176 H. P. STEENSBY. 
a round earth house was used, which is known especially from tribes 
belonging to the Sioux Indians, who lived round the Missouri River. It 
is especially known from the Mandans through the descriptions?! of 
CATLIN and the Prince or WıED? The house had a frame of wood 
and an outer covering of turf. 
As regards the economic culture we naturally do not consider recent 
times — since the introduction of the horse — and special regard is 
paid to the most northern regions. Here the distinction between the 
occupations of the summer and the winter are most pronounced. If, 
when speaking about hunting and fishing as two different means of 
livelihood, hunting was by far the most important on the prairie on 
account of the bison and on account of the comparative scarcity of 
water on the prairie, fishing was more to the fore in the forest. 
In the winter the bison was hunted on snow shoes, with lances or 
with a bow and arrows, and even the toboggan was used with this hun- 
ting. When, in the winter, the snow had covered the prairie with a firm 
layer, the Prairie Indian on his light snow sledge, which was put-to 
with 3 dogs, could drive straight into the herd of bisons and slay the 
beasts with his arrow. In the summer different kinds of underhand 
hunting were employed, when the hunter tried to steal upon the ani- 
mals; but the method of hunting which gave the best return, however, 
consisted in driving the herds of bison in between two convergent rows 
of poles, which ended in a narrow fence, where the animals could be 
slain fairly easily”; thus it is the same method which we know from the 
Eskimo reindeer hunting. 
The Economie Culture of the Northern Forest Indians. By the Nor- 
thern Forest Indians I understand the original inhabitants of the areas 
most essentially covered with forest, which in North America lay north 
of the St. Lawrence and the Canadian lakes, or more correctly, north 
of the old frontier for maize cultivation. 
Towards the south-west and west this northern forest area was 
bounded by the prairie and the Cordilleras, which occupy the whole of 
West Canada and South Alaska. Towards the north the forest area 
is bounded by the limit of the forest, which on the west coast of 
Hudson Bay is at about 60° N. lat., and then runs east of Great Slave 
Lake to Great Bear Lake. Finally a belt of forest goes along the 
Mackenzie River northwards to the delta of the river, and a similar belt 
of forest runs along the Yukon River as far as the delta of this river. 
Apart from Labrador one can divide this area of forest into a larger 
Hudson part, which comprises the area from Hudson Bay to Mackenzie 
1 As regards my former, but now abandoned, supposition that this house 
was a direct precursor of the Mackenzie house, I refer to my preliminary 
paper on the subject and to the following section about types of Eskimo houses. 
> WIED, pp. 285—86. 
3 UMFREVILLE, pp. 114 sqq. 
