Yet the riotous melee had an atmosphere of folk revelry and abandonment to primal energy which somehow stirred ancient memories. Anyone prone to get too sniffy about inappropriate salmon-catching should be reminded that some late-eighteenth-century landowners in New England, unversed in the then-unknown delights of rod-and-line fishing, travelled distances to the Connecticut River to get their fun from salmon-spearing and gaffing salmon leaping at waterfalls.
In the Pacific Northwest the background to salmon capture was quite different. There the salmon was holy and the run was a phenomenon upon which survival hung. Unsurprisingly, the ingenuity, artistry and practical neatness of some of the artefacts developed to capture and process the fish harvest from the sea were astonishing. Salmon were the lifeblood of existence for these people and their fishing culture reflected it. The most famous artwork from the Pacific Northwest is from the Haida Indians, and some of their resplendent work consists of images of fish. Salmon equalled tribe survival and the cultural acknowledgement of this is a feature of the history of the north-west.
Catching salmon was taken to a level of high art in a practical sense. Cedar bark was twined into nets and split cedar boughs were used to make nets and traps. Cedar was deployed too to make lashings for constructing lattices for stopping advancing fish, and wild cherry was tough enough for attaching shafts to nets and fish-spears. Flexible boughs of hemlock and spruce were twisted into fish-traps formed like tunnels in varied designs.
The native people were assiduous in the harvest of their prime resource. The techniques and structures were impressively elaborate. In some of the fish enclosures constructed to hold fish as the tide receded, white clam shells paved the floor, better to show to those peering down what fish were held there. There were lattice mazes with intermittent posts driven into the tidal estuary to snare salmon drifting on the tides; looking for a way out, the salmon swam further in. Different designs were used for varying stream flows and different woods were separated into functions suited to their characteristics; for instance, willow was used for major weirs, being strong and flexible and abundantly available. Stakes held their position, being pointed at the bottom and driven into the stream-bed. On the longer weirs the fishermen built spearing platforms in tripod shapes which enabled them to spot the quarry. Spears were subtly designed with stop-butts to prevent the pointed spear sections being damaged on the bottom.
Plant knowledge had progressed far on this well-endowed coastline. The Indians discovered that the stinging nettle, which grew over head height in those parts, had a property which could be used for salmon harvest. The stalks were cut, dried, peeled, beaten, shredded and then spun into a two-strand twine of exceptional strength. The wood and bone spindles used to do this were in use up to the present time.
In preparation for her brilliant illustrated study, Indian Fishing, British Columbian writer Hilary Stewart tried out these techniques herself. Using plants and different woods she constructed weirs and traps and spears and every tool connected to the salmon harvest. She found it took time and skill to replicate the old toolkits – but they worked. In Europe the same knowledge existed and nettles were considered to make stronger twine than flax – in fact the word ‘net’ derives from nettle. Cedar and willow bark were materials for net construction too. The hoops of nets might be made of bent vine maple.
The north-west Pacific peoples used only materials they had at hand. There were no imported or traded tools or materials. Anthropologists today might term their salmon capture ‘organic’. Looking back from where we are now there is something delightfully clean and satisfying about a food provision entirely serviced from the clever utilisation of local plants. Thinking further afield, there are few societies of which this remained true until recent time. The Inuits in the Arctic are an example, and there may be others in Arctic Russia, but on the bigger landmasses, where travel in any direction was physically feasible, there are few. There were the northern Saami and variously named reindeer-herders of the Asian tundra and taiga who relied almost exclusively on reindeer. Generally, though, only societies on the rim of the habitable zone were reliant on a single migratory animal.
Salmon capture was taken to a high art. If the water was moving fast the salmon were swept into a fenced enclosure. The single exit was a grid shelf sloping upwards; escaping fish marooned themselves on the grid, struggling upstream as they attempted to reach flowing water again. Neat.
Snaring fish was a various art. Rocks on the river-bed were designed in hoops or ‘wing-dams’ with the open end upstream. There could be a series of these ring structures widening out with the river. On the ebb tide salmon fell back in the river-mouth and were stranded. The rock-traps can be seen in outline today, still in place even though modern techniques have rendered them obsolete. The top rocks have been swept away in centuries of spates, but the river-bed structures remain, jawbones from which the teeth have fallen.
They are as evident in western Europe as they are in the Pacific Northwest, but in the former place no one has been looking for them or trying to build a picture of Stone Age salmon capture. If you go to the Grimersta River on Lewis, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, a prolific salmon system, you can find the same primeval remains of what at one time supplied local Outer Hebrideans with their winter food supply. The most elementary aspects of food harvest have a tendency not to alter much.
Weirs were angled to guide fish towards a centre-pass where the trap would be positioned. I have seen salmon channelled this way in Canada for counting and stock assessment. It works unerringly and the flow of the water keeps the latticework or stake-fence in place. Sometimes densely foliated tree branches are used to fill the bigger gaps. All the system needs is salmon with the urge to go upstream and water pushing the other way. Usually the more delicate lattice structures were taken away after the salmon run and the basic structures, especially when of rock, were left in place. If necessary they were repaired and rebuilt in springtime.
Tricking salmon into net-ends or ‘bunts’ was a brain-teaser which produced ingenious contraptions. The Indians worked out that salmon could be deflected by the appearance of pendant vertical lines which, had they attempted, the fish could have swum through. But the salmon opted to go in the direction of the tidal current and could be fooled into the upper layer of the water even though the water below was a lot deeper. A loose cats-cradle of connected lines, kept in place by sinker-weights and buoys, was enough to direct the salmon to where spear-wielding fishermen awaited them.
Bunches of rye grass were tied to the floor of the loose cradle of line to create the illusion of a floor or river-bed. This kept the fish in the river’s upper level heading for the denser-woven net near the shore through which they could not escape. Guile and knowledge of the quarry were essential in the capture of this turbo-charged fish. A salmon can outswim any creature in the river, and indeed most in the ocean.
In some ways it is peculiar that the Indians never developed the art of rod-angling. In the Azores today medium-sized fishing boats go to sea to take tuna, armed with bunches of fishing poles which are fished manually by fishermen just as day-boat anglers jig for pollack and mackerel. Rod and line is simply the best way of catching tuna. Additionally, rod-caught fish remain clean and attract the highest prices in the market.
The Indians approximated to this with line-fishing by trolling. Trolling from canoes took place in the bays and inlets before the fish range was narrowed by the confinement of rivers. A witness at the time describes what the Nootka Indians did:
‘For slimness and invisibility the braided leaders were made from women’s hair, or in rougher water from the quills of birds or porcupines. A hook was baited with fresh sprat or herring, and the line was attached to the solo canoeist’s paddle. The whole rig was sunk with small sinker stones. As the oarsman moved his paddle back and forth a slow jerking movement of the hook attracted the salmon. The paddle was then handled in such a way that the salmon was boated.’
You may ask, what were the hooks made from in a culture without metal? It is ingenious. ‘Bentwood’, or wood of hemlock, balsam, fir or spruce branches were used, but taken only from the places there were knots. For knots were denser than ordinary wood and instead of floating, sank. This wood was shaved to the right slimness, then steamed and pressed into