Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/138

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Many women, though not all can built snow houses, even if they have not usually the same skill as the men; they often help the men to cut the blocks. There are some men who never learn the art; a young married man at Iglulik could not build a snow house and the same was said of a man about fifty years old at the same place.

The size of the snow house and its arrangement depend upon what it is to be used for. Other demands are of course made of a snow house that is to be used as a dwelling for a couple of families Fig. 77.Ground plan of snow house; Repulse Bay. for a long period than of a house that is only intended to provide shelter for a man for one night. In the following I will describe different snow houses, showing their size and construction and how they are joined together into blocks of dwellings.

Fig. 77 shows the ground plan of a snow house at Repulse Bay, of the usual form. intended for two families. The diameter is 4.3 m, the height above the floor 2.65 m, platform height 0.55 m; above the doorway is a window of fresh-water ice, 2.05 m above the floor; its size is 60 × 55 cm; by the side platform there is a niche, about 20 cm deep. in which the women sitting sewing on the main platform can place their feet. In front of the house is a store room, the floor of which is about 20 cm lower than that of the house; from this an opening leads into the house and a wooden door on hinges out to the front room, which opens out with a semi-circular wall; the front room is where the dogs live in bad weather. At the side of the store is a sideroom for skin clothing.

The Eskimo terms for the various parts of the house are: ceiling: iluperuk; floor: nateq; main platform: igleq; side platform: akit; rear wall: kilo; door: uateruluk; store room: serdluaq; dog's room: uatlik; window: igalâq; airhole: qingaq.

This is the usual form and size of snow house intended as a dwelling for two families for long periods.[1] If there is only one family, they are mostly made smaller (3–3½ m in diameter); if there is a lack of blubber so that heating is difficult, they can be

  1. ↑ Boas 1901, p. 96 writes of the snow house of the Aiviliks: "The snow house differs from that of Cumberland Sound in that the bed platform is not in the rear of the house but at the sides", but this only applies to the large houses: the ground plan figured by Boas 1888, fig. 491 of a snow house of the tribes at Davis Strait might just as well be of the Iglulik Eskimos.
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