1 62 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



when, after giving gahwengare as snowshoes in Mohawk, he speaks 

 of going to cut some. Charlevoix described Canadian snowshoes in 

 these words : 



They are about three feet long and from 15 to 16 inches in their 

 extreme width. They are of an oval shape, except that the hind 

 part terminates in a point ; there are small bits of wood placed cross- 

 wise 5 or 6 inches from either end, which serve to strengthen them, 

 and that on the forepart is as it were the string of a bow, under an 

 opening in which the foot is inserted, and made fast with thongs. 

 The tissue or covering of the snow-shoe is made of straps of leather 

 two fingers broad, and the border is of a light wood hardened in 

 the fire. Charlevoix, 1 : 335 



Prof. Otis T. Mason speaks of the Eskimo snowshoe, made "of 

 two pieces of wood bowed and lashed together at the ends in len- 

 ticular form." He adds that, " in the Iroquois and Sioux country, 

 and also among the voyageurs, the two-part frame reaches its per- 

 fection, being neatly made and gracefully turned up in front." 

 Mason, p.383. The reference is not to the Iroquois of New York, 

 but of Canada. He adds something on the range : 



The snowshoe line southward is on the isotherm of northern New 

 York. There was abundance of raw material for making them, and 

 the question was one of demand. If the snow was too soft to sus- 

 tain the wearer, it mattered not how deep it lay, that only made mat- 

 ters worse. There was also a northern limit of good snowshoes. It 

 lay within the Arctic circle, where the snow became hard enough in 

 the long winter nights to sustain the hunter without them. Mason, 



P.383 



At present snowshoes are almost unknown on the Onondaga 

 reservation, while at St Regis they are seen in almost every house; 

 yet the Onondagas used them freely in early days, on long hunts 

 or on the warpath as well as at home. In Pennsylvania they were not 

 so constantly on hand. Thus in the journal of a Moravian Indian 

 town there, Feb. 1, 1753, it is said: " Our young folks made snow- 

 shoes, as the snow is so deep no one can go beyond a mile of the 

 town." The Rev. Charles Wooley, writing in New York about 1678, 

 described the broad snowshoes which the Indians used in deep 

 snows, traveling " without sinking in the least." This might have 

 been told him, though he met the Indians familiarly. 



