Pap. ?fo!* IsT' McNARY RESEARCH — SHINER 255 



Preparation of food in the early historic period has been described 

 (see p. 185, on earth ovens), but little mention was made of artifacts 

 used for that purpose. Most of them must have been of a perishable 

 nature, for no containers are found. Pestles are not rare, but no mor- 

 tars have been recovered. If baking and roasting had been exten- 

 sively used, containers would not have had to be plentiful. Most 

 of the stone bowls that have been found have been far too small to 

 have been used for cooking but may possibly have been used for serv- 

 ing. Almost any of the stone tools that have been classified as ham- 

 mers and choppers could have been used in pounding roots, berries, 

 and meat. Apparently many of the artifacts used for preparing food 

 TV ere either made of perishable materials or were of a generalized tool 

 form. 



Details are rare on hunting techniques although frequent mention is 

 made of Indians engaged in that activity. Apparently the Plateau 

 Indians employed techniques that were common over most of North 

 America. They used disguises such as skins of animals (Thwaites 

 1904-5, vol. eS, p. 297), and such tactics as surrounding, driving and 

 running down game on horseback (ibid., p. 316) . 



Fishing is well documented all over the Plateau in the early his- 

 torical period. One of the most detailed descriptions is from Lewis 

 and Clark in 1806, near the mouth of the Walla Walla. 



Near our camp is a fish-weir, formed of two curtains of small willow switches, 

 matted together with withes of the same plant and extending across the river 

 in two parallel lines, six feet asunder. These are supported by sevei-al parcels 

 of poles in the manner already described, as in use among the Shoshonies, and 

 are either rolled up or let down at pleasure for a few feet, so as either to suffer 

 the fish to pass or detain them. A seine of fifteen or eighteen feet in length is 

 then dragged down the river by two persons, and the bottom drawn up against 

 the willows. They also employ a smaller seine like a scooping net, one side of 

 which is confined to a semicircular bow .... [Biddle, 1904, vol. 2, p. 80.] 



Wliile the bulk of the fish taken were probably captured with seines 

 or dip nets, some were speared and others were taken by angling. 

 Spear tines have been recovered in all regions of the Plateau, but no 

 archeological evidence of hook and line has been recovered in the 

 McNary region. Angling was reported at least twice in the region 

 that is now within the McNary Reservoir. In 1806, Lewis and Clark 

 described the use of a gorge hook : 



Soon after we halted, an Indian boy tooli a piece of bone, which he substituted 

 for a fish-hook, and caught several chub, nine inches long. [Ibid., p. 74.] 



Again, in 1811, just above the mouth of the Snake Eiver, Ross de- 

 scribed an Indian fisherman : 



For this purpose, the fisherman cut off a bit of his leather shijt, about the size 

 of a small bean ; then pulling out two or three hairs from his horse's tail for a 

 line, tied the bit of leather on one end of it, in place of a hook or fly. Thus pre- 



