Showing posts with label fishing. Show all posts

Monday, September 9, 2019

Who Were the Beothuck Indians?

Who were the Beothuck Indians?

Adjacent to the Labrador Eskimos and the northern Algonkins, upon the Island of Newfoundland, dwelt the Beothuks, or “Red Indians,” now extinct, who in custom and language differed much from their neighbors of the mainland. Although called “red,” they are also said to have been unusually light in complexion, and the term was applied to them from their habit of smearing their bodies with a mixture of grease and red ochre. They are further described as of medium stature, with regular features and aquiline noses, the hair black and the beard scanty or absent.

In several elements of culture they had marked differences from the tribes of the adjacent mainland. Their canoes were of bark or of skins stretched on frames, and were in the shape of a crescent, so that they required ballast to prevent them from upsetting. The winter houses they constructed were large conical lodges thirty or forty feet in diameter, having a frame of light poles upon which was laid bark or skins, generally the latter. Hunting and fishing provided them with food, and they have left the reputation of irreclaimable savages. They had no dogs, and the art of pottery was unknown; yet they were not unskilled as artisans, carving images of wood, dressing stone for implements, and tanning deerskins for clothing. An examination of their language discloses some words borrowed from the Algonkin, and slight coincidences with the Eskimo dialects, but the main body of the
idiom stands alone, without affinities. Derivation was principally if not exclusively by suffixes, and the general morphology seems somewhat more akin to Eskimo than Algonkin examples

Monday, June 18, 2018

Native American Fishing and Boats

In fishing, hunting, and journeying, the woodland Indians needed some sort of watercraft. They had a number of different kinds of canoes. The “dug-out,” cut from a single tree trunk, is still used in many of our Southern streams; the Cherokees in their lovely North Carolina home have them. Along the Northwest Coast, magnificent war-canoes, capable of carrying fifty or sixty persons, were made from single giant logs; these canoes often had the decorative bow and stern pieces carved from separate blocks. The birch-bark canoes were made over light wooden frames with pieces
of birch bark neatly fitted, sewed, and gummed, to keep out the water. Almost all the Algonkin tribes and the Iroquois used them upon their lakes and rivers; they were light enough to be carried easily across the portages. A few tribes, the Mandans among others, had the light but awkward “bull-boat,” or coracle, nearly circular, consisting of a light framework covered with skin: such were chiefly used in ferrying across rivers.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

California Native American Fishing

They had various methods of catching fish—with hook and line, with a spear, by weir-traps in the stream, and by saturating the water with the juice of the soap-root plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). Before they could obtain fishhooks of modern make, they made them of bone. Their lines were made of the tough, fibrous, silken bark of the variety of milkweed or silkweed, already mentioned. Their spears were small poles pointed with a single tine of bone, which was so arranged that it became detached by the struggles of the fish, and was then held by a string fastened near its center, which turned it crosswise of the wound and made it act as an effective barb.

Their weir-traps were put in the rapids, and constructed by building wing dams diagonally down to the middle of the stream until the two ends came near together, and in this narrow outlet was placed a sort of wicker basket trap, made of long willow sprouts loosely woven together and closed at the pointed lower end, which was elevated above the surface of the water below the dam. The fish, in going down stream, ran into this trap, and soon found themselves at the lower end and out of the water.

The soap-root was used at a low stage of water, late in summer. They dug several bushels of the bulbous roots and went to a suitable place on the bank, where the roots were pounded into a pulp, and mixed with soil and water. This mixture, by the handful, was then rubbed on rocks out in the stream, which roiled the water and also made it somewhat foamy. The fish were soon affected by it, became stupid with a sort of strangulation, and rose to the surface, where they were easily captured by the Indians with their scoop baskets. In a stream the size of the South Fork of the Merced River at Wawona, by this one operation every fish in it for a distance of three miles would be taken in a few hours.
The fish were generally cooked by roasting on hot coals from burned oak wood or bark.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Native American Aleut Indian Pictures

Native American Aleut Indian Women Making Baskets

Aleut Indian Women Drying Fish in Alaska

Aleut Indian House on Seal Island Alaska

Aleut Indian Girls in Attu Alaska Weaving Baskets

Native American Aleut Indian Hunters

Aleut Indian Fishermen

Aleut Eskimo Indian Children Photo

Aleut Eskimo Indian Woman Making Baskets

Friday, December 20, 2013

Alaska's Aleut Native American Pictures

Aleut Indian Woman Making a Basket

Aleut Indian House Located in the Aleutian Islands Alaska

Aleut Eskimo Men Fishing in a Boat

Aleut Indian Men Constructing a Fish Trap

Native American Aleut Indian Photographed in 1895 In Alaska

Aleut Indian Woman and Girl

Photo Gallery of the Aleut Eskimo's Life and Culture in Alaska

Photo Gallery of the Native American Aleut Indians

Aleut Indians build a fish trap or weir in Alaksa

Aleut Eskimo Indian Boy from Alaska

Aleut Eskimo Indian House in Alaska

Aleut Eskimo Indian Women Making Baskets in Alaska

Aleut Eskimo Indian Woman from Alaska

Aleut Eskimo Indians Fishing

Aleut Indian Women Photo, Entitled, "Water Carriers."

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Indian Houses of the Northwest Described

the fishing season in the Columbia River, where fish are more abundant than in any other river on the earth, all the members of the tribe encamp together, and make a common stock of the fish obtained. They are divided each day according to the number of women, giving to each an equal share. At the Kootenay Falls, for example, they are taken by spearing, and in huge baskets submerged in the water below the falls. The salmon, during the spring run, weigh from six to forty pounds, and are taken in the greatest abundance, three thousand a day not being an unusual number. Father De Smet, the late Oregon missionary, informed the writer, in 1862, that he once spent several days with the Kootenays at these falls, and that the share which fell to him, as one of the party, loaded, when dried, thirty pack mules. The fish are split open, scarified, and dried on scaffolds, after which they are packed in baskets and then removed to their villages. This custom makes a general distribution of the capture, and leaves each household in possession of its share.

[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]

Their communism in living is involved in the size of the household, which ranged from ten to forty persons. "The houses of the Sokulks are made of large mats of rushes, and are generally of a square or oblong form, varying in length from fifteen to sixty feet; the top is covered with mats, leaving a space of twelve or fifteen inches, the whole length of the house, for the purpose of admitting the light and suffering the smoke to pass through; the roof is nearly flat … and the house is not divided into apartments, the fire being in the middle of the large room, and immediately under the hole in the roof…. On entering one of these houses he [Captain Clarke] found it crowded with men, women, and children, who immediately provided a mat for him to sit on, and one of the party immediately undertook to prepare something to eat." [Footnote: Lewis and Clarke's Travels, pp. 351-353.]

Again: "He landed before five houses close to each other, but no one appeared, and the doors, which were of mats, were closed. He went towards one of them with a pipe in his hand, and pushing aside the mat entered the lodge, where he found thirty-two persons, chiefly men and women, with a few children, all in the greatest consternation." [Footnote: ib., p. 357.] And again: "This village being part of the same nation with the village we passed above, the language of the two being the same, and their houses being of the same form and materials, and calculated to contain about thirty souls." [Footnote: ib., p. 376.]

In enumerating the people Lewis and Clarke often state the number of inhabitants with the number of houses, thus:

"The Killamucks, who number fifty houses and a thousand souls."

"The Chilts, who … are estimated at seven hundred souls and thirty-eight houses."

"The Clamoitomish, of twelve houses and two hundred and sixty souls."

"The Potoashees, of ten houses and two hundred souls."

"The Pailsk, of ten houses and two hundred souls."

"The Quinults, of sixty houses and one thousand souls."

[Footnote: Lewis and Clarke's Travels, pp. 426-428.]

Speaking generally of the usages and customs of the tribes of the "Columbia plains," they make the following statements: "Their large houses usually contain several families, consisting of the parents, their sons and daughters-in-law and grandchildren, among whom the provisions are common, and whose harmony is scarcely ever interrupted by disputes. Although polygamy is permitted by their customs, very few have more than a single wife, and she is brought immediately after the marriage into the husband's family, where she resides until increasing numbers oblige them to seek another house. In this state the old man is not considered the head of the family, since the active duties, as well as the responsibility, fall on some of the younger members. As these families gradually expand into bands, or tribes, or nations, the paternal authority is represented by the chief of each association. This chieftain, however, is not hereditary." [Footnote: ib., p. 443.] Here we find among the Columbian tribes, as elsewhere, communism in living, but restricted to large households composed of several families.

A writer in Harper's Magazine, speaking of the Aleutians, remarks: "When first discovered this people were living in large yurts, or dirt houses, partially underground … having the entrances through a hole in the top or centre, going in and out on a rude ladder. Several of these ancient yurts were very large, as shown by the ruins, being from thirty to eighty yards long and twenty to forty in width…. In these large yurts the primitive Aleuts lived by fifties and hundreds for the double object of protection and warmth." [Footnote: Harper's Magazine, vol. 55, p. 806.]

Whether these tribes at this time were organized in gentes and phratries is not known. At the time of the Wilkes expedition (1838-1842) the gentile organization did not exist among them; neither does it now exist; but it is still found among the tribes of the Northwest Coast, and among the Indian tribes generally. The composition of the household, as here described, is precisely like the household of the Iroquois prior to A.D. 1700.