156 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Florida (1528), he says, found in one of the large houses, or buhios, a golden bell 

 among nets [hallamos alii una Sonaja de Oro, entre las Bedes); and in speaking of 

 the Mareames, he states that if they wanted to marry, they bought wives from 

 their enemies, paying for each wife the best bow they could procure and two 

 arrows; but that in defiult of these weapons they gave a square net measu- 

 ring a fathom either way (^ si acaso no tiene Arco, una Bed, liasta una hraga en 

 anclio, i otra en largo)''' His other references to nets are of little moment. The 

 two principal authors who have left accounts of De Soto's expedition for the con- 

 quest of Florida (1539-43) , Garcilasso de la Vega and the anonymous Portuguese 

 gentleman, called the Knight of Elvas, likewise say little concerning the nets of 

 the Indians. The latter relates, however, that the Spaniards, while at a place 

 near the Mississippi called Pacaha (Capaha, according to Garcilasso) caught 

 fish in a lake with nets furnished by the Indians.f Later authors are more 

 explicit in their statements concerning Indian net-fishing, as an examination of 

 the " Extracts " given later on will show. 



Sinkers. — It scarcely need be specially affirmed that the natives of North 

 America, like the primitive fishermen in all parts of the world, weighted their 

 nets by means of stones. In our time the Indian and Innuit tribes of the North- 

 west Coast and of other northern regions of America use pebbles, either unaltered, 

 if of suitable form, or notched or grooved, as sinkers for their different kinds of 

 nets, and the same is done by whites in many districts of this country. Those, 

 for instance, who pursue the trade of fishing along the Susquehanna and its 

 North Branch, use stone sinkers for their set-lines and nets, the stones employed 

 by them being usually not notched or grooved, but having naturally two opposite 

 sides curved inwardly, around which a string can be firmly tied. They carefully 

 select the stones which present this form. 



The original of Fig. 253 was given to Mr. F. H. Gushing by a white fisher- 

 man at Dunkirk, on Lake Erie (New York). It is a nearly circular pebble, not 

 quite an inch thick in the middle, and notched on opposite sides. The string 

 which connected it with the net is still in place. Such stones, Mr. Gushing 

 informed me, are prepared and extensively used for weighting gill-nets by fisher- 

 men along the shores of the great lakes. 



Sinkers of this simple character were most commonly employed by the 

 indigenous inhabitants of North America, and they are represented in the 

 National Museum by specimens from Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, 



* Naufragios do Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaoa, etc. ; Barcia: " Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias 

 Occidentales ; " Vol. I, Madrid, 1749; pp. Sand 20. — The original work appeared at Valladolid in 1505. 



f Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida, as told by a Knight of Elvas, 

 and in a Relation by Luys Hernandez de Biedma, Factor of the Expedition; translated by Buckingham Smith ; 

 New York, 18C6; p. 112. — There will be occasion to refer again to this passage in another connection. 



