Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 7).djvu/303

 winter. The men are divided into two parties; one for hunting, and the other for fishing: and of the women also, one party cure the fish, another collect roots and berries. All these different productions are dried and seasoned in the sun, and require much attention and labour. The fish when properly cured is packed up into large bundles or bales; the roots and berries into bags made of rushes. The stock for the winter, thus daily and weekly produced, is then, during the nights, conveyed in secret, and put in caches; that is, hidden under ground among the rocks; each family having its share apart, secure from wild beasts and the eye of thieves. During the continuance of the fish season, the Indian camp is all life. Gambling, dancing, horse-racing, and frolicking, in all its varied forms, are continued without intermission; and few there are, even the most dull and phlegmatic, who do not feel, after enjoying so much hilarity, a deep regret on leaving the piscatory camp on these occasions.

As soon as the fish season is over, the Indians again all withdraw into the interior or mountains, as in the {316} spring, and divide into little bands for the purpose of hunting the various animals of the chace. In their mode of ensnaring the deer and other animals, they are generally very successful. Exclusive of hunting these animals with their guns, bows, and arrows, and running them down with their horses, which latter practice is a favourite amusement, they frequently select a valley or favourable spot of ground between two mountains, having a narrow outlet or pass at one end; and the better to decoy the unwary game into it, bushes are planted on each side of the pass, contracting, as it were, the passage as it advances into the form of a funnel, until, at the