148 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

use another type of conical hut, mostly underground and with a passage-way
which recalls that of the Eskimo igloit. Fred. Whymper describes those huts
as “simply square holes in the ground, roofed in, and earthed over. The
entrance of each was a rude skanty (fig. 19) of logs or planks, passing into
which we found a hole in the ground, the entrance to a subterranean passage.
Into this we dropped and crawled on our hands and knees into the room’,

He then adds the following picturesque details which well illustrate
Indian camp life. “The fire was built on the floor in the centre of the chamber
and when it burnt low the embers and sticks were always thrown out of
the smoke-hole in the roof by the natives inside, and it was then covered
with a skin. This process effectually shut in all the warmth, but with it a
good deal of smoke and carbonic acid gas. The entrance hole was also
usually covered with a deer skin, and the mixture of those smells inside the
house, arising from more or less stale fish, old skin clothes, young dogs,
dirt and smoke, was very sickening. The dogs scrambling and fighting on
the roof above, sometimes tumbled through the smoke-hole on to the fire
below, upsetting all the cooking arrangements, and adding a new smell to
those above mentioned—that of singed hair! It need not be said that they
retreated with great alacrity, yelping and snarling as they went”®.

House Furnishing and Etiquette.

Needless to say that the furnishing of even the best equipped Déne
lodge was of an extreme scantiness. In fact, the only equivalent of our own
furniture was the stools of the Hupas, mere cross-sections of trees about a
foot high. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only Déné tribe that
was acquainted with that commodity. Elsewhere people simply squatted on
the floor or the bedding. No aboriginal Déné had the faintest idea of a
table or of a bedstead.

They sleep almost invariably on either side of the fire when dwelling
in rectangular habitations. For a bed the northern tribes spread small spruce
branches in an imbricated manner, with the top ends towards the feet. These,
of course, have to be renewed from time to time. Over that layer they have
a deer or bear skin with the fur on, and the bedding is complete. They
sleep with practically all their clothes, except the footgear, and cover them-
selves with a single blanket. No degree of cold will persuade them to
have two.

In cold weather the fire is kept burning all night long, and stretching
their naked feet in the direction of the hearth is all the comfort they will
seek. Even in the woods, camping under a simple cotton shelter open to all
kinds of wind, when 40° below zero prevented me from having a wink of

' “Travel and Adventure in the Territory of Alaska’, p. 152.
* Ibid., pp. 153—54.