Chinook Salmon Essay

The Chinook Native Americans gathered food and made their weapons all while utilizing every part of the animal or material at hand. Likewise, the Chinook showed a respect to the land that is rarely shown today. Incredibly, these people thrived with only stone tools and natural materials fashioned to fit their needs.
Food wise, the most common food item the Chinook peoples ate was salmon. This protein’s importance was seen in the first salmon ceremony. Here, the bones from the season’s first salmon “are taken out of the Columbia River in a gesture of gratitude and respect.” Also, found on the flag, a colorful salmon can be seen with patterns enveloping it’s body. Rather than being hunted for sport, every salmon caught was solely for the nourishment of their bodies. The Europeans, however, would kill close to any animal just for sport or for its skin. Although salmon was extraordinarily important to them, the Chinook ate other foods. Although salmon is important to the Chinook, other forms of food are needed, so they consume other fish, wild game, berries, vegetables, shellfish, and roots. These foods were just as important to the Chinook as salmon, for each portion of the
However, without the proper materials, fishing would be close to impossible. So, using rocks for sinkers, nets, weapons made from sharpened rock tips and wood, and spears, fish-baskets, hooks, and fish traps the Chinook fished with much greater ease than with their bare hands. All of these weapons, created from raw materials in nature, bore no European influence when it came to materials. Even their knives were made from stone and not metal. Other weapons made with no European materials were chisels, drills, hammers, awls, rakes. These did not just help the process of hunting, but these tools were put to use in their everyday lives. Many of these tools were used in the process of creating one of a kind pieces of