Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442Murdoch, John
History
Ethnological results of the Point Barrow expedition: Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887-1888, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1892, pages 3-442
Murdoch, John
Eskimos -- Alaska -- Barrow, Point, Region
No. 56757 [11] is a very handsome garment (Fig. 58). The body and
sleeves are of white and brown (winter and summer) ermine skins
arranged in an elegant pattern, and the hood of reindeer and mountain
sheep skin. This is the only frock seen in which the hood is not
fitted to the sides of the throat by curved and pointed throat pieces,
after the fashion universal among the western Eskimo, from Cape
Bathurst at least to Norton Sound. The pattern of the hood is shown by
the diagram (Fig. 60 _a_). The middle piece is the skin of a reindeer
head, the two cheek pieces and median chin piece of mountain sheep
skin. When the hood is put together the lower edge of it is sewed to
the neck of the body, which has the back and front of nearly the same
size and shape (diagram, Fig. 60 _b_), though the back is a little
longer in the skirt. There is no regular seam on the shoulders, where
irregular bits of white ermine skin are pieced together so as to fit.
From the armpit on each side runs a narrow strip of sheepskin between
back and front. The sleeve is a long piece made of three white ermine
skins put together lengthwise, doubled above, with a straight strip of
sheepskin let in below, and enlarged near the body by two triangular
gussets (front and back) let in between the ermine and sheepskin. The
wristbands are broad pieces of sheepskin. The skirts are of white
ermine skins pieced together irregularly, but the skins composing the
front, back, and sleeves are split down the back of the animal and
neatly cut into long rectangular pieces, with the feet and tails still
attached. They are arranged in a pattern of vertical stripes, two
skins fastened together end to end making a stripe, which is the same
on the front and the back. There is a brown stripe down the middle,
then two white stripes on each side, and a brown stripe on each edge.
The hood is bound round the edge with white sheepskin and bordered
with wolfskin. There are shoulder straps and a border round the skirt
of edging of the usual materials, but slightly different arrangement,
and tagged with small red glass beads.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--Pattern of sheepskin frock.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Pattern of ermine frock. _a_, hood; _b_,
body.]
The former owner of this beautiful frock (since dead) was always very
elegantly dressed. His deerskin clothes were always much trimmed, and
he owned an elegant frock of foxskins, alternately blue and white,
with a hood of deerskin, which we did not succeed in obtaining for the
collection. (The “jumper of mixed white and blue fox pelts,” seen by
Dr. Kane at Ita,[N212] must have been like this.)
[Footnote N212: Second Grinnell Exp., vol. 1, p. 203.]
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Woman’s frock, front and back.]
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