Our Arctic province

by Henry Wood Elliott

We are not reminded of the clothing stores of San Francisco when we meet Innuits everywhere between Point Barrow and Nooshagak; they are clad in the primitive garments of their remote ancestry, as a rule—a few exceptions to this generalization being those individuals who are living constantly about the widely scattered trading-posts, and the chapels, or missions, located in their territory, where they act as servants or interpreters. The conventional coat of these people is the “parka,” made of marmot and muskrat-skins, or of tanned reindeer-hides, with enormous winter hoods, or collars, of dog-hair or fox-fur. This parka has sleeves, and compasses the body of the wearer, without an opening either before or behind, from his neck to his feet. His head is thrust through an aperture left for it, with a puckering string which draws it up snugly around the neck. In winter the heavy hood-collar, or cowl, is fitted so as to be drawn over his entire head and pulled down to the eyes. This parka is worn with singular ease and abandon; frequently the arms are withdrawn from the big, baggy sleeves and stowed under the waist-slack of the garment, leaving these empty appendages to dangle. Natives, as they sit down, draw the parka out and over the knees, still keeping their arms underneath; or, when on the trail, and the wet grass and bushes make it imperative, the parka is gathered up and bound by a leather thong-strap or girdle of sinews, so as to keep its bottom border dry and as high as the knees of a tramping native; the baggy folds of it then give its wearer a grotesque and clumsy figure as they bulge out over his hips and abdomen. The most favored and valuable parka is that one made out of alder-bark tanned reindeer-skin, for winter use; the hair is worn inside, next to the skin. For summer styles those fashioned out of the breasts of water-fowl, of marmot- and mink-skins, are most common. The hood is never attached to the parka in the warmer months of the year. It is a very capacious pouch which, when not in service, is resting in thick folds back of the head and upon the shoulders. It is ornamented in a variety of ways, but usually a thick fringe of long-haired dog- or fox-fur forms its border, and when drawn into position encircles the wearer’s face and gives it a wild and unkempt air.

The only underwear which a Mahlemoöt affects is limited to that garment which we call a shirt, made of light skins or of cheap cotton drillings; if it is of skin, it is worn from father to son, and becomes a real heirloom highly polished and redolent. Their trousers are, for both sexes, a pair of thin skin or cotton drawers, puckered at the ankles and bound about with the uppers of their moccasons, or else enclosed by the tops to their reindeer-boots, which are the prevalent covering for their feet. Such are the characteristics of a costume worn by much more than half the entire aboriginal population of Alaska; but when we come to inspect their dwellings we find a greater variety of housing than indexed in dressing.

“CHAMI”
An Innuit Girl, about 14 years old

AFTER DINNER—GOOD DIGESTION
Favorite position of Innuits

A very great majority of the Innuits live in a house that outwardly resembles a circular mound of earth, seven or eight feet high, and thirty or forty feet in circumference. It is overgrown with rank grasses, littered with all sorts of utensils, weapons, sleds, and other Eskimo furniture. A small spiral coil of smoke rises from a hole in its apex, a dog or two are crouching upon it, and children climb up and roll down its sides, scattering bones and fragments of fish and meat as they eat in the irregular fashion of these people. A rude pole scaffolding stands close by, upon which, high above the reach of dogs, is a wooden cache, containing all winter stores of dried provision, “ukali,” and the like. This hut is usually right down upon the sea-beach, just above high tide, or high-water mark, on the river banks, for these savages draw their sustenance largely, even wholly in many instances, from the piscine life of those northern streams.

An Innuit Home on the Kuskokvim.

All these tribes have summer dwellings distinct from those used during the winter. For the winter houses a square excavation of about ten feet or more is made, in the corners of which posts of drift-wood or whale-ribs from eight to ten feet in height are set up; the walls are formed by laying posts of drift-wood one above the other against the corner-posts; outside of this another wall is built, sometimes of stone, sometimes of logs, the intervals being filled with earth or rubble; the whole of the structure, including the roof, is covered with sods, leaving a small opening on top, that can be closed by a frame over which a thin, transparent seal-skin is tightly drawn. The entrance to one of these houses consists of a narrow, low, underground passage from ten to twelve feet in length, through which an entrance can only be accomplished on hands and knees. The interior arrangement of such a winter house is simple, and is nearly the same with all these tribes. A piece of bear- or reindeer-skin is hung before an inner opening of the doorway; in the centre of the enclosure is a fireplace, which is a square excavation directly under that smoke-hole in the roof; the floor is rarely planked, and frequently two low platforms, about four feet in width, extend along the sides of the house from the entrance to the back, and covered with mats and skins which serve as beds at night. In the larger dwellings, occupied by more than one family, the sleeping-places of each are separated from each other by suspended mats, or simply by a piece of wood. All the bladders containing oil, the wooden vessels, kettles, and other domestic utensils, are kept in the front part of the dwelling, and before each sleeping-place there is generally a block of wood upon which is placed the oil-lamp used for heating and cooking.