The natives, too, as soon as they knew that they must spend the winter here, said they wanted to go ashore and build their own houses, for then they could keep much warmer with less fuel than on the ship. They were not used to so much room and did not feel at home in it.
Each family built their own igloo; the women working with the men. Achatinǵwah’s mother helped carry the heavy bowlders from far off for their igloo, while Achatinǵwah scraped them free of snow and helped to loosen those that were frozen down, by pounding them with smaller stones.
After enough had been collected a place was scraped free from snow and made level; and for this they were glad to borrow the ship’s tools, for it would take much longer to clear the spot with only a rude knife made from walrus tusk than it did with a large shovel.
At one end of the circular space Achatinǵwah’s father built a platform about a foot high.
“Building an Igloo.”
The walls he put up, just as a stone mason would put them up, only he used turf which Achatinǵwah brought, instead of mortar, to stop the cracks. After the walls were three or four feet high the whole was roofed over. Usually this is done with large flat stones, but as Achatinǵwah’s father was in a hurry to get his family moved into the house he threw a walrus-hide over the top and held it down with heavy rocks to keep the wind from blowing it off.
The igloo was then thickly covered with snow, and the inside of it lined with seal skins.
The doorway, or entrance, was scarcely two feet high, and opened into a long, low passage-way which ended in a vestibule as high as the igloo itself. This passage-way and vestibule Achatinǵwah’s father built of snow-blocks.
The natives leave their fox-skin kapetahs (coats) in this vestibule if they are covered with snow, for if they took them into the warm igloo the snow would melt, and it would take a long while to dry the heavy fur garments.