OCTOBER 15, 2005
Smoke Signals 9
back into the nets." He remembers
helping a pal drag in a 60-pound
salmon.
Dean Mercier recalls Wyams Chief
Tommy Thompson showing him a pic
ture of a 115-pound Chinook. Today,
people get a 30-pounder and think they
got a big fish."
But Dean also remembers that dip
netting wasn't all that easy.
"The pole holds like a basket," he
said, "and (when the fish is in there) it
closes like an umbrella. It's more like
lassoing."
He recalls first trying it. "I was al
ways six feet behind the fish. You have
to throw the net 5-6 feet ahead of them,
and you've got to let the net go the
length of the fish. You can feel the fish
going through it and it's just like set
ting your hook in sport fishing."
Dean also remembers netting two
salmon at once from one of the Celilo
platforms when fishing with Tribal
member Oren Pichette, now passed on.
The current was too swift, though, and
Dean's tennis shoes slipped.
"They said, 'Let it go.
"I said, 'No.'
"It took four or five of them fisher
men to pull me up."
"I told Oren that's the last time I'm
going to let those goddam fish pull me
in the water. I went home and got my
cork shoes (spiked shoes for standing
on logs)."
And then there was Tribal member
Hattie Hudson, Dean's grandmother,
now passed on. "She loved to fish," he
said. "She'd fish at The Ripples (on the
South Yamhill River across the road
from her home in Grand Ronde) and
she'd catch some big trout. She had a
bench, and she had her pole and no
body touched her pole."
In later years at the Nestucca
River falls, Hubert Mercier recalls
putting "a good sized hook on a pole
to hook chinook and silver salmon
The fish turned red, Hubert said,
because they were in the fresh water
too long. "It didn't hurt the meat but
you had to scrape the slime off them."
One time, I lubert recalled, "two guys
come in raincoats and then we had to
go to jail. Dean's dad was the first one
to head to jail. I was the next one.
They fined us five dollars apiece but we
had no money. My uncle, (Tribal mem
ber) Jasper Boydson, who has since
passed on, had money, and he said he'd
pay. "Dean's dad jumped up and said,
'Can we all go home?' and the judge
said, Yeah, go home.'"
Hubert remembered all kinds of
times when they took him and others
off to jail for illegal hunting and fish
ing, sometimes losing a truckload full
when we needed it, maybe that
deer would have another genera
tion. The other thing is, we're
trying to get so many, we might
have three, four deer in our
freezer, and sometimes deer go
bad. If we would only get that
when we need it, none of it
would go bad."
La Verne I losford remembers
hanging deer in a shed "until
we got a refrigerator in the
1940s."
"It held for a week or better,"
she said.
And for a time, Tribal mem
ber Irving Tom (Chips Tom's
uncle), now passed on, lived with
the Bean family. "He'd go fish-
in
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of fish in the deal, but he said that
people were hungry all the time so they
hunted and fished all the time, what
ever the Oregon laws said.
Tribal member Bobby Mercier is one
of the younger generation of hunters
and fishers who can't understand why
Indians should be expected to limit
themselves to seasons and places, as
specified in Oregon law and agreed to
in the Consent Decree signed by the
Tribe around the time of Restoration.
"The original treaties said that we
could live off the abundance of the land
to take care of our families. We should
be able to take care of our families the
way our old people did."
Elder Dean Mercier, for one, doesn't
believe the Tribe ever had the right
to sign away those rights. "Those
ing in Cosper Creek (coming out of the
Yamhill River behind the junction).
He'd bring home 70-80 trout (you
couldn't get that much now), and
there'd be enough people in the ex
tended family to eat for two, three
days," said I losford.
Changing Times
While salmon has remained a main
stay in the community, somewhere in
the 1950's, 60's and 70's, "venison
turned to chicken" at the potlucks, said
Elder Dean Mercier.
But change comes slowly to many
Tribal families. Even Tribal member
Bryan Langley, not yet 40 and one of
the younger generation of Tribal hunt
ers, said that he still was raised on
venison, and hunts to keep that part
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Tools Of The Trade This
wall in the home of Tribal Elder
Marvin Kimsey holds memorabilia
from the old days, including guns
used to hunt, a photo of life for
earlier generations, and some of old
tools used to dig roots.
when they jumped."
At that time, he said, "There were
so many white people there that you
could have to wait. The chums would
turn red coming in from the ocean and
the white folks wouldn't take them.
When they left, we went in."
are the people's rights and they can't
be signed away."
"It was illegal," acknowledged Elder
Marvin Kimsey, "but we'd use every
scrap of the meat. You should obey the
law, but we needed that meat, and
(though the state tried to stop Indians
from hunting in traditional ways) they
weren't that hard to outwit."
Because of the restrictions today,
said Bobby Mercier, "we try and get as
many deer as we can. The way I see
it, we're kind of killing off a whole gen
eration of deer because we can't go
back in when we need food. Some get
4-5 deer (when enough tags are avail
able). If we would have only got that
of his family birthright alive.
Time and the casino have brought
many changes to Tribal members.
The Tribe now provides Elders with
food and housing, health care and
burial rights. It helps the young at
tend college, the middle-aged go back
to school, and provides employment
for many, if many others say not
enough yet.
The change has been profound for El
ders like Kimsey and the Elder
Merciers. Kimsey said that he stopped
hunting 30 years ago.
"I didn't need to anymore," he said.
"The older you get, I guess, the more you
respect life." In fact, he added, holding
his thumb and first finger less than an
inch apart, "I'm about this far from be
coming a vegetarian."
He doesn't even care that much
about eating salmon anymore. He
spent a lot of years "alongside Dean"
commercial fishing in the ocean. "Dad
and I gill-netted on the Columbia, too,"
he said. "I guess when you're knee
deep in it all day... I don't know."
Today La Verne Hosford, who once
upon a time hunted with her husband,
Fremond Bean, today says that there's
a deer and her does living behind the
Tribal Housing Authority building. "I
hope no one kills them," she said.
"They're a beautiful animal."
But many in the younger generation
are knee-deep in it now. When Bobby
Mercier hunts, he tries to get enough to
provide not only for his family, but also
for cultural events to keep traditions of
the Tribe alive. When the Maoris of New
Zealand (see related story, page 4-5) vis
ited Oregon with their weaving arts re
cently, Bobby and his family provided
210 packs of stew meat for the celebra
tion. Members of the Siletz Tribe pro
vided hand-picked huckleberries.
As Bobby Mercier and Bryan Langley
started learning to hunt almost as soon
as they could walk, they are now pass
ing the traditions on to their children.
Bobby's boys, Kyoni, 7, and Nakoa,
3, already go out with him to hunt.
"They are just thrilled about hunting.
They just sit and watch out the win
dows and watch for deer. I take them
around small hills where they can
walk. When we get a deer, they're
right there, helping me put it in the
truck. They help me when I'm skin
ning it and everything. They just love
it. Everything about it. They ask me
to cook it. We fry it up, same as my
dad and grandfather did."
When Bobby was a boy, he said, "Us
boys would go with them and walk
where we could until we were old enough
to carry a gun and keep up with them.
I've been walking in the woods with
them since I was six, seven years old."
He's been carrying a gun with them and
hunting since he was 13, 14. "After
that, I was hunting ever since."
While the need was different back
in the day, Bobby said that even to
day, "We live off it all winter.
There's no need to buy meat. We
make our own hamburger. With
some of the extra, we get pepperoni
done for the kids."
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