Butler, Virginia L. and Jim E. O'Connor. “9000 years of salmon fishing on the Columbia River, North America.” Quaternary Research 62 (2004): 1-8. (Reviewed by Laura Gayton)
Summary:
This article outlines an argument which informs the debate about human/salmon interactions. Fifty years ago, an archeological dig uncovered a massive amount of salmon bones near The Dalles, Oregon. The authenticity of the human role assumed to be at least part of the explanation for the large grouping of bones has been under debate in the past years. More recent excavations have revealed that most of the remains are indeed anthropogenic in origin. These results indicate that the salmonids were a rich source of food, and date of occupation of this area was 9300 cal yr B.P. (Butler 1).
In the 19th century, the Columbia River was considered among the foremost salmon-producing rivers. Six species of salmon existed then, most of which are now extinct or threatened, while the Dalles area was an important fishing ground of indigenous peoples. Before the installation of The Dalles Dam in 1956, this stretch of river was premier fishing ground, where Native Americans caught what they could of the 10-16 million salmon surging upstream each year. At this site are some of the earliest radiocarbon records for Pacific Northwest archaeological sites in general.
In this study, which incorporated geologic features of the river as evidence that these fish were stockpiled by humans at some point and not by flooding or other deposition, the final conclusion was that humans were indeed responsible for the presence of the bones. This is further supported by the existence of bird skeletons on site, which had been chipped away by stone tools, also found in the vicinity.
The importance of this finding must be stressed. As Butler writes, “Records for the Dalles and other Columbia River archaeological sites dating throughout the Holocene… confirm that salmon have been important to native people for roughly 10,000 years” (7). In addition to establishing links between native peoples and a resource that has been so thoroughly damaged by installations such as dams, this study also gives a baseline estimate of salmonid populations roughly 10,000 years ago and establishes their presence in the Columbia River Basin at that time.
Critique:
This paper may have less to do with land use than I originally thought, but its topic is thought-provoking and its argument well-stated with many colorful and quality photographs, tables and graphs.
The article fails to directly address an issue that the paper seems to be peripherally concerned with: the rights of Native Americans to the use of fish populations and the devastation of said fish populations by exploitation by primarily white developers during and after the 1950s. To really get a bead on this topic, one would have to turn to a different paper that is more speculative and less concerned with straight archeological evidence, which is, granted, very interesting in and of itself.
Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
HC 441: Science Colloquium, Columbia River Ecology
Fall term, 2005
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