Fish, Fisliing and Fisheries of Pennsylvajiia. LI 



CHAPTEE II. 



Eaely Fishing on the Susquehanna. 



The vast abundance of fish in the rivers and streams of the colony of 

 Pennsylvania excited the astonishment of the early European settlers, 

 prepared as they had been beforehand by tales of the multitude of ani- 

 mal life in the new country. One amazed traveler on his return to Eng- 

 land in 1588 writes: "For foure monethes of the yeere, February, March, 

 Aprill and May, there are plentie of Sturgeons, and also in the same 

 monethes of Herrings ; some of the ordinary bignesse as ours in Eng- 

 land, but the most part farre greater, of eighteene, twentie inches, and 

 some two foote in length and better; both these kinds of fishe in those 

 monethes are most plentiful, and in best season which were founde to 

 bee most delicate and jileasant meate. 



"There are also Troutes, Porpoises, Bayes, Oldivines, Mullets, Plaice, 

 and very many other sortes of excellent good fish, which we have taken 

 and eatan, whose names I know not but in the country language ; we 

 have of twelve sorts more the pictures as they were drawn in the couu- 

 trey with their names." 



The fame of the fishing, especially that of the shad of the Susque- 

 hanna, even reached the hardy and thrifty settlers of Connecticut, and 

 many of them left their homes in that part of the country and came to 

 and settled in the picturesque Wyoming Valley, from Wyoming to Ti- 

 oga Point, now known as Athens. They brought their nets with them 

 and each neighborhood established a fishery for its own accommoda- 

 tion. For a long time the chief food of these hardy people was taken 

 from the river. Soon after their arrival trouble arose between them and 

 ihe government of Pennsylvania over the right of possession of the 

 Wyoming Valley, and a war was begun, which lasted for thirty years, 

 during which buildings, farm produce and personal elBfects were de- 

 stroj'ed by fire or carried away as plunder, and much suffering was 

 caused. For much of this time the Connecticut settlers had to live al- 

 most altogether on the fish caught. Indeed it was sometimes difiicult to 

 obtain even these, for, according to records, it was a matter of bitter 

 complaint in 1784 that the Pennamites had destroyed their sieves, and 

 so reduced them to the verge of starvation. To such destitution were 

 they driven in some instances that, according to one old settler, on one 

 •occasion when he came back from a short excursion with a companion 

 he found everything destroyed, and the only edible thing they could 

 •discover were two dead shad in the river bank. These they cooked and 



