Old School Hunting

When European explorers first entered Louisiana in the sixteenth century, they encountered many different Indian tribes who lived off the land’s great bounty. Farming supplied the bulk of the Indians’ diet but they continued to hunt for both food and recreation (see “The First Deer Hunters,” November 2016).

The French left many accounts of the Indians’ hunting techniques. Bears, for example, were often targeted while the females were denned up in hollow trees. One Frenchman who witnessed a hunt claimed the Indians first cut a tree against the den so a man could shinny up and toss a lighted torch into the hollow. When the groggy bear backed out of its hole, the Indians shot it with a musket.

“This is a very [dangerous] kind of hunting,” the Frenchman wrote, “for, although wounded sometimes by three or four shots from a gun, this animal still will not fail to charge the first person he meets, and with one single blow of tooth and claw, he will tear you to pieces instantly. There are bears as big as coach horses and so strong that they can very easily break a tree as big as one’s height.”

Alligators were another dangerous quarry. They were killed by ramming a sharpened sapling down their open mouth into the gullet. The Indians then flipped the gator over to expose his soft underbelly and dispatched it with a spear.

Buffalo were a favorite pursuit in the many prairies that dotted Louisiana. French accounts indicate the Indians either quietly stalked the buffalo or used fire to drive them into ambush points. When using the latter technique, the entire tribe would surround a herd and then set fire to the prairie grass, being careful to leave a few escape corridors open. The buffalo were then shot when they passed through the openings. The Frenchman claimed the Indians killed more than sixty buffalo a day using this method.

French accounts indicate the Indians either quietly stalked the buffalo or used fire to drive them into ambush points.

Many different strategies were used to hunt small game and fowl. Snares snagged raccoons and rabbits, and blowguns dispatched squirrels and birds. At night, Indians gathered at known passenger pigeon roosts armed with torches and long poles. The bright lights blinded the birds, and they sat passively while the people knocked them from the branches with their poles.

An ingenious trap was used to gather quail. First, a downward sloping runway was dug into the ground leading to a deep hole. Sticks were then placed over the entire trap, and corn was used to draw the birds down the runway into the hole.

After eating the corn, the quail would try to fly away but were trapped by the overlying sticks. They then sat passively until the Indians came back to retrieve them.

First, a downward sloping runway was dug into the ground leading to a deep hole. Sticks were then placed over the entire trap, and corn was used to draw the birds down the runway into the hole.

Turkeys were lured into bow range with calls made from a turkey wing bone, and magic was used in all forms of hunting. Each tribe had a shaman who knew the precise medicine, chant, or prayer to ensure a good hunt.

One puzzling discovery made by archaeologists is that prehistoric Louisiana Indians apparently did not depend much on ducks or geese for food. For example, the Tchefuncte Indians, who flourished around the time of Christ, lived along streams and in other wet environments, but duck remains are hardly ever found in their sites.

When the historic Indians did go after waterfowl they utilized a number of tactics. Bolas may have been used to tangle up rising flocks of ducks, and there is some evidence nets were stretched across narrow sloughs where ducks were feeding. Other Indians then jumped the ducks and flushed them into the nets, where they were clubbed to death.

[Read this: A Shortage of Women: Wives were imported for—and disappointed by—French trappers in Louisiana.]

When hunting ducks and geese with bows and guns, decoys were made from gourds or by stuffing the skins of dead birds. Ibis (gros bec) were hunted by using a wounded bird as a decoy.

One traditional goose hunting tactic only came to light in the 1960s when an old Indian man on Catahoula Lake caught some wild geese by hand. Before daylight, he waded out in shallow water where he knew geese congregated and sat down with only his head sticking above water.

The man told astonished wildlife officials that geese were curious creatures, and if you sat still long enough, the birds would eventually check you out. He then grabbed them by the legs under the water. The old Indian was nonchalant about it all, but did admit the wait became difficult when the water began to freeze around him.

Dr. Terry L. Jones is professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe who has received numerous awards for his books and outdoor articles.