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Tlingit Fish Traps Provide Valuable Look at Native Culture

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Ben Chitty, NY-VVAW

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Sep 19, 1996, 3:00:00 AM9/19/96
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Subject: Tlinglit fish traps provide valuable look
at Native culture

The Native Amerrican Support Group of New York City supports the
5 landless Tlingit Communties of Southeast Alaska.

This article came out in 1995. Later tests showed Tlingit fishing
traps date back over 4,000 years ago.

'Tlinglit fish traps prorvide valuable look at Native culture'
By Joe Viechnicki, pilot writer, Petersburg Press

A tour through the Tlingit fish traps and petroglyphs Saturday at
Sandy Beach brought out nearly 50 people interested inuncovering
some of the past with a look at the remenants of the ancient
culture.

U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Mark McCallum led the tour
through the artifacts which include six rock and wooden fish traps
and a stone with at least five faces carved into it.

The oldest of the remnants dates back 2,090 years when,
archaeologists believe, the tribe of Tlingits built two traps of
stone, one on either side of Sandy Beach. The traps are over
thirty feet across and all that is showing, during an average low
tide nowadays, is a heart-shaped pattern of rocks pointing toward
the water with a row of rocks leading the fish into the top of the
heart in a V-shape. Fish that swam in near the beach at high
tide would be funnelled into the heart-shaped traps, which might
have been three to four feet high, and would be unable to escape
with the ebbing tide. The Tlingits probably then speared the
trapped fish and broght them up the beach to be cleaned.

Later traps at Sandy Beach began to use wooden stakes as well as
the rocks piled up for trap walls. The Tlingits enentually
constructed all wooden traps. Wooden stakes preserved by the
anaerobic conditions in the fine, wet sand still remain in the
heart and V-shaped patterns. The traps were made of hemlock and
are so well preserved they have retained a green color and fresh
wood smell. Some of the wooden stakes do wash out of the sand
from time to time. Once the stakes have come out of the sand,
they turn brown and start to dacay and turn to dust within hours.

The traps built after the first two all were near the trap at the
northern end of Sandy Beach, probably because the tide swirls and
eddies from this side of the beach might have produced more fish
in the traps, McCallum said. Traps were built closer to the water
over time to take advantage of fluctuations of low tide levels.

While some of the traps are semi-circular shaped, the heart shaped
design was most successful by channeling fish in two overlapping
circles inside the trap. The design made it most diffiult for
fish to find the exit to the trap, archaeologist speculate.

According to McCallum, this type of trap has only been found in a
forty mile area around Petersburg and nowwhere else in the World.

Also at Sandy Beach are several rock carvings or petroglyphs that
adorn the large rock at the north end of the beach on the water
side. These rock carvings were recently damaged by vandels who
scratched over the faces with a sharp object. The damage is less
evident due to a mossy covering on the face of the petroglyphs.

The carvings have not been dated but scientists think they are
related to the fish traps and reflect Tlingit religious of
spiritual beliefs. Six heart-shaped faces cover the rock as well
as several other undiscernible carved shapes. Several ideas on
the purpose of the carvings include tribal marking of the fish
traps for possession or location purposes. The carvings might
also have been a spiritual offering to the fish that returned each
year to feed the tribe.

McCallum said the carvings can be damaged by charcoal rubbings and
tourists should take photographs if they want a souvenir of the
carvings.

For more information, contact Jesse Cooday
c/o Gray Wolf (WAY...@gnn.com)

---
Posted on behalf of the landless Tlingits of Alaska
by Ben Chitty, NY/VVAW (ab...@cunyvm.cuny.edu)


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