A strong resemblance in personal traits exists throughout the numberless native tribes of North America. They are generally tall, straight, and robust. Their skin is of a copper-color; their eyes large, bright, black, and piercing; their hair long, dark and coarse, seldom or never curled; and to their simple diet and active life they owe their white and regular teeth, and their excellent health. Their food is such as they can obtain from the rivers and the forests; hunting and fishing, and fighting form the chief pursuits of the American savages. Before the arrival of the whites, very little labor was expended in tilling the lands; and, even that little, was done mostly by the women. But since their hunting-grounds have become too small, and game too scarce to allow them to support life in this way, they have begun to turn their attention to the riches which labor and time can draw from the bosom of the fertile soil. The natives made use of both spears and nets in their fisheries. They had a way of fishing in the night time, by means of a fire kindled on a hearth in the middle of their canoes, which dazzled the fishes by its light, and enabled those in the boats to take them easily with a spear. They sometimes built a fence or dam entirely across the mouth of some small river, leaving only one opening, at which they placed a sort of pot or box, made very much in the form of a mouse-trap, into which the fish were carried by the stream, and thus caught. Before the Indians had learned from Europeans the use of fire-arms, their only method of hunting was by means of bows and arrows, and traps. In shooting with the bow, they were very expert, but they have now generally laid it aside for the gun. They had a very ingenious way of taking a great number of deer and other large animals at a time. They first make two fences of strong pointed stakes, so high that the deer cannot leap over them. These fences at one end are very far apart, but they gradually approach near each other, until there is but a small opening between them, which leads into a small enclosure in the form of a triangle. At the farther end of this triangle is a small covered way; large enough to allow one deer to pass into it. When all this is prepared, a great number of people assemble together, and forming a half circle around the forest, advance slowly, driving before them all the animals which it contains. These, finding themselves hard-pressed, run on, until they come to the fences, which they follow along, and thus enter the small enclosure to which they lead. Here there is no returning, as the hunters block up the narrow passage; the affrighted herd are compelled to enter the covered way of stakes, where they are easily killed with a spear.