Fig. 64.—Details of trimming, woman’s frock.
The frocks for both sexes, while made on the same general pattern as those of the other Eskimo, differ in many details from those of eastern America. For instance, the hood is not fitted in round the throat with the pointed throat pieces or fringed with wolf or wolverine skin until we reach the Eskimo of the Anderson River. Here, as shown by the specimens in the National Museum, the throat pieces are small and wide apart, and the men’s hoods only are fringed with wolverine skin. The women’s hoods are very large everywhere in the east for the better accommodation of the child, which is sometimes carried wholly in the hood.[213]
The hind flap of the skirt of the woman’s frock, except in Greenland, has developed into a long narrow train reaching the ground, while the front flap is very much decreased in size (see references just quoted). The modern frock in Greenland is very short and has very small flaps (see illustrations in Rink’s Tales, etc., pp. 8 and 9), but the ancient fashion, judging from the plate in Crantz’s History of Greenland, referred to above, was much more like that worn by the western Eskimo. In the Anderson and Mackenzie regions the flaps are short and rounded and the front flap considerably the smaller. There is less difference in the general shape of the men’s frocks. The hood is generally rounded and close fitting, except in Labrador and Baffin Land, where it is pointed on the crown. The skirt is sometimes prolonged into rounded flaps and a short scallop in front, as at Iglulik and some parts of Baffin Land.[214] Petitot[215] gives a full description of the dress of a “chief” from the Anderson River. He calls the frock a “blouse échancrée par côté et terminée en queues arrondies par devant et par derrière.” The style of frock worn at Point Barrow is the prevalent one along the western coast of America nearly to the Kuskokwim. On this river long hoodless frocks reaching nearly or quite to the ground are worn.[216] The frock worn in Kadiak was hoodless and long, with short sleeves and large armholes beneath these.[217]
The men of the Siberian Eskimo and sedentary Chukches, as at Plover Bay, wear in summer a loose straight-bottomed frock without a hood, but with a frill of long fur round the neck. The winter frock is described as having “a square hood without trimmings, but capable of being drawn, like the mouth of a bag, around the face by a string inserted in the edge.”[218] According to Nordenskiöld,[219] the men at Pitlekaj wear the hoodless frock summer and winter, putting on one or two separate hoods in winter. The under hood appears to be like one or two which I saw worn at Plover Bay, namely, a close-fitting nightcap of thin reindeer skin tied under the chin. The dress of the Siberian women consists of frock and baggy kneebreeches in one piece, sewed to tightfitting boots reaching to the knees.[220]
Fig. 65.—Man’s cloak of deerskin.
[Mantles.]—
“Circular” mantles of deerskin, fastened at the neck by a thong, and put on over the head like a poncho, are worn by the men in very cold weather over their other clothes when lounging in the open air about the village or watching at a seal hole or tending the seal nets at night. The cloaks are especially affected by the older men, who, having grown-up sons or sons-in-law, do not have to go sealing in winter, and spend a great deal of their time in bright weather chatting together out of doors. There is one specimen in the collection, No. 56760 [94] (Fig. 65). It is made of fine summer doe-reindeer skin, in three pieces, back and two sides of dark skin, sewed to a collar of white skin from the belly of the animal. For pattern see diagram (Fig. 66). The seams at a are gored to make the cloak hang properly from the shoulder. The collar is in two pieces, joined in the middle, and the edge c is turned over toward the hair side and “run” down in a narrow hem. The points b of the collar are brought together in the middle and joined by a little strap of deerskin about an inch long, so that the edge c makes a round hole for the neck. The width of the mantle is 60 inches and its depth 39. It is worn with the white flesh side out, as is indicated by the seams being sewed “over and over” on the hair side. All the mantles seen were essentially of the same pattern. The edge is sometimes cut into an ornamental fringe, and the flesh side marked with a few narrow stripes of red ocher. This garment appears to be peculiar to northwestern America. No mention is to be found of any such a thing except in Mr. MacFarlane’s MS. notes, where he speaks of a deerskin blanket “attached with a line across the shoulders in cold weather,” among the Anderson River Eskimo. We have no means at present of knowing whether such cloaks are worn by the coast natives between Point Barrow and Kotzebue Sound, but one was worn by one of the Nunata´ñmiun who were at Nuwŭk in the autumn of 1881.