booney] EAGLE TRAPPING 993 



sometimes placed near the l>ait to add to the realistic effect. Having 

 sat up all night, singing the eagle songs and purifying himself for the 

 ceremony, the hunter started before daylight, without eating any 

 breakfast or drinking water, and went up the hill to the pit, which he 

 entered, and, having again closed the opening, he seated himself inside 

 holding the end of the string in his hands, to prevent a coyote or other 

 animal from taking the bait, and waiting for the eagles to come. 



Should other birds come, he drove them away or paid no attention 

 to them. When at last the eagle came the other birds at once Hew 

 away. The eagle swooped down, alighting always at one side and 

 then walking over upon the roof of the trap to get at the bait, when the 

 hunter, putting up his hand through the framework, seized the eagle 

 by the legs, pulled it down and quickly strangled it or broke its neck. 

 He then rearranged the bait and the roof and sat down to wait for 

 another eagle. He might be so lucky as to capture several during the 

 day, or so unfortunate as to take none at all. At night, but not before, 

 he repaired to his own tipi to eat. drink, and sleep, and was at the pit 

 again before daylight. While in the pit he did not eat, drink, or sleep. 

 The eagle hunt, if it may be so called, lasted four days, and must end 

 then, whatever might have been the good or bad fortune of the hunter. 



At the expiration of tour days he returned to his home with the dead 

 bodies of the eagles thus caught. A small lodge was set up outside 

 his tipi and in this the eagles were hung up by the neck upon a pole 

 laid across two forked sticks driven into the ground. After some fur- 

 ther prayers and purifications the feathers were stripped from the 

 bodies as they hung. 



The Blackfoot method, as described by Grinned, in his Blackfoot 

 Lodge 'tales, was the same in all essentials as that of the Arapaho. lie 

 adds several details, which were probably common to both tribes and to 

 others, but which my Arapaho informants failed to mention. While the 

 hunter was away in the pit his wife or daughters at home must not use 

 an awl for sewing or for other purposes, as. should they do so, the eagle 

 might scratch the hunter, lie took a human skull with him into the 

 pit, in order that he might be as invisible to the eagle as the spirit of 

 the former owner of the skull. He must not eat the berries of the wild 

 rose during this period, or the eagle would not attack the bait, and 

 he must put a morsel of pemmican into the mouth of the dead eagle in 

 order to gain the good will of its fellows and induce them to come in 

 and be caught. 



The eagle-catching ceremony of the Caddo, Cherokee, and other 

 eastern tribes will be noticed in treating of the Caddo songs. 



•IX. B.\ IIIX.VMNATa MTABaNA 



l!. : i hinii nina t.i ni taba na, 

 Ba'kina'mna'tii ni'taba'na. 

 Nlinli'uin.a hu'liu, 

 Nanii'nina liu bn. 



