3 - Cape Nome is at the southern edge of the range of Iñupiaq-speaking Eskimos; here they lived in their semi-subterranean sod-covered winter houses all year long. The southwestern winter house found along the mainland coast and inland was essentially a variant of north Alaska coast house; the figure below depicts a composite of design variants that typify the northern Central Yup’ik area. It represents the Unaligmiut, or Unaleet, dwelling found around Saint Michael; the Unaligmiut design had an antechamber, near-surface passage or tunnel and two tiers of sleeping platform. The Unaligmiut lived in their tunnel-and-passage house (ini) throughout the year and inhabited their alternative dwellings at times, at the least from October to June.
Unaligmiut men dug the housepit some two to four feet deep, then built the whole house themselves; by 1900, floors were usually planked, but three decades earlier, evidently before planked floors, houses lacked sleeping platforms. In this case, people covered the bare earth with grass or spruce, then carpeted it with twined grass mats, dividing the floor length wise into thirds by laying down two presumably parallel logs. Floor dimensions ranged from seven feet to between twelve and fifteen feet square. In some Norton Sound houses people came up onto the floor by means of a subterranean tunnel, whereas other members of the group entered through a higher, ground-level covered passageway that breached the front wall. Tunnel crawl ways emerged either at the middle or in the anterior section of a house floor.