Sag” REPORT—1899. 
This net scarcely needs description : its name implies its use and form. 
Briefly it is a meshed bag, from three to four feet deep, attached to a 
hoop-like frame, to which a long slim pole is fastened. The fisher holds 
this pole in his two hands, and dips in the net on the up-stream side of 
him, with its mouth towards the current, and draws it slowly and 
regularly against the stream, as far as the pole allows, and then returns 
it in the air and repeats the action again. He continues thus till he has 
secured a fish. The women stand by to receive the fish, which they kill 
by a blow on the head. They then quickly and deftly cut it open, wrench 
off the head by inserting a stick through one of the gills and out through 
the mouth, and, giving it a dexterous turn of the wrist, cut out the back- 
bone, spread the two halves open, and hang it up to dry in an open shed 
constructed of poles for the purpose near by on the bank. Scores of 
these may still be seen along the line of the railway as one passes from Yale 
to Lytton. The knives which the women use for this are fashioned after 
the pattern of their own old implement, and are quite commonly made 
from a piece of an old hand-saw about five or six inches long, on the back — 
of which is secured a grooved piece of rounded wood about one and a half 
inches thick, which runs the whole length of the steel, and serves as a 
handle. The opposite or blade edge is ground down, and the ends are 
rounded, having, when completed, very much the appearance of a meat 
or suet chopper. I was told by some Indian women whom I watched at 
work that they prefer this style of knife to any other ; and to judge by 
the dexterous manner in which they ran the edge from the vent upwards 
along the belly of the fish, opened it out, cut out the backbone, and had 
it ready for drying, it certainly is an effective instrument for the purpose 
in their hands. 
Above Lytton on the Thompson, where the water is too clear for 
catching fish in nets, they spear them by torchlight. The fish show 
white at night under the glare of the torches, and the men go out in 
canoes and spear them readily. The spearman occupies the centre of the 
canoe, and when the salmon, attracted by the glare of the torches, comes 
near, he throws his spear at it and rarely misses his mark. The fish is 
now quickly seized by one of the others, knocked on the head, the spear 
withdrawn, and the fish thrown to the bottom of the canoe. 
Salmon Oil and Butter. 
The N’tlaka’pamug had another way of treating the salmon besides 
drying them. They extracted oil from them in considerable quantities. 
To do this they would place some forty or fifty fish, according to their 
size, in a large trough which they hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, 
as they did their canoes, with fire and adze. When the salmon were ripe, 
that is in a rotten state, water was poured in upon the mass in sufficient 
quantities to just cover the whole. Heated stones were then put in and 
the whole mass stirred till it was reduced to a hot pulp. The stones 
were then taken out and a pailful of cold water was poured on, which 
caused the oil to rise to the top. The oil was at this stage of a reddish 
tinge, and had, so say the Indians, no offensive smell. It was now 
skimmed off into birch-bark buckets with a spoon, made sometimes from 
the horn of the mountain sheep and sometimes of wood. It was 
allowed to stand overnight and boiled afresh next day and skimmed till 
quite clear. The oil was then stored away in bottles very ingeniously 
made from whole skins of medium-sized salmon. The skin for this pur- 
