Implements for fishing
Hooks and Lines
The streams and lakes in the immediate neighborhood of Point Barrow contain no fish, and there is comparatively little fishing in the sea. When the water first closes in the autumn narrow tide cracks often form at the very edge of the beach. At these cracks the natives frequently catch considerable numbers of Polar cod (Boreogadus saida) and small sculpins (Cottus quadricornis and C. decastrensis), with the hook and line. The tackle for this fishing consists of a short line of whalebone, provided with a little “squid” or artificial bait of ivory, and fastened to a wooden rod about 18 inches or 2 feet long. The lure, which is apparently meant to represent a small shrimp, is kept moving, and the fish bite at it. We brought home two complete sets of tackle for this kind of fishing, two lines without rods and twelve lures or hooks. No. 89548 [1733] Fig. 264, has been selected for description.
The line is 40 inches long and made of four strips of whalebone 0.1 inch wide, fastened together with what appear to be “waterknots.” Two of these strips are of black whalebone, respectively 4½ and 9 inches long; the other two are of light colored whalebone and 15½ and 11 inches long. The light colored end is made fast to the eye in the small end of the hook as follows: The end is passed through the eye, doubled back and passed through a single knot in the standing part, and knotted round the latter with a similar knot (Fig. 265). This knot is the one generally used in fastening a fishing line to the hook. The other end is doubled in a short bight into which is becket-hitched one end of a bit of sinew thread about 3 inches long, and the other end is knotted into a notch at one end of the rod, as the whalebone would be too stiff to tie securely to the stick. The rod is a roughly whittled splinter of California redwood, 14½ inches long. The body of the lure is a piece of walrus ivory 1½ inches long. Through a hole in the large end of this is driven the barbless brass hook, with a broad thin plate at one end bent up, flush with the convex side. When not in use the line is reeled lengthwise on the rod, secured by a notch at each end of the latter, and the hook stuck into the wood on one side of the rod. The hook is wedged into the body of the lure with a bit of whalebone. The other specimen, No. 89547, [1733] from the same village, is almost exactly like this, but has a slightly shorter line, made of three strips of bone, of which the lower two, as before, are of light colored whalebone. The object of using this material is probably to render the part of the line which is under water less conspicuous, as we use leaders and casting lines of transparent silkworm gut. The body of the lure is made of old brown walrus ivory. These lures are 1 inch to 1½ inches long, and vary little in the shape of the body which is usually made of walrus ivory, in most cases darkened on the surface by age or charring, so that when carved into shape it is parti-colored, black and white. The body is often ornamented with small colored beads inlaid for eyes and along the back (Fig. 266a, No. 56609 [153], from Utkiavwĭñ).
The hook is usually of the shape described but is sometimes simply a slightly recurved spur about ½-inch long as in Fig. 266b (No. 56610 [160], also from Utkiavwĭñ). It is usually of brass or copper, rarely of iron. Two peculiar lures from Utkiavwĭñ, are No. 56705 [150a and 150b]. The first, a, has a body of brass of the usual shape, and a copper hook, and the other, b, has the body made of a strip of thin brass to the back of which is fastened a lump of lead or pewter. The hook appears to be made of a common copper tack. We were informed that these lures were also used for catching small fish, trout, smelts, and perhaps grayling in the rivers in summer. No. 89554 [950], Fig. 267a, from Utkiavwĭñ, is perhaps intended exclusively for this purpose, as it is larger than the others, (1.9 inch long) and highly ornamented with beads. Fig. 267b, No. 89783 [1007], is one of these beaded lures (2½ inches long), with an iron hook, undoubtedly for river fishing, as it belonged to the “inland” native, Ilû´bw’ga. It differs slightly in shape from the others, having two eyes at the small end into which is fastened a leader of sinew braid 3 inches long. On this are strung four blue glass beads and one red one.
No. ——387 [151] Fig. 268, from Utkiavwĭñ, is a rod rigged for fishing in the rivers. The rod is a roughly whittled stick of spruce or pine, 27 inches long. One line is 43 and the other 36 inches long and each is made of two strips of whalebone of which the lower is light colored as usual. The shorter line carries a small plain ivory lure of the common pattern, and the longer one a little flat barbless hook of copper with a broad flat shank. This was probably scraped bright and used without bait. The lines are reeled in the usual manner on the rod, and the hooks caught into notches on the sides of it. The small lures are called nĭ´ksĭñ.
When at the rivers in the autumn and early spring, they fish for burbot with a line carrying a peculiar large hook called iɐkqlûñ, which is baited with a piece of whitefish. There are two forms of this hook, which is from 3 to 5¼ inches long. One form differs in size only from the small nĭ´ksĭn, but is always of white ivory and not beaded (Fig. 269, No. 89550 [780] from Utkiavwĭñ, which is 4½ inches long and has a copper hook). The hook is of copper, brass or iron. The other form, which is perhaps the commoner, has a narrow flat body, slightly bent, and serrated on the edges to give a firm attachment to the bait. This body is usually of antler, and has a copper or iron hook either spur-shaped or of the common form as in Fig. 270, No. 89553 [764] from Utkiavwĭñ, which has a body of walrus ivory 4 inches long and a copper hook. Of late years, small cod hooks obtained from the ships have been adapted to these bodies, as is seen in Fig. 271, No. 89552 [841] from Utkiavwĭñ. The shank of the hook has been half imbedded in a longitudinal groove on the flatter side of the body, with the bend of the hook projecting about ¼ inch beyond the tip of the latter. The ring of the hook has been bent open and the end sunk into the body. The hook is held on by two lashings of sinew, one at each end of the shank.
No. 56594 [32] from Utkiavwĭñ is like the preceding, but has a larger hook, which from the bend to the point is wrapped in a piece of deer skin with the flesh side out, and wound with sinew having a tuft of hair at the point of the hook. This is probably to hide the point when the hook is baited. No. 56594 [167] from Utkiavwĭñ, has the hook fastened to the back of the body instead of the flat side. The manner in which these hooks are baited is shown in Fig. 272, which represents a complete set of burbot tackle (No. 89546 [946]) brought in and sold by some Utkiavwĭñ natives, just as they had been using it in the autumn of 1882 at Kuaru or Kulugrua. A piece of whitefish, flesh and skin, with the scales removed is wrapped round the hook so as to make a club-shaped body 4½ inches long and is sewed up along one side with cotton twine. The copper spur projects through the skin on the other side. This hook would not hold the fish unless it were “gorged,” but the voracious burbot always swallows its prey. In dressing these fish for the table, whitefish of considerable size were frequently found in them. The line is of whalebone like those already described but a little stouter, 78 inches long, and made of seven pieces, all black. The end of the line is fastened into an eye in the small end of a rough club-shaped sinker of walrus ivory, 4¾ inches long. There is another eye at the large end of the sinker, for the attachment of a leader of double sinew braid 5½ inches long connecting the hook with the sinker.
The reel, which serves also as a short rod, is of yellow pine 19½ inches long. When the line is reeled up, the hook is caught into the wood on one side of the reel. No. 89545 [946] is a similar set of baited tackle, bought from the same natives, differing from the preceding only in proportions, having a longer line—9 feet and 6 inches—and a somewhat larger bait. We also procured two sets of burbot tackle unbaited.
One of these (No. 56543 [33] from Utkiavwĭñ) has a whalebone line 14 feet long, and a roughly octahedral sinker of walrus ivory 3 inches long and 1½ in diameter. The hook, which is joined to the sinker as before by a leader of stout sinew braid, is of the second pattern, with serrated edges, and a copper hook. The leader is neatly spliced into this. The other, No. 56544 [187], also from Utkiavwĭñ, has no sinker and a hook with a club-shaped body and iron spur. It was probably put together for sale, as it is new. The sinkers, of which we collected five, besides those already mentioned, are always about the same weight and either club-shaped or roughly octahedral. They are always of walrus ivory and usually carelessly made. Fig. 273 (No. 56577 [260]) represents one of these sinkers (kíbica), on which there is some attempt at ornamentation. On the larger are two eyes and the outline of a mouth like a shark’s, incised and filled in with black refuse oil.
A similar line and reel are used for catching polar cod in the spring and late winter through the ice at some distance from the shore. These lines are 10 or 15 fathoms long, and provided with a heavy sinker of ivory, copper, or rarely lead, to which are attached by whalebone leaders of unequal length, two little jiggers like Fig. 274 (the property of the writer, from Utkiavwĭñ). This is of white walrus ivory, 2⅛ inches long and ⅜ in diameter at the largest part. The two slender hooks are of copper and are secured by wedges of whalebone. This makes a contrivance resembling the squid jigs used by our fishermen. These jiggers are sometimes made wholly of copper, which is scraped bright.
This fishery begins with the return of the sun, about the 1st of February, and continues when the ice is favorable until the season is so far advanced that the ice has begun to melt and become rotten. The fish are especially to be found in places where there is a good-sized field of the season’s ice, 3 or 4 feet thick, inclosed by hummocks, and they sometimes occur in very great numbers. In 1882 there was a large field of this kind about 2 miles from the village and the fishing was carried on with great success, but in 1883 the ice was so much broken that the fish were very scarce. Some lads caught a few early in the season, but the fishery was soon abandoned.
A hole about a foot in diameter is made through the ice with an ice pick, and the fragments dipped out either with the long-handled whalebone scoop, or the little dipper made of two pieces of antler mounted on a handle about 2 feet long, which everybody carries in the winter. The line is unreeled and let down through the hole till the jigs hang about a foot from the bottom. The fisherman holds in his left hand the dipper above mentioned, with which he keeps the hole clear of the ice crystals, which form very quickly, and in his right the reel which he jerks continually up and down. The fish, attracted by the white “jiggers,” begin nosing around them, when the upward jerk of the line hooks one of them in the under jaw or the belly. As soon as the fisherman feels the fish, he catches a bight of the line with the scoop in his left hand and draws it over to the left; then catches the line below this with the reel and draws it over to the right, and so on, thus reeling the line up in long hanks on these two sticks, without touching the wet line with his fingers.
When the fish is brought to the surface of the ice, he is detached from the barbless hook with a dextrous jerk, and almost instantly freezes solid. The elastic whalebone line is thrown off the stick without kinking and let down again through the hole. When fish are plentiful, they are caught as fast as they can be hauled up, sometimes one on each “jigger.” If the fisherman finds no fish at the first hole he moves to another part of the field and tries again until he succeeds in “striking a school.” The fish vary in abundance on different days, being sometimes so plentiful that I have known two or three children to catch a bushel in a few hours, while some days very few are to be taken. In addition to the polar cod, a few sculpins are also caught, and occasionally the two species of Lycodes (L. turnerii and coccineus) which voracious fish sometimes seize the little polar cod struggling on the “jigger” and are thus caught themselves. This fishery is chiefly carried on by the women, children, and old men, who go out in parties of five or six, though the hunters sometimes go fishing when they have nothing else to do. There were generally thirty or forty people out at the fishing-ground every day in 1882.
Jiggers of this pattern appear to be used at Pitlekaj, from Nordendskiöld’s description388, but I have seen no account either there or elsewhere of the peculiar method of reeling up the line such as we saw at Point Barrow. Lines of whalebone are very common among the Eskimo generally,389 and perhaps this material is preferable to any other for fishing in this cold region, for not only does the elastic whalebone prevent kinking, but the ice which forms instantly on the wet line in winter does not adhere to it, but can easily be shaken off. No. 56545 [410] is a line 51 feet and 10 inches long and 0.05 inch in diameter, made of human hair, neatly braided in a round braid with four strands. This was called a fishing line, but was the only one of the kind seen. Fishhooks of the kind described, with a body of bone or ivory, which serves for a lure, armed with a spur or bent hook of metal, without a barb, seem to be the prevailing type amongst the Eskimo. In the region about Norton Sound (as shown by the extensive collections of Mr. Nelson and others) this is often converted into an elaborate lure by attaching pendants of beads, bits of the red beak of the puffin, etc. Crantz mentions a similar custom in Greenland of baiting a hook with beads.390
Nets (Kubra)
The most important fishery at the rivers is carried on by means of gill-nets, set under the ice, and visited every few days. In these are taken large numbers of all three species of whitefish (Coregonus kenicotti, C. nelsoni, and C. laurettæ.) The collection contains three specimens of these nets, two of whalebone and one of sinew. No. 56754 [147], Fig. 275, is a typical whalebone net. It is long and shallow, 79 meshes long and 21 deep, made of fine strips of whalebone fastened together as in the whalebone fishing lines. Most of the whalebone is black, but a few light colored strips are intermixed at random. The length of the mesh is 3¼ inches, and the knot used in making them is the ordinary netting-knot. When not in use the net is rolled up into a compact ball and tied up with a bit of string. When set, this net is 21 feet 7 inches long and 3 feet 4 inches deep. The other whalebone net (No. 56753 [172], also from Utkiavwĭñ), is similar to this, but slightly larger, being 87 meshes (25 feet) long and 22 (3 feet 9 inches) deep. The length of mesh is 3½ inches. Fig. 276 (unit of web) is a net (No. 56752 [171] from the same village) of the same mesh and depth, but 284 meshes (60 feet) long and made of twisted sinew twine.
I had no opportunity of seeing the method of setting these nets under the ice, but it is probably the same as that used in setting the seal nets. When in camp at Pernyû in the summer, the natives set these nets in the shoal water of Elson Bay, at right angles to the beach, with a stake at each end of the net. They are set by a man in a kayak, and in them are gilled considerable numbers of whitefish, two species of salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha and O. nerka) and an occasional trout (Salvelinus malma). They take these nets east with them on their summer expeditions, but we did not learn the method of using them at this season. Perhaps they are sometimes used for seining on the beach, as Thomas Simpson says that the Eskimo at Herschel Island (probably Kûñmûd´lĭñ) sold his party “some fine salmon trout, taken in a seine of whalebone, which they dragged ashore by means of several slender poles spliced together to a great length.”391
An Utkiavwĭñ native told us that he found trout (Salvelinus malma) so plentiful at or near the mouth of the Colville, in 1882, that he fed his dogs with them.
Fig. 277 is a peculiar net or fish-trap (No. 56755 [190]) from Utkiavwĭñ, the only specimen of the kind seen. It is a conical, wide-mouthed bag, 8 feet 4 inches long and 5½ feet wide at the mouth, netted all in one piece of twisted sinew, with a 2¼-inch mesh. This was brought over for sale at an early date, before we were well acquainted with the natives, and we only learned that it was set permanently for catching fish. Unfortunately, we never saw another specimen, and through the press of other duties never happened to make further inquiries about it. From its shape it would appear as if it were meant to be set in a stream with the mouth towards the current. This contrivance is called sápotĭn, which corresponds to the Greenlandic saputit, a dam for catching fish.
From all accounts, the natives east of the Anderson River region were ignorant of the use of the net before they made the acquaintance of the whites,392 though they now use it in several places, as in Greenland and Labrador. The earliest explorers on the northwest coast, however, found both fish and seal nets in use, though, as I have already mentioned, the seal net was spoken of at Point Barrow as a comparatively recent invention. At the present day, nets are used all along the coast from the Mackenzie and Anderson rivers (see MacFarlane’s Collection) as far south at least as the Yukon delta.393 I have not been able to learn whether gill nets are used in the delta of the Kuskoquim. Petroff394 mentions fish traps and dip nets merely. That the natives of Kadiak formerly had no nets I infer from Petroff’s statement395 that “of late they have begun to use seines of whale sinew.” Nets are generally used on the Siberian coast. We observed them ourselves at Plover Bay, and Nordenskiöld396 describes the nets used at Pitlekaj, which are made of sinew thread. It is almost certain that the American Eskimo learned the use of the net from the Siberians, as they did the habit of smoking, since the use of the gill net appears to have been limited to precisely the same region as the Siberian form of tobacco pipe.397
Spears
The only evidence which we have of the use of spears for catching fish in this region is a single specimen, No. 89901 [1227], Fig. 278, from Utkiavwĭñ, which was newly and rather carelessly made for sale, but intended, as we were told, for spearing fish. This has a roughly whittled shaft, of spruce, 21½ inches long, armed at one end with three prongs. The middle prong is of whalebone, 4⅓ inches long, inserted into the tip of the shaft, which is cut into a short neck and whipped with sinew. The side prongs are also of bone, 9 inches long. Through the tip of each is driven a sharp, slender slightly recurved spur of bone, about 1½ inches long. Each prong is fastened to the shaft with two small wooden treenails, and they are braced with a figure-of-eight lashing of sinew through holes in the side prongs and around the middle one. The side prongs are somewhat elastic, so that when the spear is struck down on the back of a fish they spring apart and allow the middle prong to pierce him, and then spring back so that the spurs either catch in his sides or meet below his belly, precisely on the principle of the “patent eel spear.” This implement is almost identical with one in the National Museum from Hudson Bay, which appears to be in general use among the eastern Eskimo.398 The name, kăki´bua, is very nearly the same as that used by the eastern natives (kākkĭe-wĕi, Parry, and kakívak, Kumlien). This spear is admirably adapted for catching large fish in shallow rocky streams where a net can not be used, or where they are caught by dams in tidal streams in the manner described by Egede and Crantz. There is so little tide, however, on the northwest coast, that this method of fishing can not be practiced, and, as far as I know, there is no locality in the range of the Point Barrow natives, a region of open shoal beaches, and rivers free of rocks, where this spear could be used in which a net would not serve the purpose much better. Taking into consideration the scarcity of these spears and the general use of nets, I am inclined to believe that this spear is an ancient weapon, formerly in general use, but driven out of fashion by the introduction of nets.