The regulation Eskimo house is called an Igloo and it is usually made by using plank and small timbers for a frame which are obtained as drift wood and then covering the whole with sods and stone. This house is usually built on a side hill and is approached by a tunnel, perhaps fifty feet in length. So if you wish to enter an Eskimo house you must get down on all fours and crawl along a dark dirty hole. When you enter the house you pop up through the floor like a jack-in-the-box.
What light there is comes in through a window made of seal membrane. The sleeping bench usually occupies the side of the room opposite the entrance. This is covered with musk ox robes on which the hair is a foot in length. These robes together with many kinds of furs and skins insure a warm bed. This bed and the lamp are about the only furniture in the room. The lamp is a stone bowl from six to fifteen inches in diameter which is filled with seal oil. It is called Nan-uh. A moss wick is laid along one of the sloping sides of the bowl. The flame is white and, if properly tended, the light is even and fairly bright. All the cooking that the family do is done on this lamp and this accounts for the fact that the Eskimo eats most of his food raw.
The floor of the Eskimo house is strewn with pieces of raw meat, skins, garments and sometimes hunting utensils, although these are usually hung on the walls.
The families are large, consisting of eight and ten children, but the great mortality among the children keeps their numbers down. The adults also succumb easily to contagious diseases and die off like flies. That is why the entire Eskimo population of both North America and Asia is probably not more than forty thousand souls.
In the igloo the children are supreme. They are never punished and, considering that fact, are models of behavior. The parents seem almost to reverence the children just as the Chinese do their ancestors.
The ambition of the boy is to grow up and become a great hunter, and the girl to make good reindeer skin boots and bird skin shirts.
The young man seeks a mate when he arrives at the age of twenty. In the olden days before most of the Eskimos became Christian the young man bought his wife, but now he is more civilized. If he is very bashful, his parents will interview the parents of the girl upon whom his heart is set. If there is acquiescence all around, they at once set off to find a missionary or some teacher who is a notary public to marry them. If such officials are not available, the marriage is celebrated according to Eskimo customs, or not at all. As soon as they are married, the man marches away to his igloo if he is lucky enough to have one. His new wife follows obediently behind, walking in his footsteps. He never looks back until they reach the house.