The Wampanoags in the seventeenth century : $b An ethnohistorical survey — John Shaqi
The Wampanoags in the seventeenth century : $b An ethnohistorical surveyMarten, Catherine
History
The Wampanoags in the seventeenth century : $b An ethnohistorical survey
Marten, Catherine
Indians of North America -- New England -- History -- 17th century; Wampanoag Indians
As we wandered we came to a tree, where a young sprit was bowed
down over a bow, and some acorns strewed underneath. Stephen
Hopkins said, it had been to catch some deer. So as we were looking
at it, William Bradford being in the rear, when he came looked
also upon it, and as he went about it, it gave a sudden jerk up,
and he was immediately caught by the leg. It was a very pretty
device, made with a rope of their own making, and having a noose
as artificially made as any roper in England can make, and as like
ours as can be....[45]
These devices were also sometimes used for trapping moose, bears,
wolves, wild cats and foxes.[46]
Most hunting was carried out during the fall, after a spring and
summer of watching the habits and locations of the deer.[47] Ten
to twenty or more men from a village would move into temporary
quarters in the woods to hunt at this time, each man retiring to
his own well-defined hunting territory of “... two, three or foure
miles, where hee sets thirty, forty, or fiftie Traps....”[48] It was
necessary to tend such a trapline closely, since the human hunter
competed with other carnivores for his kill. A circuit of the traps
was made every two days. Even so, the hunter might find that a wolf
had been there before him, seeing which, he would set to building a
trap for the wolf as well.[49]
Unlike the two proceeding techniques, taking deer by means of
drives required the cooperative efforts of a number of people. This
number might range from twenty to three hundred, according to one
observer.[50] Fences of brush were built, sometimes a mile or two
in length, through the woods, in the shape of a funnel. Deer were
chased into the wider end, and Indians waited at the narrow end to
shoot them as they passed. Since it was possible for the deer to
leap over the fence, the hunters were careful not to startle them.
Working at night, they set snares for the deer that had escaped their
arrows.[51] If the evidence from other Indian groups can be applied
in this case, it can be said that the hunting party included women
and older children as well as the hunters themselves, and that these
former were stationed along the length of the brush fence, outside
it, to keep the deer from jumping over.
There is evidence that another technique of hunting common in North
America, especially among the Algonquians farther north, was also
used by the Wampanoags: driving the deer into water where they are
more vulnerable to the hunters. There is no direct description of
this process taking place, but there is the information that laws
made special provision for paying the sachem within whose territory a
deer was shot in the water.[52] And Williams tells us that there is a
special word to designate the skin of such a deer.[53]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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