Native American Indians Salmon Hunt, 1848
Oil painting by Paul Kane entitled: Falls at Colville (1848) hanging in the permanent collection at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. Kane (1810-1871) was an Irish-Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Oregon Country. American Indians have practiced spearfishing for more than 3, 000 years. Fish were a key source of meat for many American Indian tribes and a vital food supplement all year-round. Male native Indians went spear fishing and the women used a simple system of a string with a hook on the end. Women were not allowed to use spears to fish because it was the job for the males in the tribes. Depending on the size of fish they were catching, they had different types of implements for spear fishing. The shafts of these spears were all made from wood, whatever type was indigenous of the area. For the tips, they used a variety of materials. Metal, copper in particular, was a popular tip as was bone. A tip with three prongs was often used for small fish
