Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/200

most children are given a dress consisting of hose (atâjoq), stockings and trousers in one, held up by braces (ujatsiutit), as well as a frock, loose cap, boots and mittens; the inner lining is usually of caribou skin; in summer it is very often of sealskin. As a rule the frock has an indication of a back flap, on a girl's dress both back and front, and it is on them that the wide shoulders begin; sometimes the hood is Image missingFig. 145.A winter-dressed boy. loose, at other times it is part of the frock. At Repulse Bay I have seen a little girl of eighteen months wearing a dress of this kind with a loose cap; but most often the child is three or four years old before the suit is discarded.

How the child's dress varies when the first few years have been passed will be seen from the following examples: A four year old boy on Southampton Island wore in summer: caribou-skin inner frock, under-trousers, stockings and mittens. and sealskin outer-trousers, socks and boots; in winter the same boy had caribou-skin inner and outer frock, cut straight at the bottom, hose with the hair inside, caribou-skin outer trousers, caribou-skin boots with the hair inside ("because children do not know that they must beat off the snow when they come inside the house"), and caribou-skin mittens. Another four-year old boy at the same place had a small flap on the frock. A four-year old boy at Ponds Inlet had, in summer, a caribou-skin inner frock with three slits. an outer frock of caribou-calf skin with three slits, and a cap, outer and under trousers of caribou skin, long caribou-skin stockings, small socks of caribou skin and long sealskin boots which went inside the trouser legs; the same boy also had a whole suit of clothes of young seal skin (see later). A boy of three years at Ponds Inlet had a caribou-skin outer frock, open, fastening down the front, without a hood, with two white longitudinal stripes down the back. A