Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis

1. Dependence, Respect, and Moderation

1 / Dependence, Respect, andModeration To understand what went wrong with the industrial fishery and why modern management has failed, we should first step back and ask whether there was ever a successful fishery and what success might mean. Indians, as they do so often in environmental issues, have come to represent a native Eden. In popular literature and commercial advertisements alike, they stand as a symbol of natural simplicity. In the Pacific Northwest, popular culture imagines that an aboriginal balance and harmony existed between Indian fishers and salmon from which later fisheries devolved. Historians also portray the aboriginal fishery as benign in their critiques of the open-access policies of modern management. But their portrayal and critique falter because they also argue that Indians lacked both the numbers and the technology to harm the nineteenth century's massive runs. If Indians could not influence salmon populations, then their fishery does not matter in any historical sense. But look closer. Indians had a greater impact on salmon than we assume, and the success of their fishery has far more significance than Edenic myths suggest.1 The aboriginal salmon fishery provides a useful lens for analyzing the intersection ofeconomy, culture, and nature in the fisheries because Indians did influence salmon populations. Salmon were the largest single source of protein in the aboriginal diet, Indians' fishing techniques were potentially as effective as modern methods, and food storage practices and trade patterns extended consumption in both time and space. Cultural reliance on salmon and technological developments in the fishery allowed Oregon country Indians to consume a huge proportion ofthe region's runs. Indians' material and cultural relationships with salmon were both more influential and more complicated than popular mythology suggests. The scale of the aboriginal fishery and the Indians' dependence on 13 DEPENDENCE, RESPECT, AND MODERATION salmon posed a potentially significant threat to runs, yet Oregon's rivers still teemed with salmon when whites arrived. How did this happen? The answer lies in the way Indians managed their landscapes. According to anthropologists Eugene Hunn and NancyWilliams, social and environmental management is always a cultural act. "Hunter-Gatherers actively manage their resources" as actively as modern society does. In the Oregon country, historical, ethnological, and archeological evidence suggests that aboriginal spiritual beliefs, ritual expressions, social sanctions, and territorial claims effectively moderated salmon harvests. Myths, ceremonies, and taboos restrained individual and social consumption, while settlement patterns and usufruct rights restricted access to salmon. Oregon country Indians' dependence on salmon yielded forms ofrespect for the fish that sustained life, and respect shaped human actions that retarded consumption. Indian culture and economy produced a sustainable tension between society and nature.. In early December 1805, Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery hunkered down at the south end of Youngs Bay near the mouth of the Columbia River. After a journey of almost two years, the sojourners now had to endure Fort Clatsop's soggy monotony. During an uncharacteristicallybuoyant moment, however, William Clark remarked, 'We live sumptuously on our Wappatoe [sic] and sturgeon." Years later trappers and traders would echo Clark by noting the abundant herds ofelk and deer that wandered into their gun sights. Their reports helped foster a popular impression of the Oregon country as a cornucopia that was both accurate and misleading. The region did contain an amazing array of resources, but Indians did not exploit everything available. Rather, they were specialists) Indians relied primarily on salmon and a few other items for subsistence. They preferred salmon to other animals because of their abundance and reliability. Salmon runs fluctuate wildly at the extreme northern, southern, and eastern edges of their range, but Oregon country rivers were once among the most accommodating environments for salmon. Moreover, because salmon are anadromous and spawn in freshwater, they appeared at predictable places at predictable times. Fishing was thus a far more efficient way of procuring protein than hunting. It offered Indians a massive and timely supply ofprotein and carbohydrates. It is no wonder that salmon was a staple of aboriginal diets.4 Although virtually all Oregon country Indians (see map 3) specialized in salmon, individual groups employed markedly different subsistence strategies . Geography, environment, and culture thus produced a variety ofsubsistence patterns within this homogeneous salmon culture. DEPENDENCE, RESPECT, AND MODERATION An individual group's subsistence strategy depended largely on whether it lived on the coast, the Columbia River, the Plateau, or an interior valley. Indians living in coastal...