198 ARTS AND CRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 38 
So soon as the fish is hooked and drags upon the spring (¢) the pull on 
the trigger is relaxed, the key pin falls, the trigger is released, the 
spring rises, and the victim is drawn out of the water. 
200. A modification of this form of spring trap is adopted with 
certain creels having a movable door (pl. 45, fig. 2 B), described 
and figured by Stedman (pl. 47 B); also from Surinam. He speaks 
of it as the mansoa or spring basket (St, u, 227), but perhaps it may 
be of African introduction. Maswah or maschoa is the common 
Creole designation for all the simpler forms of creel. Here the bait 
string attached to the trigger leads to the inside of the basket, which 
is a fixture. Entering the trap, the fish takes the bait, draws on the 
bait string, and loosens the trigger, with the result that the key pin 
falls, the trigger is released, and the spring rising closes the creel 
door. In the Parikuta spring creels (sec. 205) the basket, with its 
contained fish, is lifted bodily out 
of the water. 
201. Fishing nets were appar- 
ently unknown, or, if they were, 
‘do not seem to have been reported 
in Surinam (AK, 188) and 
Cayenne (PBA, 157-158). The 
Arekuna, Wapishana (tsa-tsairu) , 
Makusi (pén-durr), and Pata- 
mona employ small oval dip nets 
Fic. 61,—Chain-pattern fish net from for collecting the fish, when, after 
Baan a ecto being poisoned, they rise to the 
surface (pl. 48 D). These nets are woven of kuraua fiber on the same 
pattern as the ordinary English fish net. The only instance in which 
Schomburgk saw Indians of the interior make use of a net was among 
the Arekuna, who called it penté, with which they secured a number of 
smaller fish, perhaps 8 to 4 inches in length, which bury themselves in 
holes in the banks of the rivers. They knock with the net at the hole, 
and the alarmed fish rushes out into the net (ScK, 112). It would 
seem, however, that it was in the area of the Rio Negro that the net 
reached its highest development. Thus, among the Uaupes River In- 
dians the hand nets used for catching fish are of two kinds—a small 
ring net, like a landing net, and one spread between two slender sticks, 
like the large folding nets of entomologists. These are much used in 
the rapids and among rocks and eddies, and numbers of fish are caught 
with them (ARW, 339). Illustrations of these nets are given (KG, 1, 
37, etc.). From their examination (pl. 48 A, B) it would appear that 
the larger are manufactured with a flat netting stick on the same pat- 
tern as the European fish net, while certain of the smaller ones are 
