152 THE SHAD STREAMS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 


also said to have seen the Indians catching shad in seines made of 
bushes. 
The energetic and thrifty Connecticut people who settled in the 
beautiful Wyoming valley were thoughtful enough to bring twine seines 
with them, and no doubt were the first white people to seine the North 
Branch for shad. They were a hardy class of pioneers, ready to battle 
for their rights, and during the thirty years’ war with the the Pennsyl- 
vania government for the possession of the Valley of Wyoming, de- 
pended largely on the shad supply as a means of subsistence, and one 
of the most bitter complaints made against the “ Pennamites” in 1784 
was that they had destroyed the seines. 
After the troubles between the Pennsylvania claimants had been 
settled or quieted the shad fisheries increased in numbers and value 
yearly until about the year 1830, when the internal improvements com- 
menced by the state in 1826 were finished. The people simply con- 
cluded that the fisheries were destroyed and thenceforth took little or 
no interest in the matter, leaving the streams subject to depredations of 
all sorts. Unfair fishing of every kind was resorted to and the streams 
became almost entirely depleted. The gradual disappearance of fish 
was overlooked in the general enthusiasm of the people on the subject 
of cheap and rapid transportation facilities. ‘The commonwealth could 
not afford to neglect the vast mineral resources of the interior and to 
prohibit manufacturing in order that the fish might have unrestricted 
admission to their spawning beds at all seasons, and the result was that 
in order to feed the canals of the state a series of dams were erected in 
the Susquehanna river, each of which at once became an insurmountable 
obstruction to the fish ascending from the sea to their best and natural 
spawning beds far up the headwaters of that stream. 
In 1881 the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society, in response 
to inquiries made by the late Prof. Spencer F. Baird, United States 
Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, touching the old shad fisheries on 
the North Branch of the Susquehanna, referred the matter for investiga- 
tion to a committee, of which Harrison Wright, Esq., was chairman. 
The report submitted by Mr. Wright shows that much labor and care 
were involved in procuring reliable data, and the information furnished 
is of much interest even to the general reader. Accompanying the re- 
port was a map of the Susquehanna river, from the junction of the West 
Branch at Northumberland to Towanda, near the New York state line. 
Upon this map was noted the localities of the fisheries with as much ac- 
curacy as was attainable from the accounts received. It was thought 
probable some of the fisheries were omitted, especially in the stretch of 
river from Danville to a point four miles above Bloomsburg. A tracing 
of the map referred to forms a portion of this report. 
The information contained in the few pages following is in the main 
obtamed from Mr. Wright’s valuable report. 
