63 
ing up the rivers. By day they often adopted a method common 
among the Indians and Eskimo of northern Canada; they set lures, 
such as a bear’s tooth, at holes in the ice and speared the fish that 
approached the bait. 
Several tribes em]:>loyed foi- hooking salmon a one-pronged, or 
more often multi-j)ronged, gaff that might rather be termed a rake. 
A modification of the instrument — a pole generally about ten feet 
long armed with a row of bone spikes for two feet from one end — 
served the Nootka for !)oth herring and oolakan ; drawn through a 
shoal of herring it nearly always impaled three or four fish.^ Special 
contrivances of this kind were not uncommon in Canada, for the 
Indians were quick to conceive or borrow new ideas in all matters 
that related to fishing and hunting. 
Despite their variety, all these methods yielded but a small toll 
of fish compared with the number caught with nets, traps, and weirs. 
It is a curious fact that the Eskimo, who employed a kind of square 
seine for capturing seals, never adopted the same method for fish 
until about the time of the discovery of America, when it was intro- 
duced from Siberian tribes into Alaska and spread eastward as far 
as the ^lackenzie delta. The northern, eastern, and west coast 
Indians all used the seine, the two first setting it under the ice during 
the winter as is often clone to-day. The eastern Indians and those 
of British Columbia had also bag-nets and dip-nets, which they 
usually employed in conjunction with weirs. The material of these 
nets varied considei-ably ; the Pacific Coast Indians generally used 
nettle, their iidand neighbours hemp, the eastern Indians nettle or 
hemp, northern natives willow-root or caribou thongs, and the 
Eskimo willow-root or baleen. 
Of weirs Nature herself provided many, which the Indians turned 
to full advantage. C’ertain rocky canyons, like that at Hagwilget on 
the Bulkley river, in northern British Columbia, left only a few nairow 
openings for the passage of the migrating salmon; there the natives 
planted their basket-traps, and plied their nets and spears in the 
swirling water below them. On the sea-coast, again, the receding tide 
often left a few fish stranded in pools among the rocks. These natural 
weirs probably suggested the construction of artificial ones in suitable 
places. The Kwakiutl and J^alish Indians on the east coast of Van- 
1 ('f. lloarnf: Oj). cit., 265. .'^pruat ; Op. cii. ]>. 224. .li'witt; O. cit.. ]>. 143. Mean's ; Op. cit., 
p. 265, (.‘xagjrcrates the length ul the insti'iiitieiiT. 
