white ermine skins, with two hind legs and two tails forming a fringe round the bottom, which is of dressed deerskin, in one piece, flesh side out. The band round the mouth is of gray deerskin, running only two-thirds of the way round. The piece which fills the remaining third runs out into the strap for fastening the bag to the belt. The ornamental strips on two of the longitudinal seams and round the bottom are of deerskin. The seams are all sewed “over and over” on the “wrong” side with sinew thread. This is an unusually handsome bag.

Tobacco is carried in a small pouch of fur attached to the girdle, and tucked inside of the breeches, or sometimes worn under the jacket, slung round the neck by a string or the necklace. The collection contains three of these, of which No. 89803 [889] (Fig. 8_a_) will serve as a typical specimen.

It is made by sewing together two pieces of wolverine fur, hair out, of the same shape and size, and round the mouth of this a band of short-haired light-colored deerskin, also hair out, with the ends meeting at one side in a seam corresponding to one of the seams of the wolverine fur. The mouth is ornamented with a narrow band of wolverine fur, the flesh side, which is colored red, turned out. It is closed by a piece of seal thong about 5 inches long, one end of which is sewed to the middle of the seam in the deerskin band and the other passed through a large blue glass bead and knotted. This string is wound two or three times round the neck of the bag, and the bight of it tucked under the turns. The seams are all sewed “over and over” on the “wrong” side with sinew thread.

These tobacco pouches are usually of a similar pattern, often slightly narrowed at the neck, and generally fringed round the mouth with a narrow strip of wolverine fur as above. They are often ornamented with tags of wolverine fur on the seams (as in No. 89804 [1341, Fig. 8_b_]), and borders of different colored skin. No. 89805 [1350] is very elaborately ornamented. It is made of brown deerskin, trimmed with white deerskin clipped close and bordered with narrow braids of blue and red worsted, and little tags of the latter. According to Dr. Simpson,[N117] these bags are called “del-la-mai´-yu.” We neglected to obtain the proper names for them, as we always made use of the lingua franca “tiba´ púksak,” bag for tiba´ (tobacco). No. 89903 [889] contains a specimen of tobacco as prepared for smoking by the Eskimo. This consists of common black Cavendish or “Navy” tobacco, cut up very fine, and mixed with finely chopped wood in the proportion of about two parts of tobacco to one of wood. We were informed that willow twigs were used for this purpose. Perhaps this may have some slight aromatic flavor, as well as serving to make the tobacco go further, though I did not recognize any such flavor in some tobacco from an Eskimo’s pouch that I once smoked and found exceedingly bad. The smell of an Eskimo’s pipe is different from any other tobacco smoke and is very disagreeable. It has some resemblance to the smell of some of the cheaper brands of North Carolina tobacco which are known to be adulterated with other vegetable substances. The method of smoking is as follows: After clearing out the bowl with the picker, a little wad of deer hair, plucked from the clothes in some inconspicuous place, generally the front skirt of the inner jacket, is rammed down to the bottom of the bowl. This is to prevent the fine tobacco from getting into the stem and clogging it up. The bowl is then filled with tobacco, of which it only holds a very small quantity. The mouthpiece is placed between the lips, the tobacco ignited, and all smoked out in two or three strong inhalations. The smoke is very deeply inhaled and allowed to pass out slowly from the mouth and nostrils, bringing tears to the eyes, often producing giddiness, and almost always a violent fit of coughing. I have seen a man almost prostrated from the effects of a single pipeful. This method of smoking has been in vogue since the time of our first acquaintance with these people.[N118]

[Footnote N117: Op. cit., p. 243.]

[Footnote N118: See T. Simpson: “Not content with chewing and smoking it, they swallowed the fumes till they became sick, and seemed to revel in a momentary intoxication.” Point Barrow (1837), Narrative, p. 156. Also Kotzebue: “They chew, snuff, smoke, and even swallow the smoke.” Kotzebue Sound (1816) Voyage, vol. 1, p. 237. Beechey also describes the people of Hotham Inlet in 1826 as smoking in the manner above described, obtaining the hair from a strip of dogskin tied to the pipe. Their tobacco was mixed with wood. Voyage, p. 300. Petitot (Monographie, etc., p. xxix) describes a precisely similar method of smoking among the Mackenzie Eskimos. Their tobacco was “melangé à de la ráclure de saule” and the pipe was called “kwiñeρk.” (Vocabulaire, p. 54).]

Though they smoke little at a time, they smoke frequently when tobacco is plentiful. Of late years, since tobacco has become plentiful, some have adopted white men’s pipes, which they smoke without inhaling, and they are glad to get cigars, and, since our visit, cigarettes. In conversation with us they usually called all means for smoking “pai´pa,” the children sometimes specifying “pai´pa-sigya´” (cigar) or “mûkparapai´pa,” paper-pipe (cigarette). The use of the kui´nyɐ, which name appears to be applied only to the native pipes, seems to be confined to the adults. We knew of no children owning them, though their parents made no objection to their chewing tobacco or owning or using clay or wooden pipes which they obtained from us. They carry their fondness for tobacco so far that they will even eat the foul oily refuse from the bottom of the bowl, the smallest portion of which would produce nausea in a white man. This habit has been observed at Plover Bay, Siberia.[N119] Tobacco ashes are also eaten, probably for the sake of the potash they contain, as one of the men at Utkiavwīñ was fond of carbonate of soda, which he told the doctor was just like what he got from his pipe. Pipes of this type, differing in details, but all agreeing in having very small bowls, frequently of metal, and some contrivance for opening the stem, are used by the Eskimo from at least as far south as the Yukon delta (as shown by the collections in the National Museum) to the Anderson River and Cape Bathurst,[N120] and have even been adopted by the Indians of the Yukon, who learned the use of tobacco from the Eskimo. They are undoubtedly of Siberian origin, as will be seen by comparing the figure of a “Chukch” pipe in Nordenskiöld’s Vega, vol. 2, p. 117, Fig. 7, and the figure of a Tunguse pipe in Seebohm’s “Siberia in Asia” (p. 149), with the pipes figured from our collection. Moreover, the method of smoking is precisely that practiced in Siberia, even to the proportion of wood mixed with the tobacco.[N121]

[Footnote N119: See Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 177, and Dall, Alaska, p. 81.]

[Footnote N120: This is an interesting fact, as it shows that the Eskimo from Demarcation Point east learned to smoke from the people of Point Barrow, and not from the English or the northern Indians, who use pipes “modeled after the clay pipes of the Hudson Bay Company.” (Dall, Alaska, p. 81, Fig. _A_.) They acquired the habit some time between 1837, when T. Simpson found them ignorant of the use of tobacco (see reference above, p. 65), and 1849, when they were glad to receive it from Pullen and Hooper. (Tents, etc., p. 258.) Petitot (Monographie, etc., p. xxvi) states that the Eskimo of the Mackenzie informed him that the use of tobacco and the form of the pipe, with blue beads, labrets, and other things, came through the neighbors from a distant land called “Nate´ρovik,” which he supposes to mean St. Michaels, but which, from the evidence of other travelers, is much more likely to mean Siberia.

The Eskimo geography, on which Fr. Petitot relies so strongly, is extremely vague west of Barter Island, and savors of the fabulous almost as much as the Point Barrow stories about the eastern natives. The evidence which leads Fr. Petitot to believe “Nate´ρovik” to be St. Michaels is rather peculiar. The Mackenzie natives call the people who are nearest to Nate´ρovik on the north “the Sedentary.” Now, the people who live nearest to St. Michaels on the north are the “Sedentary American Tchukatchīs”(!); therefore Nate´ρovik is probably St. Michaels. (“Le nom _Natéρovik_ semble convenir à l’ancien fort russe Michaëlowski, en ce que la tribu iunok la plus voisine de ce poste, vers le nord, est désignée par nos Tchiglit sous le nom d’ _Apkwam-méut_ ou de Sédentaires; or telle est la position géographique qui convient aux sédentaires Tchukatches américains, dont la limite la plus septentrionale, selon le capitaine Beechey, est la pointe Barrow.”) A slight acquaintance with the work of Dall and other modern explorers in this region would have saved Fr. Petitot from this and some other errors.]

[Footnote N121: See Wrangell, Narrative of an Expedition, etc., p. 58. “The Russians here [at Kolymsk, 1820] smoke in the manner common to all the people of northern Asia; they draw in the tobacco smoke, swallow it, and allow it to escape again by the nose and ears(!).” The tobacco is said to be mixed with “finely powdered larch wood, to make it go further” (ibid.). See also Hooper, Tents, etc.: “Generally, I believe, about one-third part of wood is used” (pp. 176 and 177; and Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 116.)]

The consideration of the question whence the Siberians acquired this peculiar method of smoking would lead me beyond the bounds of the present work, but I can not leave the subject of pipes without calling attention to the fact that Nordenskiöld[N122] has alluded to the resemblance of these to the Japanese pipes. A gentleman who has spent many years in China also informs me that the Chinese pipes are of a very similar type and smoked in much the same way.[N123] The Greenlanders and eastern Eskimo generally, who have learned the use of tobacco directly from the Europeans, use large-bowled pipes, which they smoke in the ordinary manner. In talking with us the people of Point Barrow call tobacco “tiba´” or “tibakĭ,” but among themselves it is still known as ta´wak, which is the word found in use among them by the earliest explorers.[N124] “Tiba” was evidently learned from the American whalers, as it was not in use in Dr. Simpson’s time. It is merely an attempt to pronounce the word tobacco, but has been adopted into the Eskimo language sufficiently to be used as the radical in compound words such as “tiba´xutikă´ktûñɐ,” “I have a supply of tobacco.” There is no evidence that anything else was smoked before the introduction of tobacco, and no pipes seen or collected appear older than the time when we know them to have had tobacco.[N125]

[Footnote N122: Vega, vol. 2, p. 116.]

[Footnote N123: See also Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. xxix.]

[Footnote N124: See Beechey, Voyage, p. 323; T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 156--“tobacco, which * * * they call tawāc, or tawākh, a name acquired of course from Russian traders;” Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 239; also Maguire and J. Simpson, loc. cit. passim. Petitot calls ta´wak “mot français corrompu”!]

[Footnote N125: Since the above was written, the word for pipe, “kuinyɐ,” has been found to be of Siberian origin. See the writer’s article “On the Siberian origin of some customs of the Western Eskimos” (American Anthropologist, vol. 1, pp. 325-336).]

HABITATIONS.

_The winter house_ (_ĭ´glu_).--The permanent winter houses are built of wood[N126] and thickly covered with clods of earth. Each house consists of a single room, nearly square, entered by an underground passage about 25 feet long and 4 to 4½ feet high. The sloping mound of earth which covers the house, grading off insensibly to the level of the ground, gives the houses the appearance of being underground, especially as the land on which they stand is irregular and hilly. Without very careful measurements, which we were unable to make, it is impossible to tell whether the floor is above or below the surface of the ground. It is certainly not very far either way. I am inclined to think that a space at or near the top of a hillock is simply leveled to receive the floor. In this case the back of the house on a hill side, like some in Utkiavwĭñ, would be underground.

[Footnote N126: In some of the older houses, the ruins of which are still to be seen at the southwest end of the village of Utkiavwĭñ, whales’ bones were used for timbers. Compare Lyon Journal, p. 171, where the winter huts at Iglulik are described as “entirely constructed of the bones of whales, unicorns, walruses, and smaller animals,” with the interstices filled with earth and moss.]

The passage is entered at the farther end by a vertical shaft about 6 feet deep in the center of a steep mound of earth. Round the mouth is a square frame or combing of wood, and blocks of wood are placed in the shaft to serve as steps. One or two houses in Utkiavwĭñ had ship’s companion ladders in the shaft. This entrance can be closed with a piece of walrus hide or a wooden cover in severe weather or when the family is away. The passage is about 4 feet wide and the sides and roof are supported by timbers of whalebone. On the right hand near the inner end is a good-sized room opening from the passage, which has a wooden roof covered with earth, forming a second small mound close to the house, with a smoke hole in the middle, and serves as a kitchen, while various dark and irregular recesses on the other side serve as storerooms. The passage is always icy and dark.

At the inner end of the passage a circular trapdoor in the floor opens into the main room of the house, close to the wall at the middle of one end. The floor is at such a height from the bottom of the tunnel that a man standing erect in the tunnel has his head and shoulders in the room. These rooms vary somewhat in dimensions, but are generally about 12 or 14 feet long and 8 or 10 feet wide. The floor, walls, and roof are made of thick planks of driftwood, dressed smooth and neatly fitted together, edge to edge. The ridgepole runs across the house and the roof slopes toward each end. The two slopes are unequal, the front, or that towards the entrance, being considerably the longer. The walls are vertical, those at the ends being between 3 and 4 feet high, while the sides run up to 6 or 7 feet at the ridgepole. The wall planks run up and down, and those of the roof from the ridge to the ends of the house, where there is a stout horizontal timber. In some houses the walls are made of paneled bulkheads from some wrecked whaler.

In the front of the house over the trapdoor there are no planks for a space of about 2 feet. The lower part of this space is filled in with short transverse beams, so as to leave a square hole close to the ridge. This hole has a stout transverse beam at the top and bottom and serves as a window. When the house is occupied it is covered by a translucent membrane made of strips of seal entrail sewed together and stretched over two arched sticks of light wood--whalebone was used in Dr. Simpson’s time[N127]--running diagonally across from corner to corner. The window is closed with a wooden shutter when the house is shut up in winter, but both apertures are left open in summer. Just above the window, close to the ridgepole, is a little aperture for ventilation. Across the back of the room runs a platform or banquette, about 30 inches high in front and sloping back a little, which serves as a sleeping and lounging place. It is about 5 feet wide, and the front edge comes nearly under the ridgepole. It is made of thick planks running across the house, and supported at each end by a horizontal beam, the end of which projects somewhat beyond the bench and is supported by a round post. At each side of the house stands a lamp, and over these are suspended racks in the shape of small ladders for drying clothing,[N128] etc. Deerskin blankets for the bed, which are rolled up and put under the bench when not in use, and a number of wooden tubs of various sizes--I counted nine tubs and buckets in one house in Utkiavwĭñ--complete the furniture.

[Footnote N127: Op. cit., p. 256.]

[Footnote N128: Compare Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 46: “Small lattice shelves * * * on which moccasins * * * are put to dry.” Plover Bay. See also plate to face p. 160 Parry’s Second Voyage.]

Two families usually occupy such a house, in which case each wife has her own end of the room and her own lamp, near which on the floor she usually sits to work. Some houses contain but one family and others more. I knew one house in Utkiavwĭñ whose regular occupants were thirteen in number, namely, a father with his wife and adopted daughter, two married sons each with a wife and child, his widowed sister with her son and his wife, and one little girl. This house was also the favorite stopping-place for people who came down from Nuwŭk to spend the night. The furniture is always arranged in the same way. There is only one rack on the right side of the house and two on the left. Of these the farther from the lamp is the place for the lump of snow. In this same corner are kept the tubs, and the large general chamber pot and the small male urinal are near the trap door. Dishes of cooked meat are also kept in this corner. This leaves the other corner of the house vacant for women visitors, who sit there and sew. Male visitors, as well as the men of the house when they have nothing to do, usually sit on the edge of the banquette.

In sleeping they usually lie across the banquette with their feet to the wall, but sometimes, when there are few people in the house, lie lengthwise, and occasionally sleep on the floor under the banquette. Petitot says that in the Mackenzie region only married people sleep with their heads toward the edge of the banquette. Children and visitors lie with their heads the other way.[N129] (See Fig. 9, ground plan and section of house, and Figs. 10 and 11, interior, from sketches by the writer. For outside see Fig. 12, from a photograph by Lieut. Ray).

[Footnote N129: Monographie, etc., p. xxiii.]

At the back of the house is a high oblong scaffolding, made by setting up tall poles of driftwood, four, six, or eight in number, and fastening on cross pieces about 8 or 10 feet from the ground, usually in two tiers, of which the lower supports the frames of the kaiaks and the upper spears and other bulky property. Nothing except very heavy articles, such as sledges, boxes, and barrels, is ever left on the ground. A man can easily reach this scaffold from the top of the house, but it is high enough to be out of reach of the dogs. The cross pieces are usually supported on crotches made by lashing the lower jaw of a walrus to the pole, so that one ramus lies along the latter. Scaffolds of this sort, usually spoken of as “caches” or “cache frames,” are of necessity used among the Eskimos generally, as it is the only way in which they can protect their bulky property.[N130]

[Footnote N130: See for instance, Crantz, History of Greenland, vol. 1, p. 141; Franklin, 1st Exped., vol. 2, p. 194 (Coppermine River); 2d Exped., p. 121 (Mouth of the Mackenzie, where they are made of drift logs stuck up so that the roots serve as crotches to hold the cross pieces); Hooper, Tents, etc., pp. 48, 228, and 343 (Plover Bay, Point Barrow, and Toker Point); J. Simpson, op. cit., p. 256 (Point Barrow); Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 92 (Pitlekaj).]

Around Norton Sound, however, they use a more elaborate structure, consisting of a regular little house 6 feet square, raised 6 to 10 feet from the ground on four posts.[N131]

[Footnote N131: Dall, Alaska, p. 13.]

Belonging to each household, and usually near the house, are low scaffolds for the large boats, rows of posts for stretching lines of thong, and one or more small cellars or underground rooms framed with whales’ bones, the skull being frequently used for a roof, which serve as storehouses for blubber. These may be called “blubber rooms.”

These winter houses can only be occupied when the weather is cold enough to keep the ground hard frozen. During the summer the passageways are full of water, which freezes at the beginning of winter and is dug out with a pickax. The people of Utkiavwĭñ began to come to us to borrow our pickax to clean out their iglus about September 24, 1882, and all the houses were vacated before July 1, both seasons.