SHUSWAP PEOPLE OP BEITISH COLUMBIA. 



IS 



sures are stopped with resin. The canoes thus made are very swift, and for their size, 

 when properly ballasted, remarkably seaworthy. (Fig. 4.) 



Fig. 4. 



The salmon, in its various species, is one of the principal sources of food supply for 

 all the tribes living along the Fraser and Thompson and their tributaries. Dried salmon 

 forms a considerable part of the provision made for winter, and before attempts at agri- 

 culture were begun constituted the sole winter staple. The right to occupy certain 

 salmon-fishing places, with the annual visit to these of the more remote families and the 

 congregation of large numbers of Indians at specially favourable places, largely influenced 

 the life and customs of the Shuswaps. In the same way, the most important news which 

 could be conveyed from place to place, if not that of some warlike incursion, was that of 

 the arrival of the salmon or the success or otherwise of the fishery. 



Besides the salmon ascending from the sea, a small land-locked salmon {Oncorhynclms 

 nerka var. KennerJyi), common in the large lakes, is extensively taken in traps and weirs, 

 when ascending streams to spawn, in September. The lake-trout and brook-trout are 

 also made the objects of special fisheries in certain localities, and the white-fish is taken in 

 some lakes in which it aboiinds. Many methods of catching the salmon and other kinds 

 of fish are practised. 



On the large and rapid rivers, including all that part of the Fraser which runs 

 through the country of the Shuswaps, with much of the Thompson, the salmon is usually 

 taken in a bag-net fixed to the end of a long pole. (Fig. 5.) This is manipulated by a 



Pig. 5. 



man who stands on a projecting stage above some favourable eddy or other suitable and 

 always well known spot, which is thus occupied every year at the appropriate season. 

 This is the same mode of fishing which is practised by the Indians who occupy the banks 

 of the Fraser below the Shuswap territory. In tranquil reaches of the South Thompson 



