48 LIEUTENANT HOWISON REPORT ON OREGON, 1846
it until they have an opportunity to burn it, their great fear being that this sacred portion of the fish may be eaten by dogs, which they shudder to think would prevent them from coming again to the river. When it is remembered that the many thousand Indians living upon this river, throughout its course of more than twelve hundred miles, are almost entirely de- pendent upon salmon for their subsistence, it would lessen our surprise that these simple-minded people should devise some propitiatory mean of retaining this inappreciable blessing. The annual inroad of these multitudinous shoals into the Columbia may, in its effects upon the happiness and lives of the inhabi- tants, be compared to the effect produced upon the Egyptians by the rising of the Nile; a subject upon which they are de- scribed as reflecting not with lively solicitude and interest, but with feelings of religious solemnity and awe.
The salmon are much finer, taken when they first enter the river ; and from the last of May the business of catching and drying is industriously pursued by the Indians. These sell to the whites, who salt and pack for winter use, or exportation. As the season advances the fish become meagre and sickly, and only those not strong enough to force a passage against the torrent at the Cascades, and other falls, remain in the lower waters of the river. In September they are found at the very sources of the Columbia, still pressing up stream, with tails and bellies bruised and bloody by the long struggle they have had against the current and a rocky bottom. They die then in great numbers, and, floating down stream, the Indians inter- cept them in their canoes, and relish them none the less for hav- ing died a week or fortnight previous. The young fry pass out to sea in October; they are then nearly as large as herrings. Different families of salmon are in the habit of resorting to different rivers. The largest and best come into the Columbia, weighing on an average twenty pounds each; .some exceed forty pounds. Seven or eight hundred barrels are annually exported ; they retail at Oahu for ten dollars a barrel, but I do not believe they are so highly appreciated anywhere as in Ore- gon, where they may be considered their staple article of food. Sturgeon arid trout are also abundant in the Columbia.
