practical considerations and is not intentional. By the side of the snow huts pillars of piled-up blocks of snow are often raised, on which sledges etc. are placed out of reach of the dogs.
General remarks. Many different considerations have an influence upon the character of the dwelling of man;[1] but only the most primitive and fundamental seem to have had any real effect upon the house of the Caribou Eskimos. This is first and foremost a shelter against the climate; serviceability takes the front rank, and even if historical factors, especially in the form of constructive principles, have their essential share in the nature of the houses, both the strange material and the special climatic demands have exercised their distinct influence. There is little or no margin for the display of ideas. of beauty or considerations of religion.
In calling the house a shelter against the climate, this may be further specified as a shelter for man, and only secondarily for the fireplace, property, etc. Both snow house and tent are "home", where the family not only sleeps at night but to a great extent also spends the day. Even in summer the women sit and sew in the tent, where they are more or less left in peace by the mosquitoes, and the men often take their various small tasks in with them. If the character of their work does not actually demand it, it is on the whole not often that the women sit in the open air; but, if the weather in summer is good, it sometimes happens that they set to work to scrape skins in the shelter of a very crude wind-screen, consisting of brush bundles placed round the fire (fig. 10); in this manner it is also easier for them to keep an eye on the children who tumble about among the tents. In summer, everything is cooked in the open air when the weather permits.
While on summer journeys and hunting trips the men may do without a house for some nights. The Eskimos with whom I made the canoe trip from Hikoligjuaq down the Kazan River had no tent with them, but slept under the canoe and, although the Caribou Eskimos do not usually make long hunting trips alone in over the tundra. I have met hunters from a starving camp roaming about a couple of days' journey from it with no other outfit than their weapons. It may of course happen that in winter a hunter is caught by darkness or a snowstorm while away from the settlement; in such cases he will, with the snow knife which is always carried, build himself a small snow hut or at any rate a shelter. Without this the night may easily be fateful. In good weather, however, there is nothing to prevent him
- ↑ Cf. c. g. Schurtz 1900; 412.
