Old Enoch ca. 1910; was the builder of all fish traps; in the background is one he has just completed, made from young Jack pine and lashed together with wild rose roots. Source: BC Archives: https://goo.gl/uGtVo4
Not every blog post has to be an essay, sometimes we can just admire the slightly smug look on a smiling guy who is good at making fishtraps, and knows it. And obviously I’m kidding about the essay part.
Posted in anthropology, Archaeology, archives, First Nations, Northwest Interior, Technology
Tagged fish, fish traps, fishing, salmon, Skeena River, weirs
Salmon cache boxes in tree, Yale BC, date unknown but probably 1865ish, Maynard collection but probably by Dally. Source: BC Archives https://goo.gl/kaixsc
Last post we (the Royal We, always, please) looked at some salmon mass harvesting technology from north central BC. But what do you do with all those fish? They need to be processed into a stable form for storage, and then cached somewhere, somehow. While there are lots of ways to skin a coho, I’m going to focus on some extraordinary photos from the Yale area on the lower Fraser River, late 1860s.The above shows four large box-like structures, identified as a salmon cache, high in a tree presumably to help protect them from scavengers. I say “presumably” because there may be another reason to do so. Continue reading
Posted in Archaeology, First Nations, history, Lower Mainland, Northwest Interior, Technology
Tagged caches, fish, fishing, salmon, storage, tree caches, Yale
Excavations at the Upward Sun River Site, Tanana Valley, Alaska. Photo: Ben Potter via adn.com
There’s been quite a bit of buzz surrounding a new paper by Carrin Halffman et al. documenting the use of salmon at the Upward Sun River Site (more) which is on the Tanana River: a tributary of the Yukon River, but about 1,400 kilometres upstream from the ocean (and much further still from the paleo-rivermouth during Beringian times). The authors report this as both the earliest evidence of salmon exploitation in the Americas, and the first evidence of Pleistocene salmon use. The first I am on board with, the second I may quibble a little with lower down. (And this is all assuming we don’t consider eastern Beringia to be effectively part of Asia at this time!). But it’s a remarkable find and a very carefully researched and presented paper. [edit: be sure to read comments from Ben Potter below which tweaks some information in this post.]
Posted in alaska, Archaeology, Northwest Interior
Tagged alaska, Beringia, first peopling, fishing, salmon, Tanana River, Upward Sun River, Yukon River, zooarchaeology
Lummi Reef Netting Model. Source: http://whatcomwatch.org/wpww/?p=348
A while back I found the cool picture above in an online exhibit of the Whatcom Museum showing photographs of Point Roberts and Lummi Island, on Puget Sound just south of the Canadian border. Reef netting is a peculiarly Straits Salish technology which involved the setting of complex nets, suspended between two canoes, at strategic locations where the natural flow of salmon was constrained. A sort of on-ramp led the fish up to the net by creating a gentle optical illusion of a rising bottom. When the salmon were milling around in the horizontal net, still free, the canoes would be suddenly swung together, closing the net and trapping the salmon.
Screen shot from video of men building a fish weir near Atka, ca. 1946. Click to see video. Source: http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/cdmg11/id/37038/rec/36
So, still rustling around the weird world of weirs. The online Alaskan archives have quite a few interesting examples – and, kind of remarkably, a video showing the construction of a weir near Atka, which is on the Aleutian Islands. The trap in the video is pretty similar to a couple of other Aleutian ones in the collection, which I’ll talk about below. It’s really cool to not only see a more-or-less traditional trap being built (look at the rocks being casually dropped down by the wooden fence!) but the photos also show weirs actually in use. There’s probably a lot to learn from these pictures – as any introductory textbook in archaeology will tell you, the more we know about the behavioural context of a given site type, the more we can reliably infer the cultural context when presented only with the archaeological remains.
Posted in alaska, Archaeology, archives, First Nations, Northwest Interior, Northwest Coast, Technology
Tagged aboriginal fisheries, alaska, fish, fish traps, fish weirs, salmon, weirs, Yukon
Yelm Jim’s fish weir on the Puyallup River ca. 1885. Click for high resolution. Source: http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov/Record/View/DAA73FC7A57E989D65B6DBEA419FC89E
So for one reason or another I’ve been thinking about fish weirs lately. A picture can be worth a thousand thoughts though, so I was happy to see these two shots of a massive weir photographed ca. 1885 on the Puyallup Indian Reservation (map) near Tacoma, southern Puget Sound, Washington. I’m sure these are common knowledge images but for some reason I hadn’t come across them before. If you’re new to weirs I posted something on them before, referencing the monumental reconstruction of one on the Koeye River. Essentially they are a method for controlling the upstream migration of salmon, allowing for stock assessment and selective harvesting.
Posted in Archaeology, First Nations, Northwest Coast, Technology, Vancouver Island, Washington State
Tagged Cowichan, fish traps, fish weirs, Nisqually, Puget Sound, Puyallup, salmon, weirs, Yelm Jim
Building Koeye Weir. Photo by Grant Callegari via indiegogo.
There’s a pretty amazing new construction on the on the Koeye River (pronounced roughly “kwaay”) on the central coast of B.C. (map). A team has built a traditional style wooden-weir across the river, and are using it for fishery management – trapping, counting, measuring, and gently releasing salmon at the end (and start) of their life cycle. The construction has been documented at the willatlas.com blog, including some amazing photos, and there are posts on the Hakai Beach Institute blog as well. Even better, there is a short documentary. This is actually is a teaser for a longer documentary, which is in the fund-raising stage, and I don’t mind using this blog as a platform to bring this really great project to people’s attention. You can see their fundraising page here.
Posted in anthropology, Archaeology, First Nations, Northwest Coast, Technology
Tagged aboriginal fisheries, fish traps, fish weirs, fishing, Heiltsuk, Koeye River, salmon, traditional use, weirs
Fishing at the Dalles, 1850, pencil drawing by George Catlin. Source: NYPL.
I’m probably the last person to get the memo that you can fire a harpoon with a bow and arrow. In fact, I only just got my head around firing a harpoon with an atlatl. Anyway, take a squint at the picture above – the figure in the lower left background is clearly shooting a harpoon-arrow from his bow. The picture is from about 1850 and is a pencil drawing of a scene at The Dalles, on the Columbia River. I’ll take a closer look at this picture below. Continue reading
Posted in anthropology, Archaeology, First Nations, history, Northwest Coast, Oregon, Technology, Washington State
Tagged bow and arrow, Chinook, Columbia River, fishing, harpoons, Oregon, salmon, The Dalles, Washington State
Measurement of vertebral height. Source: Huber et al. 2011
Salmon are a crucial cultural keystone species across most of the Northwest, of very high importance to many coastal and interior cultural groups for thousands of years. Many archaeological sites are chock full of salmon bones, and the oldest of these are around 10,000 years old. As a cultural story, the importance of salmon is obvious. Increasingly though, the archaeological data are also invoked to tell the history of salmon themselves. The very long-term view of the archaeological record provides knowledge of their ranges, their relative abundance, their life histories, etc. These data can then be harnessed as part of conservation and fisheries management of these threatened species of fish.
Each species offers different things to people: some run early, some late; some are more fatty, some leaner; some run in huge compact numbers, others tend to dribble by; some can be caught in large numbers in the open ocean, others can only be caught efficiently in streams. There’s just one problem with using salmon bones in archaeology: until recently, you really couldn’t tell one species of salmon from another based only on their bones.
Posted in Archaeology, Northwest Interior, Northwest Coast, palaeontology
Tagged aboriginal fisheries, bones, fish, fishing, salmon, zooarchaeology
Salmon lice infestation. Source: Georgia Strait Alliance.
I’ve just dipped into an interesting paper (PDF) by Sarah Campbell and Virginia Butler, which explores 7,500 years of relationship between First Nations and Pacific Salmon. While, as ever, the archaeological evidence is discontinuous and somewhat patchy, the authors reach profound conclusions that go far beyond the usual archaeological focus on the past, as if the past still exists other than in the present.
The Northwest Coast was estimated to have the second highest indigenous population density in North America (after California) at European contact, with population estimates ranging from 102,100 to 210,100 (Ubelaker 2006). Haggan et al. (2006) propose an annual average per person consumption rate of 230 kg/yr based on two 19th- century estimates. At this rate, 200,000 people would annually consume 46,000 metric tons (50,706 tons) of salmon, comparable in magnitude to the average yearly commercial catch between 1901 and 2000 (Jones 2002). (emphasis added)
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