i6 



THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



capture game. Often they tell of sustaining 

 life by eating acorns, lichens, and remnants of 

 moose skin, because the hunt had failed.^' 



^'The snow not being deep, as in other years,'* 

 wrote Fr. Bressani, an Italian missionary, in 1653^ 

 ''they could not take the great beasts ]^ gran 

 bestie,' moose,] but only some beavers or porcu- 

 pines. . . . An eelskin was deemed a sumptuous 

 supper; I had used one for mending my robe, but 

 hunger obliged me to unstitch and eat it. We 

 ate the dressed skins of the great beast, though 

 tougher than that of the eels. I would go into the 

 woods to gnaw the tenderest part of the trees, and 

 the softer bark. . . . The snow came toward the 

 end of January, and our hunters captured some 

 great beasts, and smoked their flesh, so much 

 that it became as hard as a stick of wood." . . . 

 Meanwhile some of the Indians in the neighborhood 

 died of starvation." 



The Indians were the principal hunters of 

 moose, though it was recorded that "many of our 

 Frenchmen have killed thirty or forty apiece. 

 The skins were an important article of commerce, 

 and at Tadousac, a trading post at the mouth 



'^Jesuit Relations (Cleveland, 1899), vol. Iv. (1670-71), pp. 151— 

 153; vol. XXX vii., pp. 193-195 



Ibid., vol. xxxix., pp. 113-115. 

 »3 Ibid. (1659-60), vol. xlv., p. 193. 



