406 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



The method used here by the Indians to capture the Auks 

 seems to favor the hypothesis that the birds thus taken were 

 not breeders; otherwise, the Indians would have been able 

 to kill them with less trouble on their breeding grounds, unless, 

 indeed, the birds had learned by experience to nest close to 

 the water, so that they could reach it quickly at the least 

 alarm. It is possible that the weirs were built for fishing and 

 used incidentally to catch the Auks. 



In the summer of 1868 Prof. Louis Agassiz, Prof. Jeffries 

 Wyman and Colonel Theodore Lyman examined the shell- 

 heaps in East Wareham, on the shore of which are the bays 

 referred to by Davis, and they found there the bones of the 

 Great Auk.^ 



Thus we have the best of evidence that the Great Auk was 

 found in summer at the head of Buzzards Bay, at the junction 

 of the Cape Cod peninsula with the mainland. 



As some readers of this volume may not know the origin 

 of the shell-mounds along our coast, it may be well to explain 

 that they were made by the aborigines, some of whom camped, 

 during the warmer months of the year, at suitable, places for 

 taking clams, oysters and other shell-fish, and thus in time 

 formed these mounds, which consisted mainly of the shells 

 of shell-fish, with bones and other remains of the native feasts, 

 mixed with ashes and charcoal from the fires, and various in- 

 destructible parts of utensils, etc., which had been thrown 

 broken upon the heap. The finding of the bones of the Great 

 Auk in these shell-heaps indicates that the birds were taken 

 during the warmer months, which constitute their breeding 

 season. The Auk evidently lived at sea or in the water most 

 of the time, except during the nesting time, and, no doubt, 

 slept on the waves. A bird which could dive at the flash of 

 a gun and escape the charge ought to find little difficulty in 

 avoiding the spears or arrows of an Indian hunter, but the 

 question as to how the Indians were able to take them has been 

 answered already. 



Manomet Bay is at the head of Buzzards Bay, and its 

 western portion is now known as Onset Bay. Manomet 



1 Wyman, Jeflriea: Eeport Peabody Mus. Arch, and Eth., 1869, p. 17. 



