They have regular hours for sleeping, but as these are only for a period of short duration, it is not unusual to find half the inmates asleep at any time a tent is visited.
The preparation of the food appears to go on at all times, and there are no regular hours for partaking of their meals, as each person eats when convenient. The food is taken directly from the pot or kettle, and each one helps himself. Forks are not used, and the food is divided with a knife or torn with the fingers.
[ SWEAT HOUSES.]
The Nenenot are in the habit of taking steam baths, for which purpose they use a sudatory or sweat house, constructed as follows: A number of flexible poles of small size, usually willow or alder, which grow to sufficient size along the banks of the streams, are bent to form a hemispherical or dome-shaped structure, which is covered with tent skins. A sandy locality is selected or one free from snow in winter, and a fierce fire is built. When it is well under way a number of stones are thrown into the fire to heat. When the heat is sufficient the fire is removed and the structure is quickly erected over the hot stones and some one from the outside fastens down the edges of the tenting with stones to prevent the loss of heat. A kettle of water previously placed within the bath house is used to pour over the stones, when heat rises to a suffocating degree and produces the desired perspiration. Water is not used to bathe in, though sometimes a slight quantity is poured upon the head only. The bather remains within the hut until the heat has nearly exhausted him.
These baths are frequently taken, and often when he has just started on a journey the head of the family will be seized with a desire to have a bath. Everything must await this operation before the journey is resumed.
An amusing incident occurred at Fort Chimo in the spring of 1882. That season the reindeer were extremely numerous at that place, as they were crossing to go to the northeast to drop the fawns. Often when the herds or bands were panic stricken they rushed among the Indian tents, the houses of the station, and, in fact, everywhere, with yelping dogs and screaming women and children at their heels. An old man and wife were in the sweat house at a time when a very large drove of the deer, in their frantic endeavors to escape their pursuers, headed directly for the bath. Some one screamed to the occupants to look out for the deer. The man and wife made their exit just as a score or more of the animals reached the spot. The man tore up the tenting of the bath house and whirled it in the air, while the old woman cut the most astonishing antics. The whole population witnessed the occurrence and did not fail to help increase the tumult. Signs of former sudatories are quite common along the paths where the Indians have traveled for many years.
[ HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS, ETC.]
Each household is supplied with sundry wooden vessels of various sizes (Fig. 115) which serve for buckets for holding water and for drinking cups. They are made of strips of thin boards cut from spruce or from larch trees, the wider strips being as much as six inches wide and one-third of an inch thick. They are steamed and bent into ovoid or circular forms and the ends of the strip overlapping. Then they are sewed with split roots from those trees. A groove is cut near the lower edge and into it is placed a dish-shaped piece of wood for a bottom.
These vessels are identical in shape and function with those manufactured by the Yukon river Indians of Alaska.