Jack the Young Canoeman: An Eastern Boy's Voyage in a Chinook Canoe

by George Bird Grinnell

"Oh," said the sailor, "they are not very big, maybe not more than four or six inches long, but there are lots of them, as you can see. They catch oolichans in that way too, when they are here, but they have gone now. We only have them during the month of May, but then they gather in certain places and there are worlds of them. The Indians catch them, and the white folks catch them; in fact, for a little while pretty nearly everybody lives on oolichans. They are mighty good eating, I can tell you, and besides those eaten fresh, lots of them are smoked and salted. The Indians don't save many of them. What they don't eat fresh they use to make oil with, for the oolichan is an awful fat fish and you can get lots of oil out of them. They are so fat, that after they have been dried you can light them at one end and they will burn just like a candle. I expect that is the reason that sometimes they are called candle-fish."

"Say, friend," said Hugh, "you ain't joking, are you?"

"No," said the man, "I ain't joking; that's just the way it is, like I tell you."

"Well, no offence," said Hugh. "Where I come from, in the mountains and in the cattle country, sometimes the boys, when a stranger comes around, sort of josh him in a good-natured way, and tell tall stories just to see how much he will believe. I didn't know that maybe you had such a custom as that out here."

"No, sir," said the sailor, "we don't do anything like that here. We suppose that people ask us questions about the country because they want to know how things really are, and we tell them just what the facts are."

"Well," said Hugh, "it seems to me, from what I have seen, that the facts are strange enough here, and it wouldn't be necessary for you to stretch them a mite to astonish folks."

Soon after this Hugh and Jack went back to the place where they had been sitting, in the shelter of the deck cabin, and sat there looking over the beautiful view that was stretched out before them. Neither said very much. Both were impressed by the beauty of the scene and the novelty of their surroundings; for neither of them had ever seen anything like it before.

"I tell you, son," said Hugh, "this here is a wonderful country to me, and I never saw anything to match it. You see it's the first time that I ever got down to the edge of the salt water. I don't know what to make of it all. Everything is different; the mountains and timber, the people, the animals, and the birds. And as for fish—why! I never supposed there was any place in the world where fish were as plenty as they are here."

"Yes," said Jack, "it's surely a wonderful country. There is something new to look at every minute; and it's all just as different as can be from anything I ever saw before. I was talking to one of the passengers here a little while ago and he told me that these Indians here live almost altogether on fish. They dig clams and catch mussels and catch the salmon and the herrings and those little fish this sailor was talking about; and they kill seals and porpoises and even whales. It's all mighty strange, but doesn't it show just how people fit themselves to the conditions that surround them? Now, suppose you take one of the Blackfeet, turn him loose on his horse at the edge of the water, and how do you think he would go to work to get his next meal? Why, he would starve to death."