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National Geographic : 1970 Feb
Contents
ago carved out a natural shelter that would have met Indian requirements as well as our own. We went ashore to look for artifacts. Yes, faint soot marks at the top of the shelter told us Indian cooking fires had burned here. When we scraped the cave's floor, we found layers of discarded mussel shells. This shelter could have been used by the ancient mussel-eating tribes, centuries before Christ was born. We could see that more-sophisticated In dians had used the site, because the walls were marked with pictographs probably drawn in red ocher-earth colored with iron oxide. Perhaps archeologists can interpret those drawings for us some day-but each of us could conjure up imaginative tales from the marks that ancient man had left for us to ponder. Game Fish Wage a Losing Fight To Indians along the Salmon River, the chinook salmon was an important source of food. Each spring and summer the fish mi grated upstream from the Pacific Ocean in countless numbers. Only a fraction of them complete the trip today. After fighting their way up the fish ladders in Columbia River dams, they face the perils of fishermen and polluted water as they swim through the Columbia and lower Snake Rivers. The survivors may travel almost to the Continental Divide-to the spawning redds in the headwaters and tributaries of the Salm on River. There, often in brooks no wider than the fishes' length, the journey ends. Females deposit eggs in the fine pebbles, to be fertilized by the males. Then-battered and emaciated-the salmon die.* Along the bank one day we found a huge salmon. Apparently he had worked his way up to the spawning beds above, and had drifted downstream again, with but a vestige of life remaining. We killed the dying four foot fish, and opened its atrophied stomach in a fruitless search for a sonar tag. Scientists are seeking new knowledge about these migratory fish. For years Mr. James H. Johnson, of the United States Bureau of Com mercial Fisheries, and a crew of scientists have been implanting sonar transmitters in salmon and steelhead trout. One object is to determine the effect of dams and impounded water on their upstream migration. This, plus *See "The Incredible Salmon," by Clarence P. Idyll, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, August 1968. KODACHROMES(ABOVEANDOVERLEAF)BY DICKDURRANCEII ( N.GS. How to handle a rattler: "With caution, of course," advises Frank Craighead. He grips the neck and tail of the reptile, while Lance probes its hypodermic-like fangs. Beheaded, skinned, and fried, the snake became part of a survival demonstration: a meal of par tridge, squirrel, trout, wild tubers, and ber ries, gathered from forest and stream. Into a surge of churning water goes John Craighead (following pages), pulling hard on the oars to avoid a boulder in the foam ing caldron. "The river poured in over me," John recollects. "I saw it coming and instinc tively slid down in the boat, but there was no avoiding the frigid bath. Fortunately, the air was not too cold. I've made runs in zero weather when spray coated my clothing with sheets of ice." Spills seldom occurred during the Craig heads' winter trip, but a television producer, unused to river ways, was flipped overboard (pages 234-5). 229
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