passage between them. The platform is of snow, a row of snow blocks being laid as the edge, and the space between them and the wall is filled with loose snow shovelled in with the snow shovel and trampled down. The main platform is so deep that the occupants of the house can easily sleep at full length on it, i. e. about 1.50 to 2 m at the deepest part. The breadth, of course, varies according to the size of the house; in a small Qaernermiut house at Baker Lake the breadth at the front was 3.70 m, which was almost the diameter of the house. The height of the platform is about 50 cm. On the main platform all life indoors goes on; it is chair, table and bed in one. The side platforms are of the same height but only small and serve for holding cooking pots, meat, etc. as well as lamps, if these are used. In snow huts that are built on journeys for one night the platform is sometimes omitted; but the time thus saved is usually lost again through the mix-up into which all the belongings inevitably get.
Before anyone moves into a snow house, the things that are not to be used should be buried in the snow. The bed-clothing of the occupants must not be brought in through the entrance, if there are children, but through a special hole that is cut in the wall and closed again. This is apparently done in order not to expose the children to dangers from the spirits which might otherwise follow after the bed-clothing.
Shelters. At the same places at the coast as the house ruins there are remains of shelters, consisting of stones raised in a semicircle, over which skins have undoubtedly been stretched. These are not used by the Caribou Eskimos.
In the spring, however, a period arrives when the snow houses begin to melt, and then the house is converted into a shelter [qᴀrmᴀq], consisting of the original snow wall, over which tent skins are laid flat, or nearly flat (fig. 14). If all the children of the housewife are alive, the husband himself is permitted to break down the roof and lay the skin over when he feels inclined. But if any of them are dead, he must wait until the roof falls in of itself. A shelter is equipped like the snow house. It is superfluous to remark that of course one can also be built without there having been a snow house beforehand.
Tents. Long before the country is bare of snow, the Eskimos move into tents, which are more pleasant dwellings than the snow shelter when the weather gets a little warmer. It is known through Boas that the Hauneqtôrmiut used conical tents, contrary to the Eskimos further north,[1] and in reality the conical type rules supreme among all Caribou Eskimos.
It is always the women who pitch the tent [tupᴇq]. First, the two
- ↑ Boas 1907; 465.
