Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/139

 A brief reference may be made to the skin lodge of the Kŭtchĭn or Louchoux of the Yukon and Peel Rivers.

This simple structure, the ground plan and elevation of which were taken from the Smithsonian Report is thus described by Mr. Strachan

Jones: "Deer-skins are dressed with the hair on, and sewed together, forming two large rolls, which are stretched over a frame of bent poles. The lodge is nearly elliptical, about twelve or thirteen feet in diameter and six feet high, very similar to a tea-cup turned over. The door is about four feet high, and is simply a deer-skin fastened above and hanging down. The hole to allow the smoke to escape is about four feet in diameter. Snow is heaped up outside the edges of the lodge and pine brush spread on the ground inside, the snow having been previously shoveled off with snowshoes. The fire is made in the middle of the lodge, and one or more families, as the case may be, live on each side of the fire, every one having his or her particular place." He further remarks that "they have no pottery," and that they boil water "by means of stones heated red hot and thrown into the kettle." The principal fact to be noticed is that the lodge is comparted into stalls open on the central space, in the midst of which is the fire-pit, evidently for the accommodation of more families than one. This arrangement of the interior will reappear in numerous other cases. The Kŭtchĭn must be classed as savages, although near the close of that condition.