The Collaborative International Dictionary
Travois \Tra`vois"\, n. [Cf. Travail.]
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A primitive vehicle, common among the North American Indians, usually two trailing poles serving as shafts and bearing a platform or net for a load.
On the plains they will have horses dragging travoises; dogs with travoises, women and children loaded with impediments.
--Julian Ralph. A logging sled. [Northern U. S. & Canada]
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
type of American Indian transport, 1847, said to be ultimately from a Canadian Indian pronunciation of travail.
Wiktionary
n. A traditional North American Indian sled-like vehicle, pulled by person, dog, or horse.
Wikipedia
A travois ( Canadian French, from French travail, a frame for restraining horses; also obsolete travoy or travoise) is a historical frame structure that was used by indigenous peoples, notably the Plains Indians of North America, to drag loads over land.
Usage examples of "travois".
Longarm got his two rooms and went outside, where he unlashed Dan from the travois and then carried him back into the hotel.
The boys had the travois to pull, and from them he felt numbness and cold right now, along with a lingering flutter of fear.
Carlo took the left-hand pole of the travois and Danny took the right one.
Danny and Carlo both fought the travois flat with their weight across him, all three of them atop.
His legs were shaking under him, and he tried to ease the strain on them as they stopped and stood on an icy steep where if they once entirely let go of the travois where it was, it and his sister would toboggan down a giddy stretch of rubble and ice and soar high and wide on the winds before it fell.
Carlo, pulling the travois with Brionne and Randy to the snowy spot where Cloud waited for them.
Randy on the travois, half-aware, neither of them who were pulling having breath to talk.
They were made of cedar and hard as nails, so Longarm knew that they would serve well as travois poles.
It took him less than an hour to complete both travois and then to grain and water the horses.
After that, he loaded the extra travois with as much water as he could, then food, and covered it all with a piece of gray canvas and lashed it down tight.
Longarm said, easing Dan onto the travois and then carefully tying him down with strips of leather.
The whitejackets put the creature onto a travois and began pulling it away from the landing site, towards the southwest .
Scriber moved slowly toward the end of the pier, pulling the travois from shadow to shadow.
Raven dragged Greggie to the travois and tied him down with the soft grass, and then for a moment, he thought about giving him a drink.
But with her eyes down, following the tracks, she gave him time to set down the travois and retrieve his satchel and water sack before running up the nearby draw on quick, quiet feet.