PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES 



485 



who o-oes out and tows in the cask and salmon. About 800 pounds of 

 suhnon are attached to a keg, and a tag sliownig the wheel irom 

 which shipped is tied to the hsh. 



In 1908 the first fish wheel to be located m the coastal waters ot 

 Alaska was operated in the Taku River, in southeast Alaska. The 

 wheel was set between two 4-foot scows, stationed parallel to each 

 other, and each 40 feet in length. The wheel had two dips, each 22 

 feet in width and hung with netting. It could be moved from place 

 to place, the same as the scow wheels on the Columbia River. It 

 was operated throughout the king and red salmon runs, but caught 

 almost no salmon, and was not set in the succeeding years. 



For many years the natives of the interior of Alaska have been 

 resorting to the banks of the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and their 

 tributaries in order to secure a sufficient supply of salmon to sustain 

 them through the succeeding w^inter. The favorite apparatus of these 

 natives at present is a type of fish wheel introduced by the whites 

 about 1905. An oblong" framework of timbers is constructed in the 

 water and moored to the bank by ropes. A wheel, composed of two 

 or thi-ee dips, is placed in this, the axle resting upon the framework. 

 The current catches each dip in turn, thus causing the wheel to 

 revolve, and the dip is of such shape that the salmon caught roll off 

 it into a trough, down which they shde into a boat moored between 

 the wheel and the shore or into a box fixed to the supporting frame- 

 work on the side. Although crude in construction, these wheels are 

 very effective and a large number of them are set each season. , 



The Columbia River fish wheel is a patented device. It w^as first 

 used by the patentees, S. W. Williams & Bro., in 1879, and for 

 several years they retained a monopoly in its use. A number are 

 now operating on the river. The device was not new even when 

 patented, as a similar "fishing machine," as it is called, had been in 

 use prior to this time and is still used by white fishermen on the 

 Roanoke River in North Carolina. 



REEF NETS 



Wlien the whites first visited the Northwest they found the natives 

 employing a number of ingenious devices for catching salmon, and 

 one of the most eft'ective of these was the reef net. J. A. Kerr, Esq.,-^ 

 who has been engaged in the salmon fisheries of Puget Sound for a 

 number of years, has written the following very interesting account 

 of this native fishery: 



The aborigines the world over have developed ingenuity solely along the lines 

 of their necessities. The coast Indians of Alaska evolved the bidarky and the 

 ingenious implements for taking the seal, the walrus, and the whale. The 

 Siwash of Puget Sound developed a seaworthy dugout and appUances for taking 

 salmon that marks the acme of Indian invention. 



When Vancouver explored the waters of the Sound he found over 500 Indians 

 encamped at Chiltenum, now Point Roberts. He relates in his log of the voy- 

 age that these Indians were engaged "in fishing for salmon with crude nets 

 made of the bark of young willow." He described the racks upon the con- 

 tiguous upland used by the Indians in curing the fish. 



When Governor Stevens negotiated the treaty with the Indians of the lower Sound 

 at Point Elliott, now Mukilteo, in 1855, I was informed by Colonel Shaw, the in- 

 terpreter, that over 7,000 Indians attended, the session lasting for five days. 



The Government sought to have the Indians confined to reservations, and the 

 disposition of their ancient fisheries was a matter of great solicitude on their 

 part. Salmon was the principal article of their diet. 



26 The Siwash Reef Net. By J. A. Kerr. Pacific Fisherman Yearbook, 1917, p. 60. 



