Suitable material is not at hand for the proper comparison of the lamps used by the different branches of the Eskimo race. All travelers who have written about the Eskimo speak of the use of such lamps, which agree in being shallow, oblong dishes of stone. Dr. Bessels[199] figures a lamp of soapstone from Ita, Smith Sound, closely resembling No. 89880, and a little lamp in the Museum from Greenland is of essentially the same shape, but deeper. The same form appears at Hudson Strait in the lamps collected by Mr. L. M. Turner, while those used at Iglulik are nearly semicircular.[200] South of Kotzebue Sound lamps of the shape so common in the east are used, but these, Mr. Turner informs me, are never made of soapstone, but always of sandstone, shale, etc. The people of Kadiak and the Aleuts anciently used lamps of hard stone, generally oval in shape, and sometimes made by slightly hollowing out one side of a large round pebble.[201] Such a rough lamp was brought by Lieut. Stoney, U.S. Navy, from Kotzebue Sound. No such highly finished and elaborate lamps as the large house lamps at Point Barrow are mentioned except by Nordenskiöld, who figures one from Siberia.[202] This lamp is interesting as the only one described with a ledge comparable to the shelf of No. 89879. Lamps from the region between Point Barrow and Boothia Felix are especially needed to elucidate the distribution and development of this utensil. The rudely hollowed pebble of the ancient Aleut and the elaborate lamp of the Point Barrow Eskimo are evidently the two extremes of the series of forms, but the intermediate patterns are still to be described.
Fig. 50, No. 56492 [108], is a peculiar article of which only one specimen was collected. We were given to understand at the time of purchasing it that it was a sort of socket or escutcheon to be fastened to the wall above a lamp to hold the blubber stick described above. No such escutcheons, however, were seen in use in the houses visited. The article is evidently old. It is a flat piece of thick plank of some soft wood, 11.4 inches long, 4.2 broad, and about 1½ thick, very rudely carved into a human head and body without arms, with a large round hole about 1¼ inches in diameter through the middle of the breast. The eyes and mouth are incised, and the nose was in relief, but was long ago split off. There is a deep furrow all around the head, perhaps for fastening on a hood.
[CLOTHING.]
[MATERIAL.]
The clothing of these people is as a rule made entirely of skins, though of late years drilling and calico are used for some parts of the dress which will be afterwards described. Petroff[203] makes the rather surprising statement that “a large amount of ready-made clothing finds its way into the hands of these people, who wear it in summer, but the excessive cold of winter compels them to resume the fur garments formerly in general use among them.” Fur garments are in as general use at Point Barrow as they ever were, and the cast-off clothing obtained from the ships is mostly packed away in some corner of the iglu. We landed at Cape Smyth not long after the wreck of the Daniel Webster, whose crew had abandoned and given away a great deal of their clothing. During that autumn a good many men and boys wore white men’s coats or shirts in place of the outer frock, especially when working or lounging about the station, but by the next spring these were all packed away and were not resumed again except in rare instances in the summer.
The chief material is the skin of the reindeer, which is used in various stages of pelage. Fine, short-haired summer skins, especially those of does and fawns, are used for making dress garments and underclothes. The heavier skins are used for everyday working clothes, while the heaviest winter skins furnish extra warm jackets for cold weather, warm winter stockings and mittens. The white or spotted skins of the tame Siberian reindeer, obtained from the “Nunatañmiun,” are especially valued for full-dress jackets. We heard no mention of the use of the skin of the unborn reindeer fawn, but there is a kind of dark deerskin used only for edgings, which appears to be that of an exceedingly young deer. This skin is extremely thin, and the hair so short that it is almost invisible. Siberian deerskins can always be recognized by having the flesh side colored red,[204] while American-dressed skins are worked soft and rubbed with chalk or gypsum, giving a beautiful white surface like pipe-clayed leather.
Fig. 51.—Man in ordinary deerskin clothes
The skins of the white mountain sheep, white and blue fox, wolf, dog, ermine, and lynx are sometimes used for clothing, and under jackets made of eider duck skins are rarely used. Sealskin dressed with the hair on is used only for breeches and boots, and for those rarely. Black dressed sealskin—that is, with the epidermis left on and the hair shaved off—is used for waterproof boots, while the white sealskin, tanned in urine, with the epidermis removed, is used for the soles of winter boots. Waterproof boot soles are made of oil-dressed skins of the white whale, bearded seal, walrus, or polar bear. The last material is not usually mentioned as serving for sole leather among the Eskimo. Nordenskiöld,[205] however, found it in use among the Chukches for this purpose. It is considered an excellent material for soles at Point Barrow, and is sometimes used to make boat covers, which are beautifully white. Heavy mittens for the winter are made of the fur of the polar bear or of dogskin. Waterproof outer frocks are of seal entrails, split and dried and sewed together. For trimmings are used deerskin of different colors, mountain-sheep skin, and black and white sealskin, wolf, wolverine, and marten fur, and whole ermine skins, as well as red worsted, and occasionally beads.