178 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

the mas (or bone piece) is secured, and thereby the game will be bagged and
killed on the ice.

Barbed harpoons, such as those of accompanying figure (fig. 36), which
shows an old and a modern style of the same, are used when the Déné is

Fig. 36.

out hunting, not trapping or snaring; that is, whenever the beaver is met
with free of any trap or snare. These are made of cariboo horn, though a few
are now turned out of steel files or pieces of iron. They are securely fastened
to a handle three or four feet long, wherewith they are launched at the game
much as would be done with a regular lance. The shaft is intended to ensure
greater impetus and efficiency to the weapon. Harpoons of that description
are found all over North America.

When trapping for beaver, the Dénés resort to no remarkable device save
that, to attract the game, they dilute the mud contiguous to the trap with
pulverized castoreum which they keep in special receptacles of bone (fig. 37),
or of birch bark (fig. 38). They now use for that purpose steel traps, which
have entirely superseded the original wooden appliances “constructed on the
lodge where the beaver appear to be most employed”?.

This naturally brings us to the question of trapping proper.

’ Geo. Keith, in Masson’s Les Bourgeois de la Cie. du N.-O., vol. Il, p. 67.