190 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 33 



puma, too, was hunted with the help of dogs. Weapons, according to 

 Cooper's sources, were the bow and arrow, the sling, and the two- 

 balled bolas. Snares (huachi, wachi) of several kinds were used in 

 trapping birds. Cooper's sources did not mention clog snares, spring- 

 pole and tossing-pole snares, pole and perch snares, deadfalls, pitfalls, 

 and trapping nets. 



Old informants told me they had enticed pumas (which they called 

 lions), and tigers, pudu (deer), venow, and rabbits — "in fact these 

 destructive animals and any other four-legged animals that we wished 

 to trap, when I was a young man" — into snares (wachi) consisting 

 of a pole attached to a noose made of twisted horsehair to which a 

 favorite food of the animal to be snared had been fastened as bait. 

 Pulling at the bait caused the pole to be released, thereby contracting 

 the noose about the animal's neck and choking it. Pumas were also 

 trapped in enclosures. One consisting of two fences has already been 

 described. Another consisting of a circular fence, also, was so built 

 that a puma could peek inside and see a sheep placed there as bait. 

 In the fence a blind-alley gangway, about the size of a puma, was 

 built to look like an entrance. The puma entered it to get at the sheep, 

 and when it found it could not reach the sheep it backed out. There- 

 upon, a man lying in wait for it stabbed it with a spear. 



My informants thought that a systematic hunt by the old methods 

 should be inaugurated to rid the area of pumas, "for every fourth 

 or fifth night a puma attacks a flock of sheep somewhere, or makes 

 a desperate attempt to do so. All we do today is to protect our sheep 

 by means of dogs. Dogs succeed, usually, in chasing a puma back 

 into the ravines or woods, but occasionally sheep are taken. Pumas 

 are bold, and nothing keeps them away except the ferocious bark of 

 dogs ; that is why we feed dogs chili." 



One night a puma returned to the Mission corral where it had de- 

 voured one sheep and sucked the blood of six others several weeks 

 before. The following morning its tracks were everywhere in the 

 mud at the old corral. Evidently it had not discovered the new corral, 

 in which the sheep were now surrounded by two fences, before the 

 dogs gave chase, as its footprints were not found there. During the 

 night the barking of many dogs could be heard moving into the dis- 

 tance as they chased the puma (dogs from neighboring ruka having 

 joined the Mission dog). In the morning neighbors came to see what 

 damage had been done and told how their dogs had joined in the chase 

 when the puma passed their ruka. They thought that the voices we 

 had heard during the night were theirs, for "we kept talking to our 



