FIEE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE 63 



cake or mass of ice, wliich floats down the river. The Indians now- 

 select the most favorable point for attack, and as the buffalo ap- 

 proaches dart with astonishing agihty across the ice, sometimes press- 

 ing hghtly on a cake of not more than 2 feet square. The animal can 

 make but little resistance, and the hunter who has given him Ms 

 death wound paddles his icy boat ashore and secures his prey.^j®' 



Baker says that in Central Africa the natives set up nets and start 

 a fire in tne grass to the windward in order to catch game.'"' 



An ingenious method was practiced in CaUfornia in which both 

 animals and edible insects were captured. 



The grasshopper hunt of the Consumnes Tribes, California, was 

 a great event. A whole settlement would turn out and begin 

 operations by starting a number of small fires, at regular intervals 

 in a circle through the woods, guiding the flame by raking up 

 the pine needles and stamping out the fire when it spread too far. 

 When the fires burnt out there was left a narrow strip of bare ground 

 inclosing a circular area of several acres, within which the game was 

 confined. A large fire was then kindled at a point inside the circle, 

 taking advantage of the direction of the wind, and allowed to spread 

 unchecked. The men, armed with bows and arrows, and accompa- 

 nied by their dogs, kept to the windward in front of the fire and shot 

 down the rabbits and other small animals as the heat drove them 

 from cover, while the women with their conical baskets on their backs 

 followed up the fire to gather up the grasshoppers which merely had 

 their wings singed, but were not killed. As a squaw picked up a 

 hopper she crushed its head between her thumb and finger to kill it, 

 and then tossed it over her shoulder into the basket.''^ 



Some of the minor devices of fire hunting, sometimes involving 

 considerable risk, may be given. 



Negroes place a small tiutle in a woodchuck's hole, having fastened 

 a cotton wick saturated with oil to its shell at its tail. The tmtle 

 runs into the hole, turns around and comes back, and woodchuck is 

 smoked out.'^ 



In Afghanistan the hunter with torch goes into the hyena's den 

 throws a felt cloak over animal's head, slips a noose over its forelegs, 

 and drags it out. Arabs use a gag instead of a noose." 



In bear hunting the Natchez Indians drop a bundle of lighted 

 reeds in bear hole or shoot an arrow with string attached to point 

 and bearing tinder, the latter dropping down and igniting bear's 

 nest.'* . 



« Elliott Coues. Lewis and Clark. New York, 1893, vol. 1, p. 249. 



"Sir Samuel Baker. Ismaliia, London, 1874, p. 456. 



"James Mooney. Amer. Anthrop., July, 1890, p. 200. 



" Forest and Stream, vol. 5, 1875, p. 183. 



" Idem, p. 228. 



'♦ J. R. Swanton. Indians of the Lower Mississippi Valley, Bull. 43, Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1911, p. 69. 



