INDIAN NETSINKERS AND HAMMERSTONES.’ 145 
woven into the foot-rope of the net. The nets vary in size from a 
hundred feet long to a hundred fathoms, or six hundred feet, and 
from seven to sixteen feet deep.” * 
Fishing-nets may be counted among the utensils’ invented at 
very early periods, on the spur of necessity, by men in various 
parts of the world. That they were already in use in Europe at a 
remote time of antiquity is proved by their remnants preserved in 
an almost marvellous manner in the Swiss pile-constructions of the 
Stone age, as, for instance, those of Robenhausen and Wangen. 
In the earliest works on North America the fishing-nets of the 
Indians are mentioned, but not described. Cabeça de Vaca, the 
first European who gave an account of the interior of North 
America, refers in various places, though in a transient manner, to 
the nets of the natives whom he met during his long wanderings. 
Garcilasso de la Vega and the anonymous Portuguese gentleman, 
called the Knight of Elvas, the two principal authors who have 
left accounts of De Soto’s expedition (1539-43) are likewise 
deficient in all such details as might serve to illustrate the 
original character of Indian nets. The latter relates, however, 
that the Spaniards, while at a place near the Mississippi, called 
Pacaha (Garcilasso has it “ Capaha”), caught fish in a lake with 
nets furnished by the Indians.t This establishes at least the fact 
that the tribes of the Mississippi valley employed fishing-nets, 
when first seen by Europeans. The Indians of the present New 
England States made strong nets of hemp. For this we have the 
authority of Roger Williams, who gives also the word ashép, which 
signifies a net in the language of the Narragansetts.¢ Yet it 
appears that the Indians of the Atlantic Coast (and others) prac- 
tised more the “‘spearing” of fish than their capture in nets. Some ` 
were also killed by arrow-shots.| According to Van der Donck,{ 
a eset ined “tae 
*Swan: The Northwest Coast, New York, 1857, p. 104. 
„t Relation et Naufrages d’Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca (Ternaux-Compans), Paris, 
> PP. 24, 142, 177, 179. Original printed at Valladolid in 1555. 
: t Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, etc., translated by Buckingham 
Smith, New York, 1866, p. 112. en a Fi 
$ Roger Williams: A Key into the Language of America, London, 1643; Providence, 
R. I., 1827, p- 102. io 
aye ites oe Se ee ag T 
ures of lattice-work, flanked by long weirs, the whole forming a sort of gigantic trap, 
k + Suoh tw P F 
into which the fish were driven. f the Virginia Indians is figi 
and described in the first volume of De Bry’s “ Peregrinationes ” (Frankfort on the 
Main, 1590). 
_ TBeschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlandt, Amsterdam, 1656, p. 70. 
: AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. VII. 10 
b 
