VII.-ON THE EARLY SHAD FISHERIES OF THE NORTH BRANCH 

 OF THE SUSQUEHANNA RIVER/ 



By Harrison Wright. 



History. — There can be no doubt but that the Indians, for year» 

 before the white people thought of settling at Wyoming, caught their 

 shad there in large quantities. Their net-sinkers, though they have for 

 years been collected by archaeologists, are still very plenty, and can be 

 found anywhere on tbe flats along the river in quantities, and the frag- 

 ments of pottery show unmistakable markings with the vertebrae of the 

 shad. These, together with the fact that the early settlers saw the 

 Indians catching shad in a seine made of bushes (caUed a bush-net), 

 point to the fact that shad on the North Branch were taken in quanti- 

 ties 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. A s 

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

 shad in the North Branch. 



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

 the Pennsylvania government for the possession of this valley of Wyo- 

 ming the shad supply was a great element of subsistence. For this, unlike 

 the fields, barns, and granaries, couldnot be burned by the Pennamites. 



An old settler says: "When we came back to the valley we found 

 everything destroyed, and the only thing we could find to eat were two 

 dead shad picked up on the river shore ; these we cooked, and a more 

 delicious meal was never partaken of by either of us." One of the most 

 bitter complaints made against the Pennamites, in 1784, was that they 

 had destroyed the seines. 



After the Revolutionary war had ended, and the troubles between the 

 Pennsylvania claimants and the Connecticut settlers had been quieted, 

 the shad fisheries increased in numbers and value yearly, until about 

 the year 1830, when the dams and canal were finished and an end put 

 to the shad fisheries. 



Run. — It would appear from the statements hereto appended that 

 the male fish preceded the female fish by some eight to ten days in their 



* This paper is condensed from the report of a committee of the Wyoming Historical 

 and Genealogical Society, Harrison Wright, chairman (Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne Co.^ 

 Pa.), which was published in the Fish Commission Bulletin for 1881, p. 352.— C. W. S. 



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