Fish and Fishing (Native American culture)
Fish and fishing hold significant cultural, dietary, and historical importance in Native American societies, particularly across northern and northwestern regions of North America. For many tribes, fish have been a staple food source, with techniques for capturing fish ranging from hooks and lines to nets, harpoons, and weirs. While most tribes utilized fish as a key part of their diet, exceptions like the Hopi exist, where fish are considered taboo. The Pacific Northwest stands out for its reliance on salmon, whose seasonal runs are integral to both sustenance and cultural rituals.
Fishing practices varied across regions, with men typically engaged in catching fish while women often participated in gathering fish after they had been stunned or poisoned. Shellfish collection was primarily a female activity, utilizing methods like hand gathering and digging. Preservation techniques, such as drying and smoking fish, date back thousands of years, allowing communities to store fish for extended periods.
Historically, fishing rights have been a contentious issue, with treaties protecting these rights being frequently challenged by non-Native settlers. Landmark legal decisions, such as the Boldt Decision in the 1970s, reaffirmed these rights, emphasizing the ongoing significance of fishing to Native American identity and culture.
Fish and Fishing (Native American culture)
- TRIBES AFFECTED: Pantribal
- SIGNIFICANCE: Fish were a dietary mainstay in northern and northwestern North America and a significant part of the diet in most other regions of the continent
With the exception of a few tribes, such as the Hopi, for whom fish are taboo, all American Indians, First Nations, Inuit, and M utilized fish for food. Fish were captured by an impressive array of technology, including hooks and lines, gorges (double-pointed spikes on lines, swallowed by fish), harpoons, bows and arrows, leisters (spears with grabbing hooks alongside their points), fish traps, and nets. Hooks, gorges, and traps sometimes were baited. Nets were set, thrown, or dipped; weirs (fencelike fish traps) sometimes incorporated set nets. In some places, vegetable poisons were thrown into pools to bring stunned or killed fish to the surface. When spawning fish were dense, they might be clubbed out of the water or simply grabbed with the hands. All these techniques were widespread in North America. Men most frequently did the fishing, though women often collected fish after they had been poisoned.
Shellfish were collected by different methods. Most mollusks were collected by hand or by digging, work that usually was considered to be like plant gathering and was done by women. Lobsters, crabs, and other crustaceans usually were captured in nets or traps by men. Although shell heaps left from such gathering sometimes are extensive, few tribes relied on shellfish heavily.
The degree of reliance on finfish varied around North America. The greatest reliance was in the Pacific Northwest, where salmon runs provided vast quantities of food that was preserved for use through the year. Salmon was important to Native Americans in this culture area, and the salmon run was a critical annual event surrounded by religious and social ritual to ensure success. Less intensive river and ocean fishing secured a variety of other fish, including the olachen, a fatty fish used for candles. The Inuit of the Arctic also used a considerable amount of fish, though sea mammals provided the greater part of their diet. Tribes of the northern forests of Canada used large quantities of lake fish seasonally, when mammals were less available. Fish were important to tribes of the Atlantic coast, the interior woodlands, and California, but they did not assume the importance they did in the aforementioned areas. Fish were relatively unimportant in the Plains culture and the arid Southwest and West.
Most fish come together in great numbers during seasonal spawning, and maximum advantage of their abundance can be taken only if their flesh can be preserved. In the far north, this can be accomplished by freezing, but elsewhere the technology must be more complicated. Placing fish on racks over low fires dries the meat and impregnates it with chemicals from the smoke. These chemicals flavor the meat and inhibit the growth of microorganisms, and fish can be preserved for several months by this method. Such drying-smoking racks are known archaeologically from as early as 6000 B.C.E. in New York’s Hudson Valley. There is no evidence that any Indigenous tribe used salt to preserve fish or other meat.
In the United States, American Indians' fishing rights were preserved in the original treaties between the US government and American Indian tribes signed in the late 1700s and 1800s. Despite that, between the 1880s and mid-1900s non-Native settlers repeatedly tried to restrict American Indians' access to fishing locations or arrested American Indians for off-reservation fishing. In each instance, US courts upheld American Indian fishing rights. In the 1960s, Washington state enforcement officials increasingly began arresting American Indians for fishing outside of reservations, as well as confiscating boats and fishing equipment. In response, Native fishermen began staging fish-ins, demonstrations held at their accustomed fishing grounds. The fish-ins ended in early 1974, when Judge George Boldt ruled that American Indian fishing rights were protected by the supreme law of the land in the court case United States v. State of Washington, colloquially known as the Boldt Decision. The Bolt Decision was affirmed in 1975 and 1979.
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Dougherty, Phil. "Boldt Decision: United States v. State of Washington." History Link, 24 Aug. 2020, www.historylink.org/file/21084. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
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