The various tribes of the Columbia River Basin employed a variety of adaptable fishing techniques. For example, Indians used wood or stone fences on smaller rivers that directed the water flow into traps in which salmon were kept until fishermen speared or netted them. Indians built stone fish walls into the river at an angle from the shore. These walls slowed the current providing places at which salmon would rest. Fishermen used the walls as platforms from which to spear or net the fish. Indians organized cooperative drives to capture fish in slow-moving shallow waters. According to anthropologist Deward Walker, a salmon chief would organize as many as one thousand people to herd salmon toward awaiting fishermen. Indians also used poisons to immobilize salmon and blinds to camouflage spear fishers.
Weirs & Traps
The natives construct a barrier across the Little Spokane, placing it at an oblique angle so that the current would not wash it away. After the traps filled with salmon, the Indians would spear them.
David Douglas describing practices on the Little Spokane River, 1826.One of these streams is wide, shallow, and swift; here the Indians annually construct a fence which reaches across the stream and guides the fish into a weir or rack, where they are caught in great numbers.
Isaac Stevens describing a Pend d’Oreille weir on Clark’s River, 1854.Just below the falls, where a bar divided the channel, the Indians had constructed wing walls of loose rocks across one arm, leaving a race between their extremities, in which, by means of nets, they caught salmon in passing. A long trestle work was also built on the bank upon which their captives were laid to dry.
Lieutenant Grover, member of Gov. Stevens railroad survey team, 1854.
The trap consisted on the two barriers across the stream about 100 yards apart. The lower barrier had an opening near the center to allow the salmon to enter. This opening was closed when it was desired to prevent the escape of the salmon. The upper barrier had no opening. The opening in the lower barrier was closed when the fish were to be taken out.
Claire Hunt, 1937.The whole breadth of the stream is obstructed by stakes and open work of willow and other branches, with holes at intervals leading into wicker compartments, which the fish enter. Once in they cannot get out, as the holes are formed with wicker work inside shaped something like a funnel or a wire mouse-trap.
Paul Kane, 1845.
Platforms & Dipnets
They throw it [the dipnet] into the foam as far up the stream as they can reach, and it being then quickly carried down, the fish who are running up in a contrary direction are caught. Sometimes twenty large fish are taken by a single person in an hour.
Captain Charles Wilkes, Willamette Falls, 1841.Little bridges are thrown out over the rocks, on which the Indians post themselves, with nets and hoops, to which long handles are attached. With these they scoop up the fish and throw them on the shore.
Lawrence Kipp, 1855.Holes were made in the river bed at some distance from the shore to receive the posts on which the staging was to be supported. When the water has reached the proper level during the summer, a strong man familiar with the task was chosen to set the posts. A fir sapling, pushed out from the bank, was sat on by others to hold it firm while he walked out on it. He fastened a rope around his waist, the other end of which was tied above, to keep him from being carried away should he slip off. Carrying a staging-pole, he watched until the swirling water brought the hole to light, quickly inserting it in place, and immediately tied it to the fir sapling on which he stood. Those on shore at once piled rocks on their ends. A second post was similarly set and cross-bars tied between the sapling with hazel ropes. When the water reached its proper level at another station the staging was similarly set.
Ethnologists Spier and Sapir, 1930.
Baskets
Indians used J-shaped baskets at the “Grand Rapids,” a portion of Kettle Falls where the river dropped eight meters in two large cascades. Kettle Falls was second only to Celilo Falls in its importance to the native fishery and was inundated by Grand Coulee Dam in 1941.
This basket, during the fishing season, is raised three times a day, and at each haul, not infrequently contains three hundred fine fish.
Charles Wilkes at Kettle Falls, 1841.They are now taking about 1000 salmon daily. They have a kind of basket 10 ft long, 3 wide and 4 deep of a square form suspended at a cascade in the fall where water rushes over a rock. The salmon in attempting to ascend the fall leap and fall into the basket. When the basket is full the fish are taken out. A few fish are also taken with scoop net and speared.
John Work at Kettle Falls, 1826.
Spears
About one hundred lodges of Shonshones busily engaged in killing and drying fish . . . the Indians swim to the center of the falls, where some station themselves on rocks, and others stand to their waists in the water, all armed with spears, with which they assail the salmon as they leap, or fall back exhausted.
Robert Stuart at Spokane Falls on the Snake River.We used to spear chinook at Selway Falls. We would wade out into the water and spear the fish when they jumped into the air trying to climb over the falls.
Vaughan Bybee, Nez Perce, as quoted in “Salmon and his People,” 1999.
Hook & Line
Because salmon stop eating when they enter the Columbia to return to their natal streams, they will not rise to bait. However, Indians in the basin used hook and line to harvest steelhead.
The fisherman cut off a bit of his leathern shirt, about the size of a small bean; then pulling out two or three hairs from his horse’s tail for a line, tied the bit of leather to one end of it, in place of a hook or fly. Thus prepared, he entered the river a little way, sat down on a stone, and began throwing the small fish, three or four inches long, on shore, just as fast as he pleased.
Alexander Ross describing Nez Perce practices at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia, 1813.
