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FISHERIES OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 
251 
year to year 5 while others have followed this fishery so long that they 
have nothing better to do, and each season find^ them starting out on 
a voyage as a matter of course. 
Pelagic sealing has been carried on for some years from the Puget 
Sound region. As early as 1880 Swan records the fact that six schoon- 
ers had been employed in seal fishing from Neali Bay during the previous 
year. These were the Endora , of San Francisco, and the Champion , 
Teaser , Lottie , Letitia , and Mist, of Port Townsend. The fishery has been 
prosecuted with varying fortunes since that time. 
From the first the Makah Indians have been active participators in this 
industry, and that tribe furnishes some of the most skillful hunters em- 
ployed in the business — men who have both an inherited and acquired 
knowledge of the pelagic habits and movements of fur seals. In recent 
years white men have entered more extensively into the seal hunt, and 
their numbers were materially augmented in the summers of 1888 and 
1889, when the schooners Mollie Adams, Edward E. Webster, and Henry 
Dennis came here from New England, and brought large crews and an 
elaborate equipment of boats, etc., to engage in pelagic sealing. Al- 
though these vessels hailed from ports on the Atlantic, they really be- 
came a part of the fleet of this region, and have been so considered here. 
It would be interesting to trace in detail the history of this branch of the 
fishery, but its importance scarcely seems to demand it, and space will 
not permit it. 
Vessels and boats.— -With the exception of the before-mentioned New 
England schooners, the vessels employed in the seal fishery from Puget 
Sound and vicinity are small, roughly constructed, cheap craft, such as 
would scarcely command crews from many of the Atlantic ports.* It 
was stated before the Senate committee that vessels fitted out for the 
sealing business cost from $600 to $1,800, and $ 2,000 are required to 
fit one out. The vessels are all schooner-rigged and carry large crews 
and many boats. The boats are chiefly of two types, one introduced by 
the New England fishermen and the other a native dugout canoe. 
Apparatus and methods of fishing. — The following account of the appa- 
ratus and methods employed by the Indians was prepared by Swan in 
1880, and, with few minor changes, among which the use of firearms is 
the most noticeable, is said to be applicable to the present time : 
Until within a few years past the Indians have gone to sea boldly in their canoes, 
starting out at daybreak and returning at night. Three men usually go in a canoe 
at such times. Latterly they have put their canoes on hoard the sealing schooners 
which take them to the sealing grounds and lie by while the Indians go off in them and 
spear seals; the canoes taken on board the schooners had but two Indians in each. 
The outfit of each canoe qonsists of one and sometimes two spears, which are fitted 
* Captain Joshua Brown testified before the Senate Committee on Relations with 
Canada (see page 344) as follows : “I have not seen a vessel here that you could get 
a crew upon from Gloucester to do the fishing. There is very little value to those 
soft-wood vessels. They are coarse and rough.” 
