stefansson-wrangel-09-31-113r

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THE FIRST AUTUMN ON WRANGEL ISLAND 183

use one side of the bank for a side of the house and the
roof will be sod. The two ends will be built of snow
blocks. We will pitch the 10x12 and the 8x10 tents end
to end [inside the house] and will use the small tent for
a kitchen and the large tent for living quarters. . . .
There is no snow or ice and the prospect for seals looks
rather gloomy until the ice does come. There are a few
seals about, but they stay a long distance from shore.”
Like many other entries in Knight’s diary, the above
description of the proposed winter quarters is lucid and
complete to those who know the style of dwelling he had
in mind, but meaningless to others. Evidently Knight
and Maurer in planning the camp were drawing on their
experience in northern Alaska and in northwestern Arctic
Canada, where houses of this kind are the preferred type
of winter dwelling. In writing his newspaper story from this diary,
Mr. Noice implied his surprise that so unsuitable a dwell-
ing should have been employed, giving this as one of the
instances of what he considered incompetencemismanagement. That
he makes this criticism in perfectly good faith is evident
not only from what he says, but also from a knowledge
of the geographic limitations of the experiences upon
which he based the criticism. He had been a member
of my expedition for two years in a country where drift-
wood is absent and had never seen us use a dwelling of the
kind here indicated by Knight. After leaving my expedi-
tion Mr. Noice had spent four years in Coronation Gulf
among Eskimos, to whom this type of dwelling is un-
known. But unlike Mr. Noice, Maurer had spent a year
at Herschel Island and Knight had spent a year on the
north coast of Alaska. In both these localities the
Eskimos and the white trappers alike are in the habit of
using the sort of dwelling which Knight indicates and
which we shall now describe.

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jessiesusan

Note in the top margin regarding line six " Should it be [ ], yes"