CONTRIVANCES FOR SNARING FOWL. 285 
women havea single garment much the shape of a wool-sack, sleeveless, and 
gathered at the neck with a string, more or less white once, but now, after 
the lapse of unnumbered washing-days when they did no washing, taking 
on the rich color known as isabel. When they are sitting on top of some 
great rock, pounding acorns between their legs in their clumsy way, they lay 
aside even this garment. There is nothing so intensely stupid and vacuous 
as the Indian’s daily life—the man’s part of it. 
The Maidu have two contrivances for snaring wild-fowl that I have 
not seen elsewhere. One of them is a loose-woven net which is stretched 
perpendicularly on two rods running parallel with the surface of the water. 
The lower rod is lifted up a few inches so that the net is not taut, but hangs 
down in a fold or trough. When the ducks are flying low, almost skim- 
ming the water, they thrust their heads through the meshes of the net, while 
their bodies drop down into the fold, which prevents them from fluttering 
loose. The other contrivance is also a net, stretched on a frame projecting 
up out of the water in a shallow place. The Indian fastens decoy-ducks 
close by the net, or sprinkles berries on the bottom to attract the fowl. 
He has a string attached to the frame and leading to the shore, where he sits 
holding the end of it behind the bushes. When the ducks are swimming 
about close to the net, he twitches it over them, and they thrust their heads 
up through it, which prevents them from diving or flying away. The In- 
dian runs down quickly, treading at every step on the string, to hold the 
fowl securely until he can reach them. With either of these contrivances 
they would sometimes snare a whole flock at once. 
Of dances the Hololupai Maidu have a large number, each being cele- 
brated in its yearly season. One of the most important of these is the acorn 
dance (ka-mi’-ni kon-pe'-wa la-hoam’, literally “the all-eating dance”), 
which is observed in autumn, soon after the winter rains set in, to insure a 
bountiful crop of acorns the following year. Assembled together through- 
out their villages, from fifty to a hundred or more in a council-house, men, 
women, and children, they dance standing in two circles, the men in one 
the women in the other. The former are decorated with all their wealth of 
feathers, the women with beads, ete. After a certain length of time the 
dance ceases, and two venerable, silver-haired priests come forward with 
