They Are Then Cured And Packed In A Peculiar Manner.
After having
been opened and disemboweled, they are exposed to the sun on
scaffolds erected on the river banks.
When sufficiently dry, they
are pounded fine between two stones, pressed into the smallest
compass, and packed in baskets or bales of grass matting, about
two feet long and one in diameter, lined with the cured skin of a
salmon. The top is likewise covered with fish skins, secured by
cords passing through holes in the edge of the basket. Packages
are then made, each containing twelve of these bales, seven at
bottom, five at top, pressed close to each other, with the corded
side upward, wrapped in mats and corded. These are placed in dry
situations, and again covered with matting. Each of these
packages contains from ninety to a hundred pounds of dried fish,
which in this state will keep sound for several years.** (Lewis
and Clarke, vol. ii. p. 32.)
We have given this process at some length, as furnished by the
first explorers, because it marks a practiced ingenuity in
preparing articles of traffic for a market, seldom seen among our
aboriginals. For like reason we would make especial mention of
the village of Wishram, at the head of the Long Narrows, as being
a solitary instance of an aboriginal trading mart, or emporium.
Here the salmon caught in the neighboring rapids were
"warehoused," to await customers. Hither the tribes from the
mouth of the Columbia repaired with the fish of the sea-coast,
the roots, berries, and especially the wappatoo, gathered in the
lower parts of the river, together with goods and trinkets
obtained from the ships which casually visit the coast. Hither
also the tribes from the Rocky Mountains brought down horses,
bear-grass, quamash, and other commodities of the interior. The
merchant fishermen at the falls acted as middlemen or factors,
and passed the objects of traffic, as it were, cross-handed;
trading away part of the wares received from the mountain tribes
to those of the rivers and plains, and vice versa: their packages
of pounded salmon entered largely into the system of barter, and
being carried off in opposite directions, found their way to the
savage hunting camps far in the interior, and to the casual white
traders who touched upon the coast.
We have already noticed certain contrarieties of character
between the Indian tribes, produced by their diet and mode of
life; and nowhere are they more apparent than about the falls of
the Columbia. The Indians of this great fishing mart are
represented by the earliest explorers as sleeker and fatter, but
less hardy and active, than the tribes of the mountains and
prairies, who live by hunting, or of the upper parts of the
river, where fish is scanty, and the inhabitants must eke out
their subsistence by digging roots or chasing the deer. Indeed,
whenever an Indian of the upper country is too lazy to hunt, yet
is fond of good living, he repairs to the falls, to live in
abundance without labor.
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