TRAPS OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS-A STUDY IN 

 PSYCHOLOGY AND INVENTION. 



By Otis T. Mason. 



That unicorns may be betrayed with trees, 

 And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, 

 Lions with toils, and men with flatteries, * * * 



Let me work ; 

 For I can give liis humor the true bent, 

 And I will bring him to the Capitol. 



— Julius Caesar, n, 1. 



MEANING OF THE TERM AMERICAN. 



America, in this connection, embraces all of the Western Hemis- 

 phere visited by the native tribes in their activities associated with 

 the animal kingdom. It might be allowed to exclude a small number 

 of frozen or elevated or desert regions untrodden by human feet, 

 were it not for the fact that most of these were the resorts of zoo- 

 morphic gods, creatures of the aboriginal imagination. The name 

 America must in this study include also those oceanic meadows stretch- 

 ing out from the continents, whereon were nourished innumerable 

 creatures, which dominated the activities of the littoral tribes. 



DEFINITION OF THE TERM TRAP. 



A trap is an invention for the purpose of inducing animals to com- 

 mit incarceration, self-arrest, or suicide. In the simplest traps the 

 automatism is solely on the part of the animal, but in the highest 

 forms automatic action of the most delicate sort is seen in the traps 

 themselves, involving the harnessing of some natural force, current, 

 weight, spring, and so on, to do man's work. 



In capturing animals by the simplest methods they are merely taken 

 with the hand as in gathering fruits. By a second step they are har- 

 vested with devices— scoop nets, dippers, seines, hooks that are sub- 

 stitutes for the crooked finger, reatas, dulls, bolas, and many more. 

 A third step leads to active slaughter with clubs for bruising, knives 

 and axes for cutting and hacking, and with a thousand and one imple- 



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