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6. Sturgeon, Herring, and Other Fisheries
- University of Virginia Press
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83 6 Sturgeon, Herring, and Other Fisheries The Albemarle region once constituted the richest resource of nonmarine fish in the United States. Since early prehistory the native peoples relied on food from these waterways to make a significant annual contribution toward their very survival. A wide range of residential, yearround fish (e.g., crappie, perch, sunfish, bluegill and other panfish, black bass, bowfin, garfish), shellfish, and turtles formed a major portion of a subsistence diet. Then, like celestial clockwork, each spring these waterways became alive with unimaginable numbers of anadromous fish migrating from the sea to freshwater breeding grounds. For the indigenous people of the region, the crucial significance of these spring migrations was that plentiful fish arrive at the very leanest time of year, that is, after winter stores are used up and before ripening of the corn in July. As one scholar phrased it somewhat poetically, ‘‘The moon of the peak migration was known as the Spearfish Moon—the Algonquin April Moon.’’∞ Integral to these vast natural fisheries are the great sounds, which grade from a few salty inlets into the Pamlico Sound, through its expansive brackish marshes to lazy, dark creeks and water-saturated swamps of the Albemarle Sound. In turn, both the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds receive great rivers whose tributaries lead to breeding grounds for sturgeon , river herring, shad, striped bass, and other anadromous species. With regard to river herring and shad, none equals the Chowan River, which flows southward into the Albemarle Sound. Near the Virginia 84 W America’s Wetland border, it branches into the Meherrin, Nottoway, and aptly named Blackwater rivers (the Chowan-Meherrin is approximately 130 miles long). When English settlers first came to this region in the 1580s the entire sound region was controlled by Algonquin-speaking native people who prospered here at the southernmost periphery of Powhatan’s ‘‘Empire’’ of Virginia Algonquins. The fish-rich Chowan River at the western end of the Albemarle Sound was the home of a tribe of Carolina Algonquins (Chowanocs) contiguous with the Virginia Algonquins (Nansemonds) to the north. Further inland, away from the sounds, the rivers at this time were largely controlled by Iroquois-speaking Indians (Tuscarora, Nottoways , and Meherrins) (and, reportedly, some Sioux-speaking Indians who were retreating southward in the face of a relatively recent intrusion of Iroquois from the north).≤ During the Late Woodland Period (ad 1250–1650) fish constituted a significantly greater portion of the diet of natives living in the lower Roanoke River than those living further upstream in the piedmont. Speci fically, in Jordan’s Landing, an Indian village on the Roanoke River about thirty miles from the Albemarle Sound, fish were ‘‘accounting for 70% of the faunal remains.’’ Furthermore, fish constituted three of the five most consumed foods (bowfin, gar, Atlantic croaker, in that order); herrings (family Clupeidae) were also widely consumed.≥ After the English settled the Albemarle region from the mid-1600s, the sounds and their heavily trafficked rivers contributed disproportionately to the economy of colonial North Carolina, and commercial fisheries played an important role throughout. The foremost authority on North Carolina fish observed in 1907, ‘‘At one time more American shad and striped bass were caught in North Carolina than any other state.’’∂ Thus, a number of commercial species abounded in the waters of the Albemarle-Pamlico ecosystem, including sturgeon, river herring, shad, and striped bass, not to mention whales, porpoises, diamondback terrapins , oysters, shrimp, and blue crabs, each of which was fished commercially at one time or other. Sturgeon: Jurassic Survivor The Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrhynchus) is a veritable living fossil, a Jurassic survivor literally from the days of dinosaurs. Sturgeons were once common throughout the Albemarle-Pamlico region and up the Roa- [3.81.97.37] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:47 GMT) Sturgeon, Herring, and Other Fisheries W 85 noke River into Virginia. In bygone days it must have been a sight to witness 10- to 14-foot, 1,000-pound sturgeons literally jumping out of the Roanoke River, as they do today in the similar Suwannee River at headwaters of the Okefenokee Swamp of Georgia and northern Florida. A zoo-archaeological study of Late Woodland native villages along the Roanoke River documented that sturgeons served as food sources in this river beyond the Virginia border. The village in question was occupied ad 1000–1400, but today its site lies beneath Lake Gaston, the hydroelectric reservoir for the Virginia...