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. 8b]), 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,[117] 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.[118]
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.[119] 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,[120] 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.[121]
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[122] 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.[123] 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.[124] “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.[125]
[HABITATIONS.]
[The winter house] (ĭ´glu).—
The permanent winter houses are built of wood[126] 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.
Fig. 9.—Plans of Eskimo-winter house.
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.