Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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456 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL. or prior to, 1835, and stood in the middle of the village. It represented the best type of Tlingit architecture, a broad low structure of heavy hewn spruce timbers, with noticeably high corner posts, that gave it a degree of character wholly wanting in the larger houses of the Van- couver Island people. It faced the river with a frontage of forty-nine feet ten inches and a depth of fifty-three feet — approximately the proportions of Tlingit houses large and small. Each of these old houses formed a solid structure, the frame and planking supporting each other without the use of spikes. The doorway, which was the only open- ing in the walls, was ap- proiached by two steps, more than three feet above the ground. It was narrow and low as a defensive measure, so that but one could enter at a time, and then only in a stooping posture equally impossible for attack or defense. The roof covering consisted of a confusion of overlapping spruce boards and slabs of bark, held down originally by smaller tree trunks ex- tending the depth of the structure and kept in place by heavy boulders at the ends. The smoke hole in the center of the roof, which both lighted and ventilated the interior, had been protected by a mov- able shutter balanced on a cross bar resting on two supports so that it could be shifted to either side as de- sired. The interior formed an excavation four feet nine inches below the ground level, with two receding steplike plat- forms. The lower square floor space, twent3'-six feet by twenty-six feet nine inches, constituted the general living and working room common to all, except that portion in the rear and opposite the entrance, which was reserved for the use of the house chief, his immediate family, and most distinguished guests. This was the place of honor in all Tlingit houses upon all occasions, ceremonial or otherwise. The flooring, of heavy, split,, smoothed planks of varying widths, ex- tended around a central gra^'eled fire-
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Old house in Klukwan on the Chilkat River. Kiukwan was the most important of the Chilkat villages and retained its character long- after those farther south had fallen into decay place six feet by six feet and a half^ where all of the cooking was done over a wood fire which also heated the house in winter. In front of and a little to the right of the fire space, was a small cellar-like apartment entered by a small trap door in the floor barely large enough to admit a person. This was used as a steam bath, by heating boulders in the fire, dropping them on the floor below with split wood tongs, and pouring water upon them to generate vapor —

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