lso an axe, not dissimilar to the
North American tomahawk, the handle of which is usually carved.

They made garments of pine-bark beaten fine; these were made by hand
with plaited thread and woollen, so closely wove as to resemble cloth,
and frequently had worked on them figures of men and animals: on one was
the whole process of the whale fishery. Their aptitude for the
imitative arts was very great. Their canoes were rather elegantly
formed out of trees, with rising prow, frequently carved in figures.
They differ from those of the Pacific generally, in having neither sails
nor outriggers; they had harpoons and spears for whale-fishing.
Vancouver, when at Port Discovery, saw some long poles placed upright on
the beach at equal distances, the object of which he could not discover,
and it was not till the last voyage of discovery, despatched from the
United States under Commodore Wilkes, that they were ascertained to have
been used for hanging nets upon, to catch wild-fowl by night: their
ingenuity in this and in netting salmon is very remarkable. They have
two nets, the drawing and casting net, made of a silky grass found on
the banks of the Columbia, or the fibres of the roots of trees, or of
the inner bark of the white cedar. The salmon-fishing on the Columbia
commences in June, the main body, according to the habit of this fish,
dividing at the mouth of the tributary streams to ascend then to their
sources. At the rapids and falls the work of destruction commences;
with a bag-net, not unlike to an European fisherman's landing-net, on a
pole thirty feet long, the Indians take their stand on the rocks, or on
platforms erected for the purpose, and throwing their nets into the
river above their standing-places, let them float down the rapids to
meet the fish as they ascend. By this means many are caught; they have
also stake-nets and lines with stones for leads; they also catch many
with hook and line, and sometimes, now they have fire-arms, shoot them.
Their mode of fishing for sturgeon is also peculiar. The line, made of
twisted fibres of the roots of trees, is attached to a large wooden hook
and let down over the side of a canoe; those used for this purpose are
small, having only one or two men at most in them: having hooked a fish,
they haul him gently up till he floats on the water, then, with a heavy
mallet, with one blow on the head they kill him; with singular dexterity
they contrive to jerk a fish of thre