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 i860, 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, direcdy 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 

 otten got two, and, occasionally, three geese at a single throw." 



E. W. Nelson, in the same series, says "the wolf is trapped by 



