Travois

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A travois (Canadian French, from French travail, a frame for restraining horses;^[1] also obsolete travoy) is a frame used by indigenous people in North America (Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada), notably the Plains Indians of North America, to drag loads over land. The basic construction consists of a platform or netting mounted on two long poles, lashed in the shape of an elongated isosceles triangle; the frame was dragged with the sharply pointed end forward. Sometimes the blunt end of the frame was stabilized by a third pole bound across the two main poles.

The travois was dragged by hand, sometimes fitted with a shoulder harness for more efficient dragging, or dragged by dogs or horses (although horses did not exist in North America before introduced by the Spanish in the 1520s). A travois could either be loaded by piling goods atop the bare frame and tieing them in place, or by first stretching cloth or leather over the frame to hold the load to be dragged.

Although considered more primitive than wheel-based forms of transport, on the type of territory where the travois was used (forest floors, soft soil, snow, etc.), rather than roadways, wheels would encounter difficulties which make them a less efficient option. As such they found use in New France's fur trade by Coureurs des bois, who traded notably with the Plains Tribes.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ From Late Latin tripalium - "three poles" [1]