Fishing in the Puget Sound has always been a big industry, but it hasn’t been without its share of controversy. Long before the white settlers came along, Native Americans had been historically fishing along the Puget Sound using a variety of techniques including reef-net fishing. Reef nets were often created with nettle fibers and cedar (or willow) bark, and were strung between tethered canoes or some other kind of anchor (often large stones found during low tide) from their end. They were strategically placed in ways that would guide salmon along shallow artificial reefs, where they were caught.
The Treaty at Point Elliott in 1855 was a lands settlement treaty between the U.S. government and the Native American tribes in the Puget Sound area. It dislocated the Lummi tribe, which was native to Point Roberts, away from various areas including Point Roberts; in return it granted the Native tribes unregulated fishing rights in areas that had been used over time. Obviously this “solution” didn’t please everyone. In 1883, the Lummis appealed the treaty, and by 1894 commercial fishers and the Lummi tribe were at a deadlock over fishing grounds.
This document from 1900, referencing H.B. Kirby, documented the rental of equipment (which was commonly to make fishing traps) to a man named H.B. Kirby. From what I have found, I gather that he was a skilled fisherman. While sleuthing around, I have discovered some things about good ol’ H.B.
1) He was involved in creating some of the first fish traps in the Puget Sound region
2) He was known to tote a gun and intimidate people
According to the book A History of the Puget Sound Country [1]:
In the spring of 1884 he [Duncan Neil McMillan] came to Tacoma to engage in a fishing business and in company with his brother, Malcolm and H.B. Kirby, put in and operated one of the first fish traps on Puget Sound, but, as the market proved poor during the season, they abandoned the industry for a time.
This was apparently not enough to deter H.B. as his name resurfaced in the midst of a fishing area dispute at Point Roberts. Much like Alaska is separated from the U.S., Point Roberts is a little enclave on the tip of a peninsula in British Columbia that is actually beneath the U.S. boundary line at the 49th parallel, so it is part of Washington State. Many native tribes, especially the Lummi, had deep roots in the salmon fishing there. In 1884 the Alaska Packers Association (APA) established a cannery at Point Roberts and some vigilante fisherman took issue with the (legal) Native American fishing presence. The APA began placing salmon traps among the Lummi’s reef-nets at Point Roberts, and there was some resulting animosity. In 1883 the Lummi tribe appealed the Treaty, which had previously forced them out of Point Roberts and other historic fishing sites. However, the Alaska Packers Association had a legal right to fish there too, and this became an issue over time. By 1894, it was at a point of becoming violent.
Old Polen, a member of the Lummi tribe residing on the relatively-new Lummi reservation on the Lummi Peninsula, recounted how the Alaska Packers Association had put up three large traps in front of Lummi fishing ground. He said that in 1894, while he was fishing, he was assaulted. [2]
H.B. Kirby, who was then in the employ of the defendant Association, came to the shack occupied by me on the beach and ordered me to leave and stayed around until I left. He threatened me with injury if I did not leave.
Another Lummi tribe member, Harry Sewalton, had similar testimony about H.B. Kirby, and claimed that Kirby threatened him with a revolver while he tried to fish. He also accounted how the APA used a pile driver to place piling at the fishing area he was using. According to Sewalton, the APA also destroyed his fishing equipment, including anchors, ropes and appliances. H.B. Kirby went into Sewalton’s shack at his shack with the revolver and told him to leave.
Ultimately, the court upheld the Alaska Packers Association’s right to fish at Point Roberts and reef-net fishing was abandoned by the tribal people there.
This receipt of rental from the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Co., was issued in 1900, six years after the Point Roberts incident. I have no knowledge of what became of H.B. Kirby beyond this date.
1 William Farrand Prosser, A History of the Puget Sound Country: Its Resources, Its Commerce and Its People: with Some Reference to Discoveries and Explorations in North America from the Time of Christopher Columbus Down to that of George Vancouver in 1792 . The Lewis Publishing Company, 1903
2 Richard E. Clark, Point Roberts, USA: The History of a Canadian Enclave. Textype Publishing. Bellingham, Washington, 1980.
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