HUNTING. 173

In the rutting season, the skin of a female is ordinarily chosen for that
purpose. At its sight the males immediately rush to their doom. If we are to
believe Petitot’s informants, the question of sex formerly played such a réle
on these occasions that the girls and women thought themselves in a position
to decoy ihe animals more readily than the men. They then used to put on
a large headdress of a particular make, and succeeded by their antics to draw
the deer to themselves!, a result which I leave my reader free to credit or
disbelieve.

We read that in China waterfowl are caught by wading in the water up
to the neck with one’s head hidden in a gourd, and then seizing the birds’
legs without revealing one’s identity*. If the Carrier tradition is worthy of
credence, some counterpart of this expedient obtained formerly in their tribe.
They even go so far as to assert that people disguised with the spoils of the
birds they were after would find their way to flocks of swans, whose legs
they would in some way fasten to a rope, to which the fowl would find
themselves retained on their first attempt to fly off.

Whatever degree of authenticity may attach itself to such traditions, we
know that practically all the tribes use to this day rough, temporary struc-
tures of evergreens, loose stones, or wood, which they erect on the river or
lake shores, and whence they call after geese and ducks with remarkable
success. The root word ’torh by which the Carriers designate these small
decoy-huts is in itself sufficient to attest their antiquity as adjuncts to hunting
among the Dénés.

It only remains to add that our aborigines mimic to perfection the calls
and cries of all kinds of game, both fowl and land animals. When elk hunting
during the rutting season, that is in autumn, in addition to imitating the cry
of the game, they rub the shoulder blade of an animal of that species against
a tree with excellent effect.

In the far south, deer and a variety of antelope were either driven to
some high, jutting mesa and forced to jump over the precipice, or, in the
case of the latter animal, which though very shy is still more curious, a red
handkerchief was hung up a ramrod or a stick, which lured the game within
gunshot®.

Snaring.

Most of the above-described methods of hunting, those at least which
have for their object reindeer and moose, are in vogue chiefly among the
Dénés of the far east, where the gregariousness of the game and the treeless
character of the land make them almost a necessity. West of the Barren

* Exploration de la Région du Grand Lac des Ours, p. 378.

* Six Légendes Américaines identifiées a l’'Histoire de Moise, p.741.

> Cf. Geo. W. Kendall’s “Narrative of an Expedition across the great South-Western
Prairies”, p. 100, London, 1845.