A novel device for catching rabbits, in time of scarcity an important source of food supply, is to scatter large, sharp burrs along their runs. The burrs stick fast to their feet, they sit on their haunches to try to get them off, and so fall an easy prey to the boy hunters.
Perhaps you would like to try the log deadfall. To make this effective trap, you need a good knife or a hatchet—nothing more. First drive into the ground four stakes about the size of a broom-handle, one pair on either side of a rabbit furrow, if this is the game you are after. Leave just enough room between each pair for a good-sized log, which you may lay directly across the path. The stakes serve as gate-posts to your trap, and on either side you build a slight barricade of brush. Next take two round pegs and cut off the ends squarely at about three inches long, or longer, according to your game; smooth a place for them at either end of the log between the stakes, and upon them balance a second log, which is partly supported by the two pairs of stakes as well. The aperture, just big enough for a rabbit to squeeze through, is crossed by several hairs from a horse’s tail tied to the supporting pins. The unsuspecting victim springs along, knocks out the underpinning, and the log falls upon him.
For larger game, such as the fox, mink, or fisher, two more logs are used, one end of each resting upon the upper log and the free end on the ground. This gives extra weight to the trap, which may be baited with a piece of meat, firmly attached to a string in such a way that when the animal tugs at the bait, the pins are pulled out and the trap falls. Indian men use this deadfall more than the boys.
Our fishing was even more primitive, since we were not provided with hook and line. Sometimes we would select a convenient water-hole and just below it build a rough dam of sticks and stones in a V shape, with the nose pointing down-stream. In the center of the dam we left a small opening, and just under it hung a cage or basket roughly woven of willows, projecting slightly above the surface of the water. It was great sport to wade the brook from a point some distance above the dam, poking under the banks with long sticks and slapping the water with flat paddles, so as to frighten the fish and drive them into our trap. When the basket was well filled, we shut off the opening in the dam with logs or stones, and proceeded to catch the fish with our bare hands, snare, or spear them.
If we did not care to go to the trouble of constructing a basket, we simply drove the fish into a deep hole with a rude dam below to prevent their escape, and caught them by one of the methods named, or by shooting with bow and arrow. But we were never allowed to take more than we really needed. If a surplus were caught, we usually freed them, or stored them in a small pond or spring where we could study and play with them at our leisure.
The best time for taking large quantities of fish, which may be dried or smoked for future use, is in spawning time in early spring, when most fishes migrate into shallow water and are so sluggish that they may be knocked on the head with a club. At this season all kinds of wild hunters, crows, wolves, wildcats, minks, otters, come to the outlets of the lakes or the banks of the streams for food, and my people were not much behind them in this. The streams of my boyhood days were sometimes packed like a sardine can, and we boys have more than once opened a way and saved large numbers of fish from suffocation.
VII—HOW TO MAKE AND HANDLE INDIAN CANOES
There are several different kinds of canoes made by Indians, of which the birch-bark canoe is the most generally available. The skin boats of the Esquimaux are larger and are skilfully made, but we are considering here only the handiwork of our own Indians.
The Plains Indians formerly used the buffalo-skin boat, called “bull-boat,” but this is at best an emergency vessel, constructed only when they were forced to cross a river too deep to ford and too wide to swim. It can scarcely be called a boat and might be termed a raft of skins, for it cannot be paddled like the true canoe. It is probably the crudest form of native craft.
The bull-boat is made upon a framework of willow withes roughly woven into an oblong shape, using long poles for the bottom to give the necessary firmness. Over this frame rawhides are stretched, and sewed with sinew. The seams are smeared with tallow or gum. Two or three long strings are attached to the front end. Having loaded the unwieldy vessel to its full capacity with household goods and children, one or two persons would stand in it with long poles to shove, while two or three others swam ahead, pulling it by the ropes, and sometimes others pushed from behind. The bull-boat was easily capsized, therefore every precaution was taken against accident to the precious cargo. As soon as the stream was crossed, it was taken apart, and the materials put to other uses.