16 
windward, lit a birch-bark torch, and raced around to head off the animal 
before it had time to escape. A method of catching beaver after the intro- 
duction of steel traps exemplifies how well they understood the habits of 
the game around them. About the end of March, when the wood stored 
away by the beaver in the autumn had begun to rot, the Indian drove two 
fresh stakes through the ice close to its house. The beaver, searching for 
firm wood, was attracted by these stakes and caught in the trap. 
In their fishing the Parry Island Ojibwa used nets, stone weirs, and 
spears, but neither hook and line nor traps until after the coming of 
Europeans, if we may trust the testimony of the present-day Indians. The 
weir was a single line of stones that barred the passage of pickerel and 
suckers when they ascended the streams in May to their spawning-grounds; 
the fisherman, standing on the stones, pulled the fish out by hand, some- 
times as many as a hundred in a day. Nets made of false nettle 
( Urticastrum divaricatum ) , with floats of cedar or other light wood and 
with sinkers of stone, served for both trout and sturgeon. These and other 
fish, however, the Indians generally caught with spears. For sturgeon they 
used a two- or three-pointed spear fastened to a pole 25 or 30 feet long. 
The head broke loose when the fish was struck, but remained attached to 
the middle of the shaft by a stout thong of rawhide. The weight of the 
shaft soon tired the sturgeon, so that the man in the bow of the canoe 
could draw it within reach of the club wielded by his companion in the 
stern. The Indians used a similar “harpoon,” but with a shorter handle, 
for exceptionally large trout, but their usual spear for all fish except 
sturgeon had a single non-detachable point. These, of course, were sum- 
mer methods. When fishing for trout in winter the Indian cleared a circle 
around his ice-hole so that the light penetrated to the water underneath, 
covered his head with a blanket (or erected a small wigw r am over the 
fishing-hole), dropped a fish-shaped lure of wood into the water, and 
stabbed the trout with a long, three-pointed spear. They sometimes 
employed the same method at night also, using a birch-bark torch and 
dispensing with a lure; but starvation alone could drive them to this 
extremity, for they dreaded not only the cold and the darkness, but the 
enmity of supernatural powers, who might at any moment send a huge 
snake to their fishing-hole. 
The vicissitudes of hunting and fishing compelled the Ojibwa to pre- 
serve much food for days when they were travelling, or when, despite all 
efforts, they could secure no game. They could freeze their meat and 
fish in winter, but in summer they had to smoke-dry them on stagings or 
poles over their camp fires and store them in the ground like rice and 
maple sugar. They generally pounded the meat before storing it, but, 
unlike the plains’ tribes, seldom or never mixed berries with this 
“ pemmican.” When on the war-path, and afraid to light a fire, the Parry 
Island Ojibwa would sometimes pound the carcass of a deer both before 
and after skinning it, then cut the meat into strips and eat it raw; but 
whenever it was possible, they always boiled or roasted their meat and 
fish, whether it was fresh, frozen, or dried. To kindle a fire they struck 
two pieces of pyrites over rotten wood or powdered cedar bark, or used 
the bow-drill method, with dry cedar for the hearth and any kind of hard- 
