EEL-FISHING—A POPULOUS TRIBE. 103 
Like all coast tribes the Viard depended largely on fishing for a sub- 
sistence, and the lower waters of Eel River yielded them a wonderful 
amount of rich and oleaginous eels. To capture these they constructed a 
funnel-shaped trap of splints, with a funnel-shaped entrance at the large 
end, through which the creature could wriggle, but which closed on him 
and detained him inside. Traps of this kind they weighted down so that 
they floated mostly below the surface of the water, and then tied them to 
stakes planted in the river bottom. Thus they turned about with the 
swish of the tide, keeping the large ends always against the current, that 
the eels might slip in readily. 
The operation of driving these stakes into the river-bed as points of 
attachment for eel-traps, illustrates a point of Indian character. Wading 
out into the stream the fisherman gripes the top of the stake firmly in one 
hand to prevent it from being splintered, and with a stone in the other 
softly and carefully beats it into the hard-packed shingle. He works and 
saws it about, tapping it gently the while; and in this fashion he labors 
sometimes for hours on one pile, but drives it down at last so solid that 
nothing can root it out, where-a white man, with his impatience and his 
sledge-hammer, would have battered it into a hundred slivers and failed 
totally. Mr. Dunganne relates that in former times the great number of 
these stakes driven into the river-bed in summer made it look like an old, 
deserted corn-field. 
Besides this they fish for salmon and smelt in all the various methods 
practiced by the Yurok. They also drive down little weirs across tide- 
water bayous, and by observing the ebb and flow of the waters capture 
large quantities of little flat fish resembling the eastern perch, but some- 
thing different. 
The amazing fecundity of both land and water about Humboldt Bay 
once sustained a dense Indian population. The populousness of the ancient 
grave-yards, above referred to, is.one proof thereof; and the concordant 
testimony of the oldest settlers—Dunganne, Duncan, Kinman, and others— 
as to the multitudes living on the shores of this noble bay when they ar- 
rived, is conclusive. But their manner of smelt-fishing in the surf, whereby 
their eyes were often filled with brine, and the high, sand-driving winds 
