From George Gibbs, 11 October 1850
Astoria O[regon] T[erritory] Octobre 11th. 1850
My Dear Claiborne
I am wresting what information I can respecting the salmon & salmon fisheries of the Columbia river and as you are a sportsman, I want to get from you the result of your own observations what particulars you can furnish.
I understand you have taken salmon with the hook, is this so & what bait did you use—flies or ground bait? [Mr.] Falworth took some off [illegible]bar with pork. Have you noticed the difference between spring & fall salmon, & what is it. Some persons consider the fall salmon, so called as old [males] which follow the funales up the river but this I believe to be an error. Do the fall salmon at the Dalles & the Chutes contain roes? Is there any external difference between the white salmon & the ordinary red salmon—& if so what? When do the white salmon come up, spring or fall, & do they frequent separate or the same streams. Loring1 says they run up two streams just above the cascades especially—this information he got from Indians. Do you notice other varieties of salmon, or fish of that species & what other fish besides salmon are taken at the Dalles or above, & how & when. Are there any trout in your streams & are they precisely similar to the spotted trout of the states or a variety. If so what is the difference? I saw trout on the march this side of the rocky mountains which appeared to me a variety. They were about 6 inches long, thicker in proportion than ours with a red stripe down the sides & having a more forked tail.
I send you an extract of the substance of an article on salmon in an English review.
The salmon first appears as “fry,” seemingly hatched in May from eggs laid in December (this is in England & Scotland mind you). The fry in the course of one year assume the form of “parr” being about 3 ½ inches in length. In May of the 2nd. year they grow to 6 ½ inches in length with silvery sides and blue backs and take the name “smolts” or salmon fry commonly so called. These then descend to the sea and become “grilse.”
There are three species of smolt in the Tweed,2 the black fin or salmon smolt, the orange fin or Whitling and the gray fin or “bull trout.”
In Fresh water the sea (bull) trout, is a voracious feeder, especially during river floods & when the water is high coloured, whereas the salmon on such occasions refuse every variety of sustenance. The growth of the fish from smolts to grilse is excessively rapid—these last differ exceedingly in size. They have been known to reach 16 lbs. The grilse spawns as well as the salmon & the small grilse has been known to impregnate the eggs of the salmon. (An analogous case exists among birds in the common grey eagle which is known to be the young of the bald eagle. They breed the year before attaining their full plumage, which if I remember right is not till the third year.)
The writer of the paper above quoted attributes the striking difference in the size of grilse before maturing to the length of time they remain in salt water before returning to the rivers. One year more converts the grilse into the salmon proper. The female salmon deposits her eggs in the gravel & the male sheds his milt upon them. She then covers them with her tail.
Now:
Between here and Pugets sound there is a tract of land apparently covered with water upon which there are immense numbers of small hillocks of gravel—so many in fact that in traversing the plain it is inconvenient to guide your horse among them, & some persons believe them to have been made when the land was submerged by the salmon. Have you ever seen any such elevations or heard of them elsewhere. I have not seen these but the officers of the Massachusetts reported them.
Spencer of the H[udson’s] B[ay] Co has just been in & I have pumped him as to his knowledge of salmon.3 He says that they first show themselves here from the 15th. to the 25th. of April but that the fishing season proper at the mouth of the river is from the latter part of May until the middle of July—that the fall salmon or black S. come in about the middle & become plenty at the end of October and last into November—about two weeks (here) Next however some of them come in even as early as the spring salmon and that he presumes many do so in the summer as he has seen them taken in a small stream opposite Coffin rock in July. This by the way agrees with the fact that we saw them on the march in the tributaries of Snake river, exhausted & worn out—also Col. Loring told me that at two small streams near the Cascades he saw Indians taking “white salmon” that is salmon with white flesh—which they said were the only kind that came up from those rivers—finally Stewart of yours, found them spearing salmon in a small river back of Vancouver early in September.
From all this I infer that the spring salmon, which come in fast & strong, & are perhaps a stronger fish though not much larger, do not go up the small streams near the coast, but push up the main rivers, & that the black or fall salmon, with white flesh (what I fear I called the white salmon in the beginning of this d—d confused letter) is not so powerful a fish & puts up the first stream it comes across. Certain it is that here the spring salmon are taken in the main river, & the fall in the brooks.
Spencer also says that there is a long & slender species of salmon which comes in at the end of the spring fishing which differs from the others—& he supposes that the small fish, called here salmon trout, but which are not trout, which come in a little later are a different species—that they may be, or young salmon—grilse perhaps, for I dont know the distinction.
When do each variety first appear at the Chutes & how long does the season last for each?
Now old fellow, if you will put your brains together with mine about his, we may hatch a few eggs for the Spirit of the Times. I have a good many notes & am collecting more—Drop me what you can rely on, as I promised Bill Porter to write him, and in the spring we will keep a better look out.4
By the way, I want you to collect and send me some good skulls, to send to my brother in New York just mark on them in pencil where you got them from & what tribe they are & clap them in a box with some grass to keep them from breaking—Johnson or Chenoweth will send them down by [Frosts] steam boat—I shall look upon this as a personal favor
Remember me to all the officers & to Smith—V, any of you come down the river you will always find the latch string out—
Yours truly
George Gibbs5
1. Colonel William W. Loring, who commanded the Mounted Riflemen in Oregon from 1849 to 1856. See Colonel C. Chaillé-Long, “American Soldiers in Egypt,” in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly [The American Magazine] 25 (January-June 1888): 488.↩
2. The Tweed is a river in Great Britain.↩
3. There were at least two men with the surname Spencer working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Astoria in 1850: John Hodges Spencer (1790-1881) and his son Rupert Spencer (1836-1915). It is unclear to whom exactly Gibbs refers. See “Biographical Sheets,” Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba, Canada; available from http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/biographical/s.html; accessed 22 April 2008.↩
4. William T. Porter owned the popular New York sporting magazine The Spirit of the Times. See Norris W. Yates, William T. Porter and the Spirit of the Times: A Study of the Big Bear School of Humor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957).↩
5. George Gibbs (1815-1873) served as Collector of the Port of Astoria as an ethnologist and geologist. He later became an expert on the language and culture of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest and spent a decade studying Native Americans at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. See Finding Aid for George Gibbs Papers, Record Unit 7209, Smithsonian Institute Archives; available from http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FARU7209.htm; accessed 22 April 2008.↩