VOL. III. | Indians Obtaining Game. 123 
California Indians, according to Dr. Heermann, entrapped mallards 
‘and other ducks in a weir made of willow branches, and also shot 
ducks with arrows from ambushes built on the shore. 
Dr. Suckley, in Natural History of Washington Territory, about 
the year 1860, says the Indians living along the Straits of Fuca 
destroyed vast numbers of wild ducks by shooting with shot, and 
When short of ammunition with arrows; that they obtained ducks in 
great quantities by stretching long nets on a line suspended on poles 
_ which were about as far apart, and looked much like telegraph poles. 
The poles were erected on the long sand spits running out from 
points and dividing bays along the straits. The nets were stretched 
at nightfall, directly in the course of the flight of the birds as they 
flew from bay to bay, and from point to point. He adds that the 
Lummi and Skadgett Indians obtained ducks at night by fire—hunt- 
ing with canoes and lights. The ducks dazzled and bewitched by 
the light would allow it to approach so near that they were killed 
with arrows and spears. It was not unusual to take a good sized 
canoe load in this manner in a single night. 
Lucien M. Turner, in Arctic Series of Publications of the United 
States Signal Service, says before the natives of Alaska had guns 
they usually caught geese in nets, which were about three feet high 
and thirty feet long, on the margin of a pond. When the geese 
were near enough the net was thrown over them by a man who was 
secreted near the net. Another method was to use three rounded 
stones of nearly equal weight and size, generally about one and one- 
half inches in diameter, though they differed with each individual’s 
strength, the women also using lighter stones than those used by 
the men. A groove was cut around each stone and deepened suf- 
ficiently to hold a strong thong of seal skin about twelve inches 
long. The three loose ends of the strings were tied together, 
placed in the palm of the hand, and the stones that were attached 
to the other ends of the strings were carefully disposed on the coiled 
thongs in the hand. A flock of geese that came near enough 
would have this “ bolas’’ thrown at them and it was ‘‘certain to 
become entangled on the neck or wings of some goose which fell 
to the earth and was immediately secured. The women were adepts 
at throwing these stones. An old woman told me that she had 
_ often got two, and, occasionally, three geese at a single throw.”’ 
E. W. Nelson, in the same series, says ‘‘the wolf is trapped by 
