Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/436

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seizing him and throwing him behind over their own shoulder, so strong were they.

During the greater part of the year they lived in their permanent winter houses at the south coast of the island, where Tunirmiut in South Bay was the most important settlement; map II will also show where house ruins from their time have been found.[1] On the west coast, almost opposite the head of Duke of York Bay, Lyon[2] wrote "The vertebrae of a whale and the bones of other animals were lying scattered on the beach near a long forsaken winter hut".

Comer[3] mentions 7 houses near Bay of God's Mercy, and his description of the houses there corresponds very well with the foregoing description of the houses at Kuk.

From these permanent settlements they hunted the walrus and the seal, partly from the ice edge and partly at breathing holes. In the spring they hunted the utoq seal on the ice when the ice put a stop to kayak-hunting of seals and walruses. In summer they lived in tents; in the early summer some of them went inland where they hunted birds and caught salmon at the big lakes; in September they hunted caribou, especially in the narrows between Bell Peninsula and the island, as a large number of caribou moved in summer to this high peninsula in order to get away from the mosquitos and returned during the late summer. As soon as the rivers and lakes froze over, at the end of September or the beginning of October, they again moved into the winter settlements.

In the winter houses two to four families lived together as a rule. The construction of the houses has already been described at Kuk; over the door was a window — in winter a sheet of ice, otherwise the penis or entrail skin of the bearded seal; in the middle of the roof a smoke hole. In winter the doorway was prolonged by means of blocks of ice and was often so high that a man could walk upright in it; in the walls, at such a height that the dogs could not reach them, were holes which led into store rooms, likewise built of blocks of ice, in which meat was stored, one room for each kind of meat: walrus, seal, bear, caribou, salmon, bird, etc. Besides whale bones. and lime-stone, large pieces of baleen were also used in the construction of the roof. On the platform space was laid a thick layer of dried grass, and on top of this first seal skins and then bear skins; everything however was sodden with blubber, which often dripped down from the roof; in order to rid the platform skins of blubber, sand was strewn on them, well trodden in and then they were combed

  1. Principally according to information from the Eskimo Audlanaq (John Ell).
  2. 1825, p. 96.
  3. 1910, p. 87.