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2.5.10.wavHousing for the Inupiaq, Yupik, and Alutiiq varied depending on the location and resources available. But there were common features to their homes. Most groups had a permanent winter village with more developed homes and community houses. They located their permanent villages on high ground near the mouths of freshwater streams and ocean shores. When people moved to seasonal hunting and fishing sites, they lived in skin tents or temporary lean-tos made from sticks or driftwood. If the same seasonal sites were used ever-year, more permanent homes were built.
From Kodiak Island to the coast of the Arctic Ocean, most communities were located on the tundra, where there were few trees available for building materials. To build their homes, supports were made from driftwood and whale bones, which were then covered with skins or sod.
With wood for heating scarce, homes needed to be very well insulated so they could be efficiently heated with seal oil lamps. Homes were built partly underground to use the ground for insulation. They often had underground tunnel entrances to trap cold air. People would sleep on raised benches. Seal or walrus intestine provided a removable “skylight” window.
Where wood was more readily available, people built homes with fireplaces for heating and cooking. The Chugach Alutiiq, living on the forested shores of Prince William Sound, built wooden plank houses similar to the Tlingit.
Entrance to abandoned semi-subterranean home at Tikigaq, Alaska
Cross section of a traditional underground sod dwelling
Anywhere from 8 to 20 people would live in a house. A household normally centered around an extended family, probably included several sisters and their families, an older couple, younger siblings, and occasionally poor relatives or orphans. Eskimo villages had at least one community house where men met and worked. Community activities, ceremonies, and celebrations centered around this larger structure. Villages usually had one or more level open spaces for playing games and practicing archery.
In Yupik communities men lived in the men’s house/community center (called a qasgiq). Boys old enough to leave their mothers joined male relatives in the qasgiq, where they worked, ate, slept and learned how to be men. Women prepared and brought food to the qasgiq. Yupik women and girls lived in an ena, which had architectural features similar to the qasgiq, although the size was smaller. Like most other winter dwellings, the qasgiq and the ena shared the distinctive, partially semi-subterranean entrance passageway – which in the ena also provided space for cooking.
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