352 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



RKPORT OF A COWIITIITTEE OF THE ^VYOMING HISTORICATi AND 

 GEOrOGItAf. SOCIETY ON THE EAKI^Y 8HA» FISHERIES OF THE 

 NORTH BRANCH OF THE SUSQUEHANNA RIVER. 



By HARRISON WRIGHT, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE. 



Prof. Spencer F. Baird, 



United States Commissioner of Fisheries, 



Sir: ThecommitteeoftheWyoining Historical and Geological Society, 

 to whom your inquiries touching the old shad fisheries on the North 

 Branch of the Susquehanna were referred for investigation, would re- 

 spectfully report that they have interviewed, by letter or in person, a 

 large number of the old settlers, who either now live or formerly did 

 live near the banks of the river, and were calculated to be able to give 

 therequisiteinformation, and who were pleased to report. These persons 

 have, in nearly every instance, most cheerfully and at no little trouble 

 furnished us with the information asked. We make this acknowledgment 

 for the reason that the parties to whom application was made are neces- 

 sarily far advanced in age, all with but one or two exceptions having seen 

 their "three score years and ten," and to them it was no little labor to 

 write out their reminiscences of the early shad fisheries. 



Besides these interviews, the records of the county, files of old news- 

 papers, the numerous printed histories of this section of country, have 

 been consulted, and from these various sources the data upon which 

 this report is based have been gleaned. With these preliminary remarks 

 let us proceed to our report. 



HISTORY. 



There can be no doubt but that the Indians, for years before the white 

 people thought of settling at Wyoming, caught their shad there in 

 4arge quantities ; their net-sinkers, though they have for years been col- 

 lected by archaeologists, are still very plenty, and can be found any- 

 where on the flats along the river in quantities, and the fragments of 

 pottery show unmistakable markings with the vertebrie of the shad ; 

 these, together with the fact that the early settlers saw the Indians 

 catching shad in a seine made of bushes (called abush-nct), point to the 

 fact that shad on the North Branch were taken in quantities by the 

 Indians, 



The Connecticut people who settled here over a hundred years ago 

 had, in the very start, their seines, and took the shad in numbers ; as 

 near as we can learn they were the first white people who seined the 

 shad in tlie North Branch. 



During the thirty years' war which the Connecticut settlers had with 

 the Pennsylvania government for the possession of this valley of 

 Wyoming, the shad supply was a great element of subsistence ; for this. 



