CHAPTER III.
FISH HARVESTING.
The systems adopted by the Indians for capturing salmon vary in accordance with the localities chosen for fishing. Besides the stages or baskets in use on the Columbia river, they construct weirs reaching from one side of a stream to the other, with skilfully-contrived openings, allowing fish to pass easily through them into large lateral stores made of closely-woven wicker, where they are kept prisoners until required.
They have rather a clever contrivance for catching salmon in the bays and harbours, using a sort of gill-net (a net about forty feet long and eight feet wide), with large meshes; the upper edge is buoyed by bits of dry cedar-wood, that act as floats, and the net kept tight by small pebbles slung at four-foot distances along the lower margin. This kind of net the Indians stretch across the mouth of a small bay or inlet, and sit in their canoes a short distance off, quietly watching it. These small bays, or saltwater aquariums, are the lurking-places and strongholds for shoals of anchovies and herrings. Often tempted to wander and make excursions beyond the gateway of their rocky home, they are at once spied by predatory piratical salmon; seeking safety in flight, they dash headlong for their hiding-place, hotly pursued by their dreaded foe, and shooting easily through the cordy snare, laugh to see Master Salmon ‘run his head into the net;’ bob-bob go the floats beneath the surface, up paddles redskin, hauls up his net, clutches the silvery pirate, and with a short heavy club gives him a blow on the head, drops him into the canoe, lets go his net, and waits for the next.
With this kind of net immense numbers of spring and fall salmon are taken. All their nets are made of cord, spun from native hemp, that grows abundantly along the banks of the Fraser and other streams. Squaws gather the plant about a week before the flowering-time; first soak, then beat it into fibre; this, arranged in regular lengths, is handed to the Indian, who, seated on the ground, twists the bundles of tiffled hemp into cord—a cord as regular and symmetrical as the handiwork of a practised ropemaker—-using neither tools nor machinery, but simply the hand and naked thigh.
The first salmon entering the Columbia are taken at Chinook Point, a short distance above Cape Disappointment, near the mouth of the river. These are known as ‘Chinook salmon,’ and are celebrated, not only in the immediate neighbourhood but in the markets of San Francisco, as the fattest and finest-flavoured salmon taken on the coast; they are large, ranging from 35lbs. to 70lbs. in weight.
In June the grand army arrives. We need not linger at the old fishery of the Chinook Indians, so prosperous fifty years ago. The Indians have disappeared; but the salmon army marches on, with little interruption, until they have arrived at the Cascades.
Here we must remain awhile, and see for ourselves how the red man harvests his salmon. Salmon is quite as essential to the Indians residing inland as grain to us, or bananas and plantains to the residents in the tropics: gleaning the regular supply of fish, the Indian literally harvests and garners it as we reap our grain-crops. It cannot be by mere chance that fish are prompted, by an unalterable instinct, to thread their way into the farthest recesses of the mountains—fish too that are fat and oily, and best adapted to supply heat and the elements of nutrition.
The winters are long and intensely cold, often 30° Fahr. below zero, the snow lying deep for at least six months. Birds migrate, most of the rodents and the bears hibernate, and such animals as remain to brave the biting cold, retire where it is very difficult and often impossible to hunt or trap them. In a small lodge, made of hides or rushes, as far from windproof as a sieve would be; wrapped in miserable mantles (simply skins sewn together, or ragged blankets, bought of the Hudson’s Bay Company), cowering and shivering over the smouldering logs, are a family of savages. The nipping blasts and icy cold forbid their venturing in pursuit of food; flesh they could not cure during the summer, for they have not salt, and sun-drying is insufficient to preserve it. A miserable death, starved alike by cold and hunger, must be the fate of this, and of all Indian families away from the seaboard, but for salmon: sun-dried, it preserves its heat and flesh-yielding qualities unimpaired; uncooked, they chew it all day long, and frequently grow fat during their quasi-hybernation. The waterways are thus made available for the transport of coals and provisions necessary to keep the life-stove burning, floated free of freight up to the very doors of the Indian’s wigwam. The way he harvests this store, and preserves it for winter use, we shall see as we follow the course of the salmon in their ascent of the Columbia river.