Oolachan net at Fishery Bay, 1980
Equinox time again...the spring equinox always seems to look forward, while the Fall perhaps look back. As the snows melt and anticipation of spring rises, the air is fresh and wet and full of smells and birdsong, I think about oolachan time. Oolachan, also spelled eulachon (Thalicthys pacificus) are anadromous smelt, rich in oils. In coastal Alaska the same fish are prized, and often termed “Hooligans”. Their arrival in the estuaries of rivers along the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska was widely anticipated and welcomed, as they brought an abundant source of fresh and rich food at a time in the year when stored foods were diminished and declining in quality, and hunting was extremely difficult due to deep wet soft snow. Many years ago my then husband and young daughter canoed to Fishery Bay on the Nass Estuary. The Nass (the name apparently means “belly” and comes from Tlingit) drew people from all the surrounding nations at the time of oolachan harvest in mid March to early April. Cedar dugout canoes made the trip from Haida Gwaii. Tsimshian and Nisga’a converged on their fish camps. Inland Gitksan and Witsuwit’en walked long trails known as “grease trails” through deep melting snows to the head of canoe navigation to come to harvest and trade for grease, the rendered oil that was (and is) the most prized product of the little fish. I was told they carried so much that each leg of the trail had to be walked three times to carry the goods to the coast and then back again with grease and fish. When Allen and Rose and I visited the fish camp of Charlie and Eunice Swanson when Rose was about 3, Eunice told us a story....she said that spring salmon and the oolachan had an argument about who was the saviour of the people....she laughed and said she forgot who won.
At the fish camp in Fishery bay the clouds of gulls wheel and fly in every direction, startled into the air by the slightest sound. They are attracted to the fish run, and to the fish meal left over after the grease is rendered. There is plenty of food for the birds. When we visited there some 30 years ago, people harvested some of these fat oolachan fed gulls along with the fish....I had never heard of anyone eating gulls before (nor since), but apparently they are quite palatable when they have been feeding on oolachan. People also hunted seals that came to follow the spawning oolachans.
The three pole frames for air-drying oolachans (digit) are conspicuous features of the oolachan camps. The long hand knotted trawls (long cone shaped nets) hung to dry after use are another conspicuous feature of the camps. These nets were formerly made of nettle fibre twine, and apparently took a year to make....no small amount of labour, given the need to harvest many mature tall nettle stalks and process them into fibre, spin the twine, and then knot the long fine net. It is fortunate that the rich soils fertilized by fish meal around the camp are excellent places to grow good quality nettles...and the investment in time to make the net would be repaid with tons of nutritious fish good for one’s own family use as fresh, dried, and smoked fish, and as fish oil. The fish and oil are valued and valuable for trading and for feasting (potlatching), where consumption and sharing of the grease adds stature to the Chief’s name and House.
Today walking in the ravine in Edmonton, the weather was fresh, and the melting snow and moist air reminded me of northwest BC in March. I found a tall fireweed stalk from last year, which had retted enough over the winter, and which was moist enough to work, and twisted a length of string while I walked. I used to do this with nettle stalks from by our barn when I lived in northwest BC. At the Museum of Civilization last month, I wasn’t able to see the nettle cord net they have in their collection, but I did see two spreading dogbane bana or large dipnets, and a couple of hanks of prepared fibre from dogbane(Apocynum androsimaefolium, related to Indian hemp) , called lekx in Gitksan, ready to twist into twine for netmaking. The dogbane cord in the nets was so well made and uniform I never would have believed it to be locally made cordage if the tag and accompanying fieldnotes hadn’t explicitly identified the material of the cord.
Seasonal knowledge and knowledge of seasonal cycles is vital in traditional life; being able to predict the timing of the spring high tides that will bring the life-giving oolachans was important business that could make a life or death difference to people’s ability to survive the year. Knowing when to start out from inland areas more than 100 kilometres away by trail was an exacting business. One way of coordinating this seasonal round of harvest and trade was by traditional phenological knowledge, such as the song of the robin which to Gitksan means that the steelhead (milit) will be moving in the rivers and can be caught. Another way is by the use of “calendrical sites” where the shift in location of the rising sun is tracked over a period of weeks at a known site to determine when it is time to depart the winter camp to go down river to meet the salmon (the “footprints” on the Sam Goozley territory, a Witsuwit’en clan territory are one such site). Talking to a colleague of mine at Tofino on Vancouver Island a couple of weeks ago I inquired about whether oolachan were on the coast. She replied that there were no longer oolachan runs into rivers on the west coast of Vancouver Island, but that the herring were in. The roe of spawning herring was another important seasonal resource on the coast, and I recall the crunchy salty taste of the roe with fondness.
Equinox...moving into the bright half of the year.
