Archaeological Perspectives on Native American Fisheries of California, with Emphasis on Steelhead and Salmon

Abstract

The archaeological record of California was surveyed to gain an understanding of Native American fisheries and to locate the prehistoric distributions of freshwater and anadromous fishes. Over 152,000 piscine elements were added to prior totals. On San Francisco Bay, important prehistoric intertidal fisheries were especially well documented for bat rays Myliobatis californica, sturgeons Acipenser spp., Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, clupeids, and atherinopsids. The same sites also indicate the former presence of various freshwater species, including steelhead O. mykiss and coho salmon O. kisutch, in tributary streams from which they were extirpated prior to modern surveys. Slow-moving waters of the Central Valley were heavily exploited, with most sites dominated by Sacramento perch Archoplites interruptus, thicktail chub Gila crassicauda, Sacramento suckers Catostomus occidentalis, Sacramento blackfish Orthodon microlepidotus, hitch Lavinia exilicauda, and tule perch Hysterocarpus traski, which collectively comprised 84.9% of the remains. Sacramento perch alone produced 45.7% of the identifiable elements. Noteworthy among the other identified species was the endangered delta smelt Hypomesus transpacificus. Salmonids Oncorhynchus spp. constituted only 6.3% of the remains from the Central Valley, despite their importance in the ethnographic record. Marine fishes were found far from the coast in San Diego, Monterey, and Kern counties. Freshwater species transported from the San Joaquin Valley were found as far eastward as San Bernardino County in the Mojave Desert. Steelhead were found among archaeological materials of coastal California as far south as Los Peñasquito Creek in San Diego County, but no salmon remains of any kind were found south of San Francisco. Too little sampling has been completed from coastal sites between San Francisco and Monterey Bay to rule out salmonid presence at locations where habitat was appropriate and where early reports indicated their existence. Chinook salmon were the most abundant salmonid in the Sacramento River drainage. No salmonids were found in the archaeological record in the San Joaquin River drainage south of San Joaquin County. Elements identifiable as either rainbow trout O. mykiss or cutthroat trout O. clarki were found in middens in the Lahontan system and in headwater streams of the Pit River in northeastern California. The rarity of salmonids in archaeological materials suggests that the ethnographic record overstated the importance of salmonids to the Native Americans of California and dramatically understated the importance of the Sacramento perch and its associated fauna.