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
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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
Deerskin garments rarely have the ornamental piecing seen in this
frock. Each one of the numbered parts of the pattern is generally in
one piece. The pieces 8 and 9 are almost universally white, and 7 is
often so. About the same variety in material and trimming is to be
found as in the men’s frocks, though deer and mountain sheep skins
were the only materials seen used, and the women’s frocks are less
often seen without the fringe round the hood. Plain deerskin frocks
are often bordered round the skirts with a fringe cut from deerskin.
The women nowadays often line the outer frock with drilling, bright
calico, or even bedticking, and then wear it with this side out.
The frocks for both sexes, while made on the same general pattern as
those of the other Eskimo, differ in many details from those of
eastern America. For instance, the hood is not fitted in round the
throat with the pointed throat pieces or fringed with wolf or
wolverine skin until we reach the Eskimo of the Anderson River. Here,
as shown by the specimens in the National Museum, the throat pieces
are small and wide apart, and the men’s hoods only are fringed with
wolverine skin. The women’s hoods are very large everywhere in the
east for the better accommodation of the child, which is sometimes
carried wholly in the hood.[N213]
[Footnote N213: Egede, p. 131; Crantz, i, p. 137 and Pl. III.
(Greenland); Bessels, op. cit., p. 865 (Smith Sound--married women
only); Parry, 2nd Voy., p. 491, and numerous illustrations, passim
(Iglulik); Packard. Naturalist Vol. 19, p. 6, Pl. XXIII
(Labrador), and Kumlien, l. c., p. 33 (Cumberland Gulf). See also
several specimens in the National Museum from Ungava (collected by
L. M. Turner) and the Mackenzie and Anderson rivers (collected by
MacFarlane). The hoods from the last region, while still much
larger and wider than those in fashion at Point Barrow, are not so
enormous as the more eastern ones. The little peak on the top of
the woman’s hood at Point Barrow may be a reminiscence of the
pointed hood worn by the women mentioned by Bessels, op. cit.]
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