Humboldt County Historical Society

A common theme in letters written home by Euro-American settlers who began arriving in Humboldt in 1850 was the region's wealth of natural resources, the abundance of elk, fish, game birds, and timber. That a person might walk across the rivers on the backs of the salmon became a common refrain to signify this abundance.

Fish Weir Across the Trinity River—Hupa
Photo credit: Northwestern University Library, Edward S. Curtis's 'The North American Indian': the Photographic Images, 2001. Library of Congress Edward Curtis Photos

The Eel River now depends on the success of several salmon restoration projects, and the beleaguered Klamath has been turned into a potential death trap for its remaining native Chinook, who, attempting to return to spawn, encounter inadequate and unnaturally warm waters and find their upstream progress blocked by dams.

Salmon was a staple in the diet of Native Peoples for centuries before the arrival of Euro-Americans. Freeman House, author of Totem Salmon, writes that ecologists now estimate that riverine peoples consumed as much as 500,000 to two million pounds of salmon per year, or about a pound per person per day. Fishing implements included spears, hooks, lines of iris fiber, nets and weirs. Large nets were anchored with stone sinkers and attended by men in canoes. Ingenious weirs funneled salmon into woven bags. Early ethnographer Edward S. Curtis writes of a setup utilized by the Wiyot on the Eel River which included hanging the dry carapace of a crab on one of the channel net poles: when fish struck the net, the pole rattled the crab carapace, alerting the fishermen.

Native peoples took only what was needed, and the procuring of food was accompanied by rituals which highlighted their reliance on the gifts of nature. Of special significance, writes Freeman House, were the first salmon ceremonies which served to protect the river ecology as well as to preserve inter-tribal relations. For example, when the spring Chinook salmon arrived on the Klamath and Smith Rivers, no fish could be taken until the first salmon ceremony was enacted at the Yurok village of Welkwau, near the mouth of the Klamath. In the ritual, the first salmon to arrive was allowed to pass, the next was speared to the sound of mournful cries from the women. The unfolding ceremony expressed the people's gratitude and respect for the salmon and their hopes of future happiness based on this vital food source. For the next five days, the salmon catch was limited to what could be eaten fresh only; it could not be smoked or stored.

Runners would then take news of the salmon's arrival upstream to the Karuk, as well as to the Hupa on the Trinity River. By delaying fishing, the first salmon ceremonies ensured that all peoples along the river would have plenty to eat, and that sufficient salmon would make it upstream to their favored spawning grounds, thus guaranteeing future salmon populations.

With the arrival of Euro-Americans came a different world view and a market economy in which thousands of barrels of salt salmon were shipped from the North Coast to San Francisco. In a 1990 Humboldt Historian, Mary Ellen McGuinn Niles recalls the enterprise of Jesse Dungan, who established the first canneries on the Eel River in the 1853. A cooper by trade, Dungan was able to manufacture his own barrels in which to pack and ship salmon. He imported Chinese laborers, thus uniting the three great forces of Western business prosperity: capital, labor, and natural resources.

Today we know quite a bit about the amazing Pacific salmon, which has the capacity to metamorphose from a freshwater fish to a saltwater fish as its life cycle takes it from river to ocean and, miraculously, back again; we know, too, about the salmon's restorative nutrients, which are so beneficial to our human hearts, brains, and even emotional well-being. The fight is on to protect the salmon fisheries, and the longstanding Native American response of respect and gratitude may light the road to a new kind of prosperity.

Historical Photos of Salmon Fishing in Humboldt County