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Sister M. Inez Hilger discussing fishing laws

Originally published in 1939 by Catholic University of America Press.
The families of this study [White Earth] did little fishing except for immediate use. This may be largely due to a state law which limits the number of fish per person per day to ten. The older Chippewa find it difficult to understand that such a law should be applied to Indians and most of them give little heed to it. A seventy-year-old woman of one of the families was busily engaged, one of the days we visited her, in fastening the traditional cedar floaters and the stone sinkers to her net. The sun was in the last quarter of its day and she must hurry to set her net. "Nets are set at sunset and are taken in at sunrise, "she remarked. She expected a good catch and hoped to dry some; her rack for drying was already prepared. An old man was caught by the game warden one day with eighteen fish and reminded that ten was the limit for a day. Promptly the old man replied, "Well, I go right back and get us two more and then my old woman and I have ten for today and ten for tomorrow!" Fifteen of the families (three in frame houses and twelve in tar-paper shacks) dried fish whenever possible, using the old method.
from
Sister M. Inez Hilger, Chippewa Families: A Social Study of White Earth Reservation, 1938 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998 reprint ed.) 139-140.

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