144 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



All the traders handle them and may deal in from 5 to 50 tons in a 

 year. But they refuse to purchase dog salmon except as a last re- 

 sort. The majority of the natives at the close of the fishing season 

 sell a portion of their salmon suppl}^ to the trader with whom they 

 deal, frequently leaving themselves without adequate provision for 

 their families and their dogs. Later in the year they are often com- 

 ])elled to repurchase dried salmon at an advanced price, paying for 

 it with the proceeds of their winter trapping. They are, of course, 

 more or less improvident, as in the case of other primitive peoples. 

 Their sale of salmon in the fall is frequently to liquidate their debts 

 to traders who had extended them credit earlier in the season. 



In the section of the main river below Kampart, where salmon are 

 still rich in oil and the rainfall during the summer months is usually 

 heavy, resort is had to smoking the salmon in order to preserve 

 them. There is no commoner sight along the Yukon than the cluster 

 of white tents in some picturesque nook among the hills of the right 

 bank, and with them one or more high, barnlike smokehouses, which 

 emit a faint blue vapor. There will be a fish wheel turning in the 

 current along the rocky shore and a number of open-air racks, more 

 or less protected from the weather, on which the salmon are hung 

 for a time until partially dried and ready to be smoked. The pic- 

 ture is, of course, not complete without the native men, women, and 

 children of the summer camp, nor without the invariable row of 

 dogs closely tethered to stakes driven near the water's edge. Here 

 the dogs fatten on the salmon heads and back bones and other refuse. 

 They scratch out shallow holes to lie in alongside their stakes or 

 burrow deep into the adjacent bank, if one be at hand, to escape the 

 implacable swarm of mosquitoes. 



Along the Tanana and the upper Yukon is a region of less rain- 

 fall, in which also the salmon have relatively dry meat, which is 

 easily preserved. Here smoking is frequently dispensed with and 

 dependence had entirely on air drying. But, by whatever method 

 prepared, the fish of the upper river, of the Innoko, the Koyukuk, 

 and the Tanana, are of inferior grade, and bring a lower price than 

 do fish imported into these districts from the main river. The best 

 product of all is secured from the Kampart Rapids. Here the 

 "silvers" are said to aA'erage larger and fatter than in any other sec- 

 tion. It is not improbable that inferior strains of dogs and " silvers " 

 have turned into the lower trilnitaries, leaving at the rapids almost 

 exclusively high-grade fish bound far up the river. 



In the coastal district when salmon are running abundantly 

 trenches are often dug in the soil by natives and hundreds of salmon 

 are thrown in without preparation of any kind. They are then 

 covered with earth and nature is permitted to have her unrestricted 

 way with them. When the contents of these trenches are scooped 

 out at some convenient season, perhaps in midwinter, they are said 

 to make acceptable dog feed and to be not wholly shunned by the 

 natives themselves. 



The king salmon intended for their own food is often carefully 

 prepared and stored away by natives of the lower river. AVlien suffi- 

 ciently dried and smoked^ the sides are cut into pieces of convenient 

 size and packed solidly in large baskets made for the purpose of 

 woven grass, or willow roots, or frequently of salmon skins which 



