172 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

walk round the pound, to prevent them from breaking or jumping over the fence,
while the men are employed spearing such as are entangled in the snares,
and shooting with bows and arrows those which remain loose in the pound.

“This method of hunting, if it deserves the name, is sometimes so suc-
cessful, that many families subsist by it without having occasion to move
their tents above once or twice during the course of a whole winter.” 1

That some such way of capturing venison animals was followed in con-
nection with the now practically extinct buffalo can be gathered from the
accompanying illustration. No words of mine could more adequately describe
the terrible havoc played among the great herds of that former king of the
plains through the instrumentality of those destructive contrivances. Our photo-
graph represents a corner of the Canadian prairies strewn with the bones of
buffaloes slaughtered in one of the very last pounds erected by the Indians.
A similar device is also resorted to by the Dénés of Alaska.

Decoying.

If alone or in solitary groups, the deer is generally as coy and shy as
it is gentle and confiding when in large numbers, especially at certain sea-
sons, when its sight is defective. The native huntsman must then have recourse
to stratagem in order to entice it within shooting distance. This almost inva-
tiably consists in donning the spoils of the animal with its antlers, and imi-
tating the bearing and actions of the live deer. As a further decoy the Hare
Indians use bunches of hoofs of the same animal, which they carry about
suspended to their belts by means of a string. By agitating these, they draw
the attention of the cariboo which, startled at first, stop in their course and
soon come to investigate, with the result that they pay for their curiosity
with their life.

One is no sooner shot down than the would-be deer moves on after
the retreating band without throwing off his disguise, and by his imitation
cries and the antics proper to the game he is after, he soon has them again
at a standstill, when he repeats his execution in their ranks. Quite a few heads
can thus be secured in succession.

The same stratagem was originally in vogue among the Hupas and
other Pacific Dénés. In fact, those Indians at times simulated so well the
movements of the deer that even the watchful panther was deceived and
attacked the disguised hunter, The Navahoes also wore masks with horns
for decoying purposes, sometimes dressing themselves up as antelopes, some-
times like deer?.

' Op. cit., pp. 78—80.

* Cf. Goddard’s “Life and Culture of the Hupa’”, p. 21.

°* Cf. “Navaho Legends”, pp. 191 and 217.