106 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
Wa-poos, as the Crees call him, plays a very important part in the 
Indian diet, besides furnishing the skins from which their famous rab- 
bit-skin winter robes are made. In the many instances in which I have 
had occasion to visit Indian wigwams, winter cabins, or in coming acci- 
dentally upon their shifting camps, signs of the defunct hare were almost 
always present. Such bones and feet and fur as had escaped the hungry 
dogs bestrewed the near landscape. When we arrived at the Fish Lakes 
in early October, 1913, a number of Indian youths were stalking about 
in the thickets bordering the lake and outlet hunting snowshoe hares 
with the primitive bow and arrow. Nor did they lack the skill to get 
them. The Indian seldom wastes ammunition in getting the hare, 
the main dependence being placed in the snare. Invariably, in fall 
and winter at least, as one approaches an encampment large or small, 
the rabbit snare is conspicuous. A small spruce lies prone, a few 
branches lopped out underneath forms an opening, and in this reposes 
the treacherous snare attached to a balance pole secured to a neighbor- 
ing tree. Wa-poos, sniffing the fresh-fallen spruce as invariably he 
does, nibbles and hops along. Then coming to the inviting lane in the 
tangle, he dives through, releases the snare and is jerked aloft, a gro- 
tesque kicking figure soon to be silenced forever. The snare is a very 
simple arrangement and very effective. Perhaps a score may be scat- 
tered about the camp to a distance of fifty or more yards, further afield 
if it is a permanent camp. I carefully took note of the structural pecul- 
iarities of this snare as employed by the Crees and early pressed it into 
service on my own account as a means of providing bait for a long line 
of traps. During the period of trial in which several snares were doing 
duty about my cabin, an Indian spied one while passing the clearing. 
I chanced to be near, and the pleasure he evidenced in this work of 
emulation was an entertainment seldom afforded among this people. 
His stoical countenance became transfigured with half-a-smile as he 
turned with some such expression as Me-wa-ne-pa-hou (good to kill). 
Few animals are considered more strictly vegetarian than the rabbit, 
yet occasionally it develops tastes to the contrary. This at first was 
quite a surprise to me. It has no capacity however for gratifying such 
carnivorous inclinations by any effort of its own, except that of killing 
young leverets which it is supposed at times to do. On the contrary, 
any meat which it has access to under ordinary wilderness conditions is 
supplied by some outside agency. The habit of robbing trap cubbies of 
bait leads to various consequences. I have known them to demolish 
a cubby of wooden chunks completely in the effort to reach a frozen 
hindquarter of one of their own species. The entrances to these cub- 
