One could pick out the Indian section of the village, because not far
from it was the Indian graveyard, with its scaffolding of poles and brush
and its offerings for the dead. There were almost interminable rows of
scaffolding on the river's edge and upon the high bank where hung the
salmon drying in the sun. The river, as it ambled along, here over
shallows, there over rapids and tiny waterfalls, was the pathway for
millions and millions of salmon upon a pilgrimage to the West and
North--to the happy hunting grounds of spawn. They came in droves so
thick at times that, crowding up the little creeks which ran into the
river, they filled them so completely as to dam up the water and make the
courses a solid mass of living and dead fish. In the river itself they
climbed the rapids and leaped the little waterfalls with incredible
certainty; except where man had prepared his traps for them. Sometimes
these traps were weirs or by-washes, made of long lateral tanks of
wicker-work. Down among the boulders near the shore, scaffoldings were
raised, and from these the fishermen with nets and wicker-work baskets
caught the fish as they came up.
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