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Allen Pinkham discusses John Ordway's experience with salmon Item Info

So now we need to correct all these misinterpretation and misunderstanding. And case in point would be when Ordway came back in 1806. He went back from Kamiah to, up on the prairie and went to look for salmon in the Salomon River. He couldn’t find any so he went down to the Snake River, probably through, near Winchester now, and then he went on down to the Snake River, and there he found some salmon, and so he traded and purchased salmon down there. And what occurred the night before he was to come back to Kamiah, bringing salmon with him, he made a note in his journal that the Nez Perce stole salmon from him the night before. So not realizing that there were other things going on in that village where he purchased the salmon, that there is a salmon leader, what we called a “salmon leader” and what the responsibility of the salmon leader was to distribute salmon to all people and to make sure that when they catch the salmon that it is well distributed among all the members of the village people and all the guests. Well I think this is what occurred, that the salmon leader took back some of the salmon that was traded or sold to Ordway, and redistributed to a family or other tribal members that didn’t have salmon. But Ordway noted in his journal that fish were stolen; so this is a misunderstanding. And because Ordway and others that were with him couldn’t speak Nez Perce and they couldn’t convey in sign language what this salmon leader did, it was written in Ordway’s journal that the salmon were stolen. But among our people nobody goes without food within the family group or within the village group. So here is this misunderstanding. It is reflected continuously throughout the Lewis and Clark journals and all the other ones that had written journals.

Title:
Allen Pinkham discusses John Ordway's experience with salmon
Date Created:
2001-11
Description:
Allen Pinkham discusses John Ordway's experience with salmon and his misinterpretation of a "Cho pun-nish theft." Interviewed by Josiah Pinkham
Source
Preferred Citation:
"Allen Pinkham discusses John Ordway's experience with salmon", Nimíipuu L3, Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL)
Reference Link:
https://cdil.lib.uidaho.edu/nimiipuu-l3/items/nimiipuu-l3-019.html
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