EXTRACTS FROM VARIOUS WRITINGS 



or THE 



SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, EIGHTEENTH, AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES, 



IN WHICH REFERENCE IS MADE TO 



ABORIGINAL FISHING IN NORTH AMERICA* 



Egede (Hans): Beschreibung und Natur-Geschichte von Gronland; ubersetztwn 

 Dr. J. Or. Krunitz; Berlin, 1763. Translation: "In fishing the Greenlanders 

 use iron hooks, and in their absence hooks made of the breast-bone of the bird 

 called auk. Their fishing-lines are thin and narrow strips of whalebone tacked 

 together at the ends. With such lines they will draw up a hundred fish to one 

 which our people take with their hempen lines. But for catching halibut they 

 use lines made of seal-skin, and also our hempen lines." (Page 130). 



Crantz (David}: The History of Greenland : including an Account of the Mission 

 carried on by the United Brethren in that Country ; London, 1820 :\ "A few of the 

 common salmon have been seen in certain places (of Greenland), but they fall 

 greatly short of those of Norway and other countries in size. The Greenlanders 

 catch these fishes under the stones with their hands, or strike them with a prong 

 of bone or iron. At the season when the salmon ascend from the sea into the 

 rivers, the natives build a wear of stones across the mouth of the stream at low 

 water ; over these the fish pass with the tide, and are left in the shallows by the 

 ensuing ebb. ^ 



" The ordinary food of the Greenlanders is the Angmarset, or Greenland 

 Salmon, Salmo Groenlandicus. The Newfoundland men call these fishes Capelins. 



* This section is far from embodying all early and later notices of fishing, as practised by the North American 

 Indians and Innuits. The copious literature bearing on the natives of the northern half of America might have 

 enabled me to increase the given material to a considerable extent ; but it is doubtful whether more extracts would 

 have added much to the reader's information. Even in those here presented iteration is not wanting. I have 

 arranged the extracts geographically, beginning with Greenland and ending with Alaska, following the plan 

 adopted in my account of North American shell-heaps. 



f The first edition of the German original of this work was published at Barby (Prussian Saxony) in 1765, 

 and it was for the first time translated into English in the following year. The author's name was not Crantz, 

 but Cram. 



(261) 



