front tent poles, [qanai] w. suff., are tied together at the top with a long line of babiche or sealskin, and while one woman holds these leaning to the rear a little, two other poles are loosely laid in the fork formed above the lashing (fig. 15). Then two other poles are loosely laid between the last two poles and finally one or two poles at the rear. The loose end of the line holding the two foremost poles together
Image missingFig. 16.Ground-plan of Pâdlimiut tent, Hikoligjuaq. In the back part sleeping rugs separated from the floor by means of short poles, at one side wooden boxes and meat tray, and at entrance the fire-place. Dark spots indicate the place of the tent poles.
(Sketch by the author).
is wound several times round where the other poles cross and is finally made fast further down on one of the front poles. In this manner a conical frame of seven or eight poles is raised; sledge runners, which among the Pâdlimiut may reach a length of 10 metres, and sometimes more, are often used as tent poles. On the whole it is plain that these Eskimos have easy access to wood. A tent in the Thule collection from the Pâdlimiut at Eskimo Point has 5 poles 4.49–3.30 m in length.
The tent sheet is sewn of skin in approximately halfround shape. All the original tents which I have had an opportunity of seeing had a single sheet of caribou skin with the hair outside; but the Tyrrell brothers saw a tent “of deer-skin parchment” north of Dubawnt Lake and another of musk-ox skin at the west end of Baker Lake.[1] Even if the tent sheet is of skin with the hair, it has at the two front edges a strip of unhaired skin with a row of holes. The sheet is drawn over the frame from back to front and tied together over the door with a line through the holes just mentioned. At night the tent is closed by means of a skin and, in windy weather, a short stick is set up under a flap of the sheet at the side of the door, thus forming a sort of wind-
- ↑ J. W. Tyrrell s. a.; 106, 122.
