a primitive vehicle used by the plains Indians consisting of two trailing poles serving as shafts and bearing a platform or net for the load

A travois (Canadian French, from French travail, a frame for restraining horses;From Late Latin tripalium - "three poles" http://www.bartleby.com/61/13/T0331300.html also obsolete travoy) is a frame used by Native Americans, 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.