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
_Rain-frocks._--The rain-frock (silû´ña) is made of strips of seal or
walrus intestines about 3 inches broad, sewed together edge to edge.
This material is light yellowish brown, translucent, very light, and
quite waterproof. In shape the frock resembles a man’s frock, but the
hood comes well forward and fits closely round the face. It is
generally plain, but the seams are nowadays sewed with black or
colored cotton for ornament. The garment is of the same shape for both
sexes, but the women frequently cover the flesh side of a deerskin
frock with strips of entrail sewed together vertically, thus making a
garment at once waterproof and warm, which is worn alone in summer
with the hair side in. These gut shirts are worn over the clothes in
summer when it rains or when the wearer is working in the boats. There
are no specimens in the collection.
The kaiak jacket of black sealskin, so universal in Greenland, is
unknown at Point Barrow. The waterproof gut frocks are peculiar to the
western Eskimo, though shirts of seal gut, worn between the inner and
outer frock, are mentioned by Egede (p. 130) and Crantz[N221] as used
in Greenland in their time. Ellis also[N222] says: “Some few of them
[i.e., the Eskimo of Hudsons Strait] wear shifts of seals’ bladders,
sewed together in pretty near the same form with those in Europe.”
They have been described generally under the name _kamleïka_ (said to
be a Siberian word) by all the authors who have treated of the natives
of this region, Eskimo, Siberians, or Aleuts. We saw them worn by
nearly all the natives at Plover Bay. One handsome one was observed
trimmed on the seams with rows of little red nodules (pieces of the
beak of one of the puffins) and tiny tufts of black feathers.
[Footnote N221: Vol. 1, p. 137.]
[Footnote N222: Voyage to Hudsons Bay, p. 136.]
The cotton frock, already alluded to as worn to keep the driving snow
out of the furs, is a long, loose shirt reaching to about midleg, with
a round hole at the neck large enough to admit the head. This is
generally of bright-colored calico, but shirts of white cotton are
sometimes worn when hunting on the ice or snow. Similar frocks are
worn by the natives at Pitlekaj.[N223]
[Footnote N223: Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 98.]
ARM CLOTHING.
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