Science (journal)/Volume 5/No. 120/Prehistoric Fishing

by W. M. Beauchamp

Prehistoric fishing.

In Professor Rau's interesting work on prehistoric fishing is a series of Indian bone and horn fish-hooks, ending with a figure that I sent him of one found on an early site on the line of Onondaga county, N.Y. I was especially interested in this object; because it was the first thing found there that seemed to show any knowledge of Europeans, although the site was connected with later sites, near by, by several peculiar relics. The general form of the hook, with its distinct barb, was so like some of the present day, that I naturally thought the Indian maker had at least seen a white man's hook. The series in Professor Rau's work gave rise to doubts, as the main difference in this and others figured was in the barb. I was thus led to see the force of Dr. Rau's remark in his introduction: "I would not venture to say that barbed fish-hooks had been unknown in America in ante-Columbian times; I simply state that none have fallen under my notice."

In looking over some drawings of relics made about three years ago, my attention was arrested by one which I had labelled 'horn perforator.' The more I looked, the more the conviction strengthened that it was the barb of a fish-hook. Borrowing the fragment, I drew it again, after careful examination, and then sent the fragment to Dr. Rau for inspection. He says, "It certainly has the appearance of the barb of a fish-hook." The fragment is one inch and five-sixteenths long by about one-twelfth of an inch thick; from the point to the present end of barb, fifteen-sixteenths of an inch; while the width at the barb is about five-sixteenths; that of the shank, one-eighth of an inch. It is very sharp. There seems to have been a defect in the material, which caused the sharp point of the barb to break off, and which weakened the hook itself. This came from an early site where I have gathered many articles myself, and all are clearly prehistoric. The large copper spear figured by me for Dr. Abbott's 'Primitive Industries' came from the same field.

Yet I think the New-York Indians seldom used hooks. All the early references are to fishing with nets and spears; and our Indian village sites are seldom on the shores of deep lakes, almost always by streams, or near the shallow rifts of rivers. Stone fish-weirs are not uncommon, probably used as they were farther south. One of three deep bays which I measured was a work of great magnitude. Nets were much used, and I have found the flat sinkers on sites far away from the water. These were small, however. The large ones, measuring six to seven inches across, I have only found on the river-bank.

A small cylindrical sinker of brown sandstone, grooved around the centre, was probably used on a line. The ends are rounded. A rough tube of copper, two and a half inches long by three-fourths in diameter, found by the Oneida River, I have thought might have been attached to a line, as well as the polished stone plummets.

The polished slate arrows of the Seneca and Oswego rivers, and of one part of Lake Champlain, I think may prove to be fish-knives, being much like a double-bladed knife of broad form. They would have been admirable for opening and skinning fish, had savages been so fastidious.

W. M. Beauchamp.