The coats of the women differ from those of the men only in having a short tail in front, and a much longer one behind. They also have a loose bag on each shoulder, and the hood is much longer than the men wear. The women's outside coats are always made of the short hair, the same as are their ar-tee'-gee. Their trousers reach further below the knee, fit closer to the leg, and are worn with the hairy side out. Women never wear but the one pair in any weather. Their stockings and boots are made with a sort of wing extension at the ankle, and, coming up over the bottom of the trousers, have a long strip, by which they are fastened to the belt that also sustains their trousers at the waist.
To secure the necessary amount of skins for his family taxes the skill of the best hunter, for they must be secured in the summer and fall. Each adult requires six skins for his outfit, besides the number for the bedding. Take, then, an average family of a hunter, two wives and three children, and he must have for the adults eighteen skins, eleven for the children, three for his blanket—one blanket is enough for the entire family to sleep under—and about five for the mattress—a total of thirty-seven skins. This is more than many of them can secure during the short season of good fur; but others may kill many more, now that they are supplied with fire-arms, and those who have a surplus will always supply the actual needs of the more unfortunate; but often much suffering occurs before their wants are met.
When a hunter kills a reindeer, the first thing he does is to skin it; then he eats some of the warm, quivering flesh. This is a very important part of his task. He cuts it open and removes the entrails, and, making a sack of the reticulated stomach, fills it with the blood that is found in the cavity of the body. He then regales himself with some of the spinach-like contents of the paunch, and, by way of filling in the time and the little crinkles in his stomach, cuts off and eats such little portions of fat as are exposed in the process of butchering. He then looks around for a stony place and deposits the carcass conveniently near it, together with the entrails and the bag of blood. Before cutting the body open it is turned back up, and the strip of muscles along each side of the backbone is removed, together with the sinew that covers it. Over this also lies the layer of tallow (tood-noo) when the animal is fat, as is usually the case in the summer and fall. The head is then severed from the body and placed on top of the rest of the meat, so that when the entire mass is covered with about a ton weight of large stones it is considered secure from the ravages of foxes and wolves. Not so, however, from the wolverine and bear—they can open any newly made cache; but after the snows have fallen, and the stones and meat are frozen in one compact mass, it requires the ingenuity of man to remove it. This is done by loosening as large a stone as possible with the foot, and with this stone as a battering-ram another and larger one is loosened, which in turn serves as the battering-ram to loosen the others. Often it is found necessary to use a narrow, wedge-like stone as a lever, or to force the other stones apart. The cache is always made more conspicuous by leaving the antlers to protrude above the stones.
After his meat has been secured and he has refreshed himself with a pipe, the hunter makes a bundle of the skin and the meat attached to the sinew and tallow, and wends his way to his tupic, where his wife or wives await him. His favorite wife takes the meat (oo-le-oo-she-nee) and strips the sinew (oo-le-oo-tic) from it by holding the meat in her teeth while she cuts the sinew from it with her knife, which is shaped like a currier's knife. She then chews off the meat that still adheres to the sinew until it is perfectly clean, and hangs it up to dry, when it is separated into its fibres and becomes thread (ever-loo). In the meantime the other wife, with her teeth, cleans the fleshy side of the skin of the meat and fat that may still adhere to it, and if the sun is still shining stretches the skin upon the ground to dry, holding it in place by small stones placed around the edge. At night the skins are brought into the tent to keep them away from the dogs, and they are again put out in the sun every day until thoroughly dried. They should be dried as soon after killing as possible, in order that they may be in the best condition to preserve the fur.
According to the old traditions and customs—the Mosaic law of the Esquimaux, so to speak—no work of any kind, except the drying of them, can be done upon new skins until the ice has formed sufficiently thickly upon the salt water to permit the hunter to seek the seal at his agloo or blow-hole. Until that time they are put carefully away in the tent, and have to be carried from point to point in their nomadic mode of life, or cached away where they will be presumably secure from the ravages of dogs and wild animals. When the season for making the new clothing arrives, that is, when the winter styles come out, then the work begins. The skins are dressed by the men, because it is hard work and beyond the power of most women, if they are required to be nicely dressed. Only one skin is prepared at a time. There is generally an old man at the head of each family of sons, or sons-in-law, or young men whom he has brought up and taught to hunt. The entire stock of the family is then spread out upon the ground some fine day, without regard to individual claims as having secured them, and are apportioned out by the patriarch—these for this son's outfit, these for his wife and children, those for the other hunter and his family, and these extra fine ones for the patriarch's own use and for his wives.
The clothing for the men must be made first, for they are the lords, and then they need them first as they must go out hunting, and should be made as comfortable as possible. The two skins that are to become his inside coat, and the one for his inner trousers—his dress suit, as it were—are selected, and the women dampen the fleshy side with water that is warmed in their mouths and squirted on the skin, to be spread evenly over the surface with their hands. They are then folded over, with the damp side in, and put aside where they will not freeze until the next day. After arising in the morning, and a breakfast of raw meat, followed by a pipe, he removes his coat, and, with nothing on from his waist up but the usual dirt, he sits upon his bed, and with a bone scraper, called a suk-koo, goes over every particle of the skin upon the fleshy side, breaking it thoroughly and stretching it. Then comes the woman's first part of the work. It is not considered best to dry the skin over a lamp, because it has a tendency to harden it somewhat. It should be dried gradually, and by the heat of the body, so the woman wraps it around the upper part of her body, next to her skin, and sits at work until it is thoroughly dried. One who has never had the experience of exhausting his caloric for the purpose of drying a wet blanket can have but a vague idea of the exquisite torture of sitting in a temperature far below zero with no covering upon his shoulders but a damp reindeer skin. It may not be unhealthy, and perhaps a physician of the water-cure practice might recommend it for certain ailments, but it would never become popular as a pleasurable pastime. At night the other two skins are put in the bed, one beneath and the other over the sleepers, and by morning are dry. But it seems almost a miracle that the occupants escape a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism. In the morning the man again peels for work, and with a suk-koo of stone, that has a sharp edge, scrapes off every particle of the fleshy membrane until the skin becomes soft and pliant, and assumes a delicate cream-like color.
Only the skins of the does are used for clothing or the sleeping blanket. Buck skins, which are much less pliable compose the underlayers of the bed, and these are not scraped, but merely stretched on a frame while drying. The skin of a young buck is, however, sometimes used for making the trousers, and is nearly as fine in texture as the skin of the doe. The skins are now nearly ready for cutting out and sewing, but first have to be chewed, which is also women's work.
A man can scrape two skins in a day, and some of the women—many of them are, indeed, very skillful with their crude, home-made needles—can make a coat in two days, and a pair of trousers in one day. Some of the young men, whose wives are good tailors, affect considerable ornamentation upon the inside coat; but this is usually seen in the trimming that surrounds the lower edge and the border of the hood. Successive narrow strips of white and black fur, with very short hair, compose this trimming, and the lower edge is finished with fringe made of thin skin, which is quite ornamental in effect. It also aids in keeping out the wind, and is, therefore, useful as well. The outside coat is sometimes surrounded with a border of white fur, with the fringe attached of longer hair than that upon the inner coat. Some of the belles, and indeed some of the women whose beauty is a thing of the past, wear a breastplate of beadwork, which is further decorated with a fringe of reindeer teeth that has a most ghastly effect—they look so much like human teeth. The style of costume differs but little among the various tribes of North America; but in any part of the country the labor of producing the clothing is the same, and if a man would dress well he must work hard—he cannot order his suit from a confiding tailor. It has its advantages and disadvantages. He has no tailor's bills to avoid the payment of, but he must depend upon himself and a loving and skilful wife.