This is an interesting image of Inuit Eskimos of Alaska, inside an igloo. We see three Eskimo women and a child sitting around a bowl of crabs, stripping the delicate meat out of the leg shells. With them is a non-native woman, the photographer’s wife according to the caption. That would be Margaret. Clearly, the photographer had to remove half of the roof of the igloo to make the shot, but no doubt the Eskimos didn’t mind. We have seen another image by this photographer of Eskimos building an igloo, probably this one — most likely built just to be photographed.

The photographer was Captain Frank E Kleinschmidt. He made documentary films 1912-34, such as The Alaska-Siberian Expedition (1912) and Captain F. E. Kleinschmidt’s Arctic Hunt (1914). His main occupation however was as Captain of a merchant freighter, plying the waters from Seattle to Alaska. His wife, Margaret Alaska Young Kleinschmidt (1884-1962), while not Inuit was Alaskan born. Her father was Rev. Samuel Hall Young, who went to Alaska with his young wife in the 1880s to spread the Gospel among the heathens (probably much to their everlasting regret). Frank and Margaret Kleinschmidt had twin daughters born in Nome, Alaska in 1907.