PELAGIC SEALING. 



HISTORY. 



SEALING BY COAST INDIANS. 



Page 187 of The Case. 



Formerly, in the winter time, used to hunt them in the Straits of San 

 Juan de Fuea, and in the spring- and summer time 

 we hunted them in canoes and with spears from Peter Br oivn, p. 377. 

 10 to 30 miles off and around Cape Flattery. 



About ten or twelve years ago we commenced carrying- our canoes on 

 little schooners and followed up along the coast towards Kadiak. I 

 have been a part owner in a schooner for about seven years, and have 

 owned the James G. Swan for about three years. She is about 59 tons 

 burden. The other schooner was not so large. * * * 



In early times none of my tribe ever went any farther out to sea than 

 from 10 to 30 miles off Cape Flattery, and close inshore a few miles up 

 and down the coast. They had no other way of hunting, except to go 

 from here in canoes. About fifteen years ago the post trader induced 

 some of them to put their canoes on board of a small schooner and go out 

 from 50 to 75 miles offshore, and to hunt along the coast from Columbia 

 Eiver to Barclay Sound. In the last five or six years some of my tribe 

 have bought and now own four little schooners, and use them to carry 

 their canoes and provisions when they go any distance from home. 

 About seventeen of my people have been in the Bering Sea, and, with 

 the possible exception of two or three, none of them were ever there 

 before 1887. 



In 1887 the British schooner Alfred Adams, from Victoria, British 

 Columbia, came here and employed some of my tribe to go to the Bering- 

 Sea hunting seals, and the schooner Lottie, owned by the Indians, also 

 went from here in that year. 



In 18S9 and 1891 some of my people went on schooners, as hunters, 

 to Bering Sea. At no other times have any of them been in those 

 waters. 



I have been engaged in hunting seals all my life, and have always 

 used the spear, and went in canoes. Formerly we 

 went around the cape in canoes, but for the last Landes Callapa, p. 379. 

 fifteen years I have frequently gone out on small 



schooners, from 10 to 80 miles around the cape, up and down the coast 

 from 100 to 200 miles. We take our canoes on the vessel and use them 

 after we get to the sealing grounds. 



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