In the heavily wooded and completely undeveloped landscape of much of North America, by far the quickest and easiest way to travel was by water, should a suitable river or lake be available. As with all primitive peoples, the natives developed canoes for this purpose, and with the coming of the white man these remained their most important means of getting about.

Much in this set has been produced in other sets. The six grey plastic native figures have been discussed in our review of Rangers and Canoes, which also contains the canoe model. The only new figures in this set are the two pairs of natives carrying the canoe above their heads. These are made in the unfortunate soft plastic used elsewhere in this range, and despite the picture on the box both figures have hands too close together to grasp both sides of the canoe except towards the ends where the craft narrows. The canoes are made in a good solid resin, so are fairly heavy, which makes putting men and canoes together for porting a bit tricky as the whole assembly is top-heavy.

The fourth row contains the surreal content of this set. All began life in the Airfix set Zoo Animals No.1, and are an antelope, tiger and bear. Both native chroniclers and European settlers mention the abundant wildlife in this part of the world at the time, but all fail to mention antelope and tigers, leading us to think that these animals are not entirely right for this set. Presumably we are supposed to take the antelope as a deer and the tiger as a big cat such as a cougar. This would suggest the natives are on a hunting trip, which is reasonable.

The set is completed by a piece of vac-formed base about 180 mm by 120 mm. This seems to suggest a pool no wider than the canoes themselves, plus a small stretch of river barely wider than the canoes. As a random generic piece of land it has some value but does nothing to suggest a riverbank or similar.

Hunting was obviously a vital part of the life of the American, and as hunting scenes go this is not particularly great but could be worse. More to the point it smacks of reusing existing components to create something 'new' when little actually is new, and for modellers and military enthusiasts alike there is not much here that is likely to appeal.