This Kind Never
Leaves The Woods But Its Skin Is As Much Perforated By The Gadfly As That
Of The Others, A Presumptive Proof That The Smaller Species Are Not
Driven To The Sea-Coast Solely By The Attacks Of That Insect.
There are a
few reindeer occasionally killed in the spring whose skins are entire and
these are always fat whereas the others are lean at that season.
This
insect likewise infests the red-deer (wawaskeesh) but its ova are not
found in the skin of the moose or buffalo, nor, as we have been informed,
of the sheep and goat that inhabit the Rocky Mountains, although the
reindeer found in those parts (which are of an unusually large kind) are
as much tormented by them as the barren-ground variety.
The herds of reindeer are attended in their migrations by bands of wolves
which destroy a great many of them. The Copper Indians kill the reindeer
in the summer with the gun or, taking advantage of a favourable
disposition of the ground, they enclose a herd upon a neck of land and
drive them into a lake where they fall an easy prey but, in the rutting
season and in the spring, when they are numerous on the skirts of the
woods, they catch them in snares. The snares are simple nooses, formed in
a rope made of twisted sinew, which are placed in the aperture of a
slight hedge constructed of the branches of trees. This hedge is so
disposed as to form several winding compartments and, although it is by
no means strong, yet the deer seldom attempt to break through it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 323 of 649
Words from 87171 to 87446
of 176017
