For thousands of years the different species of salmon have provided Westcoast First Nations (from Alaska to Northern California) with their principal source of food and they have fished for them along the many rivers and streams flowing into the Pacific ocean. They perfected many different techniques, including spears, dip nets, fish traps, and weirs, for catching the fish as they returned from their ocean sojourn to spawn and die in the exact same place they were born. They didn't have to go out into the ocean to catch the fish because they knew they would be coming right back up the rivers every summer and fall.
Always making sure to let enough salmon get through the various traps so they could spawn successfully, these methods of catching and managing fish stocks sustained First Nations for time immemorial. Every summer communal fishing camps would be set up for individual villages to catch and process the salmon. Once the fish were caught they were processed by either drying or smoking and this provided the people with enough food to last all winter and into spring and also allowed them to trade any surplus with other groups including European fur traders. The salmon harvest was huge and it sustained a coastal Indigenous population that, at the time of first European contact, was estimated to be 200,000 with 60,000 living in B.C. alone.
In the shift from fresh water fishing to tidal/salt water fishing, Indigenous people had to learn how to harvest using oar and/or sail powered gillnet boats. By 1911 gasoline powered boats were common but their use in the Northern waters was forbidden until 1924. Sockeye salmon follow a four year cycle and on the Fraser River the big runs were on 1897, 1901, 1905, 1909 and 1913. In those years the canneries produced an average 800,000 x 22 kg cases of sockeye salmon with 1913 being the biggest run ever when 2.4 million cases were produced. In the small run years 1898, 1902, 1906, 1910, and 1914 the average was 200,000 cases but in 1914 a landslide at Hell's Gate, caused by railway work being done, resulted in millions of sockeye not being able to get to their spawning grounds and created a long lasting alteration of the river's ecology.
Thousands of Indigenous people were employed both as fishermen, with contracts and licenses attached to the canneries, and as critical labourers within the canneries themselves cleaning, cutting, and gutting the fish and then packing them into cans with great precision and speed. Starting with what appeared to be a seemingly inexhaustable supply of salmon, over-fishing soon became apparent and, rather than point the finger at the fishing fleets that were supplying the canneries or the canneries themselves, it was the First Nations who were accused of causing the shortage by preventing the salmon to successfully spawn. Regulations forbidding or limiting the freshwater capture of salmon were brought in along with making it illegal for Indigenous people to sell their catch and making them get a licence to fish for food.. Fisheries department inspectors also destroyed traps, weirs, and fish barricades throughout the Province. This of course went against what they viewed as their right to fish as per the terms of the original Douglas Treaties but it was to no avail.
As a result of the Hell's Gate disaster famine set in for many First Nations groups and, rather than assist them, Fisheries officials opted to protect the canneries. Fishing by Natives was forbidden anywhere in the Fraser canyon and Fraser River system while the canneries were given access to all the fish caught in the mouth of the Fraser River by licensed commercial fishermen. Using conservation as the justification, food fishing by Indians above the tideline, and the right to sell their catch locally was gradually eliminated while the canneries were able to sell all of their catch and ship it out of the country.
Once again the Indians had been tricked by the settlers. When government agents originally met with the Natives they asked where the traditional fishing streams were located and, thinking this meant where they would be establishing reserves, the Natives were quite happy to point out the most productive rivers. The government then licensed canneries at the mouth of each of these rivers and barred the First Nations from fishing there. Overfishing soon threatened what were once thriving spawning grounds that had sustained various First Nations for thousands of years, and the people were now forced to work for the canneries in order to survive.
