As the sea opens the people from the lower camps travel up the coast and concentrate at Pernyû, where they meet the Nuwuñmiun, the Nunatañmiun traders, and the whalemen, and are joined later in the season by the trading parties returning from the east, all of whom stop for a few days at Pernyû. On returning to the village also, in September, the tents are pitched in dry places among the houses and occupied till the latter are dry enough to live in. Tents are used in the autumnal deer hunts, before snow enough falls to build snow houses. In the spring of 1883, when the land floe was very heavy and rough off Utkiavwĭñ, all who were going whaling in the Utkiavwĭñ boats went into camp with their families in tents pitched on the crown of the beach at Imêkpûñ, whence a path led off to the open water. The tents are nowadays always made of cloth, either sailcloth obtained from wrecks or drilling, which is purchased from the ships. The latter is preferred as it makes a lighter tent and both dark blue and white are used. Reindeer or seal skins were used for tents as lately as 1854. Elson saw tents of sealskin lined with reindeer skin at Refuge Inlet,[N160] and Hooper mentions sealskin tents at Cape Smyth and Point Barrow.[N161] Dr. Simpson gives a description of the skin tents at Point Barrow.[N162] Indeed, it is probable that canvas tents were not common until after the great “wreck seasons” of 1871 and 1876, when so many whaleships were lost. The Nunatañmiun at Pernyû had tents of deerskin, and I remember also seeing one sealskin tent at the same place, which, it is my impression, belonged to a man from Utkiavwĭñ. Deerskin tents are used by the Anderson River natives,[N163] while sealskins are still in use in Greenland and the east generally.[N164] The natives south of Kotzebue Sound do not use tents, but have summer houses erected above ground and described as “generally log structures roofed with skins and open in front.”[N165] That they have not always been ignorant of tents is shown by the use of the word “topek” for a dwelling at Norton Sound.[N166] [Footnote N160: Beechey’s Voyage, p. 315.] [Footnote N161: Tents, etc., pp. 216, 225.] [Footnote N162: Op. cit., p. 260.] [Footnote N163: MacFarlane MSS. and Petitot, Monographie, etc., p. xx, “des tentes coniques (_tuppeρk_) en peaux de renne.”]