The Fish

We turn our minds to all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks. Now our minds are one.

Long before contact with Europeans, the Haudenosaunee held an enormous influence over the Northeast. Haudenosaunee people used waters westward to the Great Mississippi, northward to Georgian Bay, southward to the Ohio River drainage basin and eastward the Atlantic coast. These waters all supported different aquatic life forms. Cold mountain streams harbored brook trout, food for otter and mink. Coastal tributaries were home to anadromous striped bass and shad whose spawning runs supported the great migrations of bird life. The Great Lakes supported populations of Sturgeon, Atlantic Salmon, and Whitefish, which, in turn, fed the people who gathered them. All of these fish had a special purpose and place in Haudenosaunee life.

HAUDENOSAUNEE TRADITION

Many Haudenosaunee communities were centralized near or around specific waterways. Cayuga Lake, Onondaga Lake, Oneida Lake, Mohawk River, etc., are all pseudonyms given by the non-native for the people that frequented their shorelines the most. Each community has developed specific knowledge about their water environments and the life they support. Traditional fishing places still exist in our communities, where fish give themselves to us as food and annual harvests occur. Fish were speared, netted or caught with hooks and line made of bone and sinew. Like any sustenance the Creator provided, complete use of the fish was necessary. Buying unused fish carcasses supply the nutrients contained in modern fertilizers.

In the Thanksgiving Address, we give thanks for the fish’s ability to “cleanse and purify the water.” Apparently, the Haudenosaunee people realized quite early that fish life occurs where water is pristine. This phrase, though a poor English trans­lation, demonstrates that Haudenosaunee communities realized the unapparent relationship between water quality and aquatic life. Western science has proven that some fish, like the salmonids, cannot tolerate polluted environments as much as other species (i.e., carp). The primary fish species in European and Haudenosaunee diets of the 1800’s were carp and salmonids, respectively. It is obvious that Onkwehonwe people would come to this conclusion much earlier than our overseas brothers, if they were to rely on salmon rather than carp populations for sustenance. Like the animal and plant nations, there were always precautions surrounding the harvesting of fish. The annual spawning run of anadromous fish up into the tribu­taries was recognized as a critical time for their reproduction by Onkwehonwe people. Fish habitats-spawning substrate, deep pools, stream cover, reefs, and sandbars were all recognized by the Haudenosaunee as critical to the development of the eggs laid in these places. This knowledge and understanding took place long before western science started to realize that specific and exact natural conditions are required for reproduction.

It is difficult to determine what specific species of fish our people had developed a special relationship with. The haphazard introductions of fish throughout the Northeast have made the natural histories of aquatic life a blurry picture. The principle fishes for Haudenosaunee people in the years before Columbus were mostly Lake Trout, Atlantic Salmon, Lake Sturgeon, and Whitefish. These fish were found in most inland waters of the Northeast, as well as all of the Great Lakes.

SETTLEMENT

As people arrived from Europe, the Haudenosaunee welcomed them, acknowl­edging their need for the same necessities as Onkwehonwe people. We agreed to live together as equal brothers, respecting each other’s set of beliefs. The end of the Revolutionary War found the ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee being claimed as a spoil of war by New York State. The colonists’ settlements soon were estab­lished near the canals and rivers frequented for travel, centered around protected harbors and bays. Unfortunately, these places: the fertile alluvial river plains, nutrient rich estuaries and wetlands, were precisely the areas holding a delicate balance between the physical and chemical processes of Mother Earth. As these settle­ments turned to villages and cities, there was a false sense of security in the size and amount of resources in the “New World.”

Clearing land for expanding townships posed two significant problems for fish life in these areas: direct sewer discharges and deforestation. The immense area of the Great Lakes gave them the appearance of being invincible to any immediate human impact. By 1850, the impact of sewage outflows into the Great Lakes resulted in many rivers being described as “turbid,” instead of “fair.” Out of sight, out of mind was the philosophy, as sewage canals from new villages were simply pumped out further into lakes and increasingly Downstream into rivers.

The deforestation of land for sprawling developments resulted in two important problems for fish - the loss of habitat in traditional spawning rivers and streams, and sedimentation. The fragile soil would erode off of the plowed fields and smother fertilized fish eggs. There were no longer shaded forests, which kept the streams filtered, cool, and clear. Irrigation methods also diverted natural water flows; the quantity of water was decreasing along with the quality. Slowly, tributaries became seasonal while the bigger waters became warm and un-oxygenated. Atlantic Salmon, told of today by some elders, were probably the first to start disappearing. These salmon were found in Lake Ontario and other inland lakes, where small dams on the tributaries were beginning to block their long migratory spawning runs. The devel­opment of their young also required the cold, clear rivers and streams that ran through the once ancient forests which now were slow and turbid.

Other activities by the Europeans had a much more quick and devastating result on fishes by the 20th century. The first, over fishing, weakened the ecological balance between individual species by destroying timeless niches the Creator had formed for each fish. Hundreds of commercial fisheries sprang up throughout the Northeast in the 17th century and found their harvests declining by the early 1900’s. These settlers did not recognize how the cycles of fish life intertwined with each other. A certain species of fish were targeted first, considering other fish species as “garbage” or “useless.” Fish values were based on a monetary system of supply and demand. Soon, yields were decimated to a point where the commercial harvest of a fish was no longer profitable, and the target species would change. Whitefish disap­peared, then Lake Trout populations would plummet, followed by Atlantic Salmon, whose runs are still and so on. Lake herring was wiped out from Lake Ontario where harvests of fish totaled over 14 million pounds per year. Eventually, the sturgeon, considered by early non-natives as an ugly, tasteless fish, would be almost totally exterminated from Lake Erie, the most productive lake in the East.

Another impact the settlers made was an accidental one resulting from the construction of the Erie Canal: the first efficient canal system of the time introduced the efficient parasite of fish in Haudenosaunee territory – the Sea Lamprey. A lamprey’s role in an ecosystem is like that of a disease. So, when over fishing and low natural reproduction were hurting fish already, it was relatively easy for lampreys to flourish. The decreasing tributary temperatures didn’t help either, as parasitic lampreys prefer warmer, murkier water for efficient reproduction. This parasitic fish pushed up the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, colonizing inland waters and established a foothold in Lake Ontario. After some changes in the Welland Canal system near the Grand River, the sea lamprey now had free access to Lake Erie and the rest of the Great Lakes. Today, human-made chemicals are being used to control populations of lamprey.

Other introduced species made the lamprey’s job easier- the rainbow smelt and the alewife. The rainbow smelt were planted along with Japanese Salmon in Lake Michigan, while the alewife also made its way up the canals from the ocean. Both reproduced at amazing rates. They eventually spread throughout the Northeast and giant runs of them in the spring still are common in many lakes. Fluctuating populations of smelt and alewife can out compete young whitefish and Lake herring for food, once important predators at the top of the food chain. The problems are compounded when the ancient predators can’t keep the forage fish under control. The carp, brought directly from Europe, is a herbivore initially intended for fish farms. Their foraging habits have resulted in turbid water and can seriously impact lake vegetation. It has since displaced the sturgeon and the mess it creates can suffocate eggs laid in shallow waters.

To be continued next week.