icks of other fishes. They also make weirs,
with setting up reeds or twigs in the water, which they so plant
one with another, that they grow still narrower, and narrower.
There was never seen among us so cunning a way to take fish withal,
whereof sundry sorts as they found in their rivers unlike ours,
which are also of a very good taste. Doubtless it is a pleasant
sight to see the people, sometimes wading, and going sometimes
sailing in those rivers, which are shallow and not deep, free from
all care of heaping up riches for their posterity, content with
their state, and living friendly together of those things which God
of His bounty hath given unto them, yet without giving Him any
thanks according to His deserts.

The most vivid and comprehensive description of Indian fishing was
given by historian Robert Beverley. Though his work was not published
until 1705, he dealt with an earlier period:

Before the arrival of the English there, the Indians had fish in
such vast plenty that the boys and girls would take a pointed stick
and strike the lesser sort as they swam upon the flats. The larger
fish that kept in deeper water, they were put to a little more
difficulty to take. But for these they made weirs, that is, a hedge
of small rived sticks or reeds of the thickness of a man's finger.
These they wove together in a row with straps of green oak or other
tough wood, so close that the small fish could not pass through.
Upon high water mark they pitched one end of this hedge and the
other they extended into the river to the depth of eight or ten
foot, fastening it with stakes, making cods out from the hedge on
one side, almost at the end, and leaving a gap for the fish to go
into them. These were contrived so that the fish could easily find
their passage into those cods when they were at the gap, but not
see their way out again when they were in. Thus if they offered to
pass through, they were taken.

Sometimes they made such a hedge as this quite across a creek at
high water and at low would go into the run, so contracted into a
narrow stream, and take out what fish they pleased.

At the falls of the rivers where the water is shallow and the
current strong, the Indians use another kind of weir thus made.
They make a dam of loose stone, whereof there is plenty at hand,
quite across the