56 
Fishing Utensils. Fish-nets were made of willow twine, with a backing 
of willow line, in the same manner as European nets except that only one 
backing was used, on which the net was loose so that it could move easily. 
This may have been to keep it from breaking. There was backing on the 
top and bottom of the net, which was set and visited as is the European 
net of twine employed at the present time. Willow nets are known among 
most of the northern Athapaskan tribes but are no longer used. 
The net measure was a thin, rectangular block of spruce wood cut to 
the length of the desired mesh. The willow-net netting needle was made 
of a thin piece of spruce about 8 inches long and 1^ inches wide. Square 
notches were cut in the ends about 1 inch deep and 1 inch wide. This is 
a simpler form of needle than that used in making thread nets, the latter 
probably not being suitable for the dry, less flexible willow twdne. 
Nets made out of babiche are used for taking beaver. They are about 
15 feet long and are set much after the fashion of fish-nets. The attaching 
lines are put through a sliding piece of bone so that when the beaver is 
entangled its exertions draw the net into a sort of bag and the animal is 
easily drawn to the surface. 
Fish-hooks were made by attaching a piece of bone, generally part of 
the jaw of a trout, to a short wood haft with sinew. A short piece of 
babiche was attached to this hook so that the fish could not bite through 
the willow fibres which made up the rest of the line. Hooks were baited 
by sewung on a piece of fish skin. 
Spears of several types are known by the Satudene. Perhaps the 
commonest is the herring spear with a haft about 6 feet long, split at the 
end for the insertion of a moose-bone point. Two barbed tines about 8 
inches long made of fire-hardened birch are spliced on around the pointed 
end of the haft. The width of the tines is gauged by the palm of the hand. 
A cop} 7 of the Eskimo double spear is also used, with upturned wooden 
barbs lashed on the tines. A spear with a single metal blade is employed 
to catch jack-fish spawning in the spring around lakes whose edges are free 
of ice. This spear seems to be a copy of an early form, for Wentzel says 
(1890, I, page 90) that the spear made by the Beaver (Slave) was about 9 
feet long with a bone blade at one end, furnished with a row of barbs. A 
drag-spear made of a long spruce pole with a fish-hook on the end is pushed 
under fish idling against the current, and they are pulled ashore. 
The ice-chisel is a simple instrument composed of a sharpened piece 
of moose humerus about 10 inches long, hafted into a 7-foot spruce pole 
left thick at the hafting end for the advantage of weight. The handle w r as 
split and then bound with babiche after the long, tapering bone was inserted. 
Eskimo ice-chisels of native copper were in use by the Dogribs at Rae in 
1913. King (1836, I, page 152) mentions caribou horn chisel points in 
1836 among the Dogribs and he w r as impressed by the wide use of this 
material. 
The ice-scoop used for straining the fishing hole free from ice is made 
of a single piece of spruce or willow bent in the shape of a tennis racket and 
bound wfith babiche. One specimen was 28 inches long. The scoop 
proper is about 8 inches across and constructed of near-parallel strands of 
babiche running from the throat to the periphery. A few alternating cross- 
strands of babiche give firmness to the strainer. 
