niiK&amp;gt;cH.] HUNTING REINDEER. 265 



reindeer, so that we did not learn where they went to. When the fawns 

 are perhaps a month old a small party, say a young man and his wife, 

 sometimes makes a short journey to the eastward to procure fawn skins 

 for clothing. They say that the fawns at this age can be caught by 

 running them down. During the summer again the deer come down 

 to the coast in small numbers, taking to the water in the lagoons, or 

 even in the sea, when the flies become troublesome. 



Sometimes in warm, calm weather the flies are so numerous that 

 the deer is driven perfectly frantic, and runs along without looking 

 where he is going, so that, as the natives say, a hunter who places 

 himself in the deer s path has no difficulty in shooting him. Flies 

 were unusually scarce both summers that we were at the station, so 

 that we never had an opportunity of seeing this done. When a deer 

 is seen swimming he is pursued with the kaiak and lanced in the man 

 ner already described . [n July, 1883, one man from Utkiavwlfi made 

 a short journey inland, &quot;carrying&quot; his kaiak from lake to lake, and 

 killed two deer in this way without firing a shot. I believe this method 

 of hunting is frequently practiced by the parties who go east for trading 

 in the summer, and those who visit the rivers for the purpose of hunting. 



The natives seemed to expect deer in summer at the lagoons, as 

 along the isthmus between Ime kpuii and Imekpfmlglu they had set up 

 a range of stakes, evidently intended to turn the deer up the beach 

 where he would be seen from the camp at Perniju. Only one deer, 

 however, came down either summer, and he escaped without being seen. 

 This contrivance of setting up stakes to guide the deer in a certain 

 direction is very commonly used by the Eskimo. Egede gives a 

 curious description of the practice in Greenland in his day: They 

 &quot;chase them [i. e., the reindeer] by Clap-hunting, setting upon them on 

 all sides and surrounding them with all their Women and Children to 

 force them into Denies and Narrow Passages, where the Men armed lay 

 in wait for them and kill them. And when they have not People 

 enough to surround them, then they put up white Poles (to make up 

 the Number that is wanted) with Pieces of Turf to head them, which 

 frightens the Deer and hinders it from escaping.&quot; 1 PI. 4, of the same 

 work, is a very curious illustration of this style of hunting. 



A similar method is practiced at the Coppermine River, where the 

 deer are led by ranges of turf toward the spot where the archer 

 is hidden. 2 Franklin also noticed between the Mackenzie and the 

 Colville similar ranges of driftwood stumps leading across the plain 

 to two cairns on a hill, 3 and Thomas Simpson mentions a similar 

 range near Herschel Island, 4 and double rows of turf to represent men 

 leading down to a small lake near Point Pitt, for the purpose of 

 driving the deer into the water where they could be speared. 5 This is 



1 Greenland, p. 62. 



Franklin, 1st Expert., vol.2, p. 181. 



2dExped., ]&amp;gt;. 137. 



1 Narrative, p. 114. 



Ibid., p. 138. 



