330 BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY IBdi.l. 137 



they commonly kill with bow and arrow thinking it not worth throw- 

 ing powder and shot after them." Of turkeys specifically, Adair re- 

 marks : 



The wild turkeys live on the small red acorns, and grow so fat in March, 

 that they cannot fly farther than three or four hundred yards ; and not being 

 able soon to take the wing again, we speedily run them down with our horses 

 and hunting mastiffs. At many unfrequented places of the Mississippi, they 

 are so tame as to be shot with a pistol, of which our troops profited, on their 

 way to take possession of the Illinois-garrison. (Adair, 1775, p. 360.) 



This would not help us much in the understanding of Indian hunt- 

 ing methods except that the use of dogs is again noted by Du Pratz, 

 who professes to be describing native customs. He states that his 

 Natchez companions told him turkeys must be taken by means of a 

 dog which forced the birds to fly up into a tree, where they would 

 sit still and allow themselves to be shot without attempting to escape, 

 while if a man chased them on foot they would quickly outdistance 

 him. (Le Page du Pratz, 1758, pp. 220-221; Swanton, 1911, p. 72.) 

 This seems to be the best authenticated account of the use of dogs in 

 hunting in the Southeast. 



Mention has already been made of the employment of dogs in 

 hunting bear. They are said to have been used also in the chase of 

 rabbits, raccoons, oppossums, and squirrels, but rather in late times 

 than in the aboriginal period. Raccoons are also said to have been 

 caught in deadfalls of a common type, so arranged that in taking the 

 bait the animal released a trigger and let logs down upon his back. 

 Another sort of trap, used by De Soto's followers in the winter of 

 1541-42 in catching "conies," i. e., rabbits, was borrowed from In- 

 dians west of the Mississippi, probably in what is now Arkansas. 

 They were snared "by means of stout springs which lift the feet off 

 the ground and a noose of strong cord fastened to which is a joint 

 of cane, which runs to the neck of the rabbit, so that it can not gnaw 

 the cord." Elvas, who describes this, adds that many of these ani- 

 mals were taken in the cornfields, "especially when it froze or 

 snowed" (Robertson, 1933, p. 205). Smith (Tyler ed., 1907, p. 94) 

 and Strachey (1849, p. 124) say that the beaver and otter were taken 

 with snares by the Virginians. According to MacCauley (1887, p. 

 513), however, the Florida Seminole usually shot otters by means of 

 the bow and arrow or rifles, and resorted to trapping only in very late 

 times. When Lawson visited the chief of the Saponi in 1701 he 

 was trapping beaver, and Byrd tells us that "the Indians . . . have 

 hardly any way to take them but by laying Snares near the place 

 where they dam up the Water" (Lawson, 1860, p. 84; Bassett, 1901, 

 p. 292), while Romans (1775, p. 66) asserts that the Chickasaw 

 thought beaver hunting beneath them. The ancient Florida Indians 



