Note 48 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

1º Abundance of food. The Aleuts eat only the best parts of the dried fish; the rest is thrown away48. Bancroft tells us that “although game is plentiful, the Haidas are not a race of hunters, but derive their food chiefly from the innumerable multitude of fish and sea animals, which, each variety in its season, fill the coast waters”49. The Tacullies, “are able to procure food with but little labour”50. Our informant also speaks of the “abundant natural supplies in ocean, stream, and forest” of the Puget Sound Indians51. The Tlinkits, according to Holmberg, do not take great pains to secure their food; the ebbing tide leaves a multitude of sea-animals ashore, which they can gather without difficulty52. Kane remarks: “Salmon is almost the only food used by the Indians on the Lower Columbia River, the two months’ fishing affording a sufficient supply to last them the whole year round”53. About the tribes of W. Washington and N. W. Oregon Gibbs remarks: “With all these sources of subsistence, the greater part of which is afforded spontaneously by the land or water, nothing but indolence or want of thrift could lead to want among a population even greater than we have reason to believe at any time inhabited this district”54. The salmon fishery “has always been the chief and an inexhaustible source of food for the Chinooks, who, although skilful fishermen, have not been obliged to invent a great variety of methods or implements for the capture of the salmon, which rarely if ever have failed them”55. The Ahts also, in Jewitt’s time, could procure an immense quantity of salmon with the greatest facility56. Several other tribes on the Pacific Coast have fixed habitations and live together in large groups, as we soon shall see; therefore amongst them too food must be abundant, though this is not explicitly stated.