Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/144

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room −6.0°; at man's height above the drying rack: +1.6°; on the platform in the small house −1.7°; on the floor, same house −8.0°; man's height above the drying rack: +2.0°; the floor in the front room: −10.2°; man's height same place: −1.8°, the floor in the store room: −24.2°.

Large skin-lined house at Pingerqalik, 14th April 1923, 3 pm.:

Air temperature: −10°; on the platform +4.2 C., floor 0°, at man's height above the platform: +6.4°. Four lamps burning.

Small skin-lined house at Qajuvfik, 23rd March 1923, 3pm. Two lamps burning, a number of people present; air temperature −30°: platform +5.2°, at man's height above it +9.8°, the floor +0.5°.

House at Pitorqaq, 27th January 1924; not skin-lined; outside −41°. On the floor −7°, middle of house −1°, 20 cm below middle of roof +4°.

For a snowhouse with all lamps burning and many people and dogs inside it, with an air temperature of −32°, Parry[1] recorded: over the drying rack +3°, two or three feet from it 0°, near the wall −5°.

A special use of the snow house is as a Festival or Dance House (qâgi). These are not built now; but formerly, when a number of people often gathered at one place, they were used and old people still alive can remember them and their furnishings. At Repulse Bay, festival houses were built in the form of two large, connected snow houses; in each of them was a platform, one for the men and one for the women; it was under the arch which joined the two houses that the dance proceeded. Hall[2] mentions a great feast at Nuvuk which took place in a house of this kind; from Repulse Bay he figures a dance house which differs in consisting of three connected snow houses. At Iglulik in winter, mask-dances were held in a large snow house, round, with no platform, the lamp on a block of snow in the middle; the men stood at one side, the women at the other, and the children between them. At Ponds Inlet, dance houses were most often built at Qilalukan, and they had the same form as the Iglulik house, i. e. without platform. These dance houses closely resemble that described by Boas[3] from Cumberland Gulf but differ in the positions of the men and women.

The Tent.

In May, when the snow house begins to become less comfortable as a dwelling, most Eskimos move into tents (Esk.: tupeq), a change that is just as pleasant as the move from tent to snow house in the

  1. ↑ 1824. p. 502.
  2. ↑ 1879, p. 90.
  3. ↑ 1888, fig. 531.
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