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Eel dam / weir archeological site Danville PA, Susquehanna River
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2020
- The pyramids of Egypt were built about 4,500 years ago. Native Americans built giant stone structures in our area as long as 6,000 years ago...and they can still be seen! I grew up on Bald Top Mountain and had a great view of the Susquehanna River below. As a child I noticed a giant “V” in the River that was clearly visible from our home. Dad explained to me this was an “eel dam” that was used by Indians to catch Eels. American Eels are fish that live in freshwater streams like our river. Each fall they swim downstream and head to the Sargasso Sea (off the coast of the Carolinas). Here they lay their eggs. Eventually these eggs hatch and the baby Eels, known as elvers, make the 2-3 year journey back to the waters where their parents lived. They ascend the rivers and can live over 50 years.
Native Americans constructed Eel weirs to trap them in the fall as the adults swam to the ocean. This consisted of a stone dam of rocks that would funnel the eels to a wooden trap or weir. Hundreds of pounds of Eels could be caught each day during the peak weeks of the migration. They would then smoke and dry the Eel meat to be used all winter. This was likely the most important source of protein and calories for local people for several thousand years. The oldest known site is in Maine and has been radiocarbon dated to 6,000 years ago. The Danville-Riverside site could easily be just as old. Once this technology was developed it spread all over the continent.
People still used this Eel dam into the early 1900’s. Even in a poor eel year like 1912, the eel take was staggering; 50,000 eels, weighing more than 44,000 pounds, were caught in PA. In Danville, in September 1914, three tons of eels were taken in
10 days. Some were 3’ or longer and were sold for 18 cents per pound if cleaned or 15 cents per pound if uncleaned. The word would spread quickly when the eels were starting downstream and men would leave their jobs to man their eel nets. Boys could be seen walking the streets of Danville with a stringer of eels thrown over their backs. They would stop at restaurants, bars, and family homes to sell the delicacy to anxiously waiting purchasers. Most folks agreed that eel was especially good-eating when smoked. By the 1920’s giant cement dams blocked the Susquehanna River and migratory fish like Eels and Shad declined in great numbers. My students at Lewisburg High School have partnered with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission to raise Eels in our classroom. We then release them in local streams. This will not fix the problem of dams blocking migration but considering they can live 50+ years, it will at least put some Eel back in local streams for now.
Enjoy this drone footage taken yesterday by Luke Wagner. You are looking at a stone dam built by highly advanced people several thousand years ago...and it’s right in our backyard.
Amazing that even after hurricane Agnes these eel weirs are still there.
Awesome history
Awesome video... Thank you
I live in mifflinville and I fish the river from shickshinny down to sunbury, there are a few of these weirs around, and it never ceases to amaze me how old they are
I grew up in Watsontown Pa. There is an eel trap just outside of town south toward Milton. We were catching eels there in 1995. Haven't been back to fish since. The fishing was great there where the white deer creek came into the Susquehanna you could catch a trout a walleye and a large mouth bass all in the same spot.
This was a great video!
Excellent video, thanks for this
My new favorite fact about Pennsylvania thanks for sharing. I'll have to drive up and check it out.
Very well put together.Thanks for posting.
Spectacular history and work, what a treasure. Hope to see those eels be able to make a comeback up the river
Thank you (and your boys) for putting this together.
My family is from Danville love these videos brother and your music is amazing. Thank you for this history lesson.
Thank you John!
Look on Google maps right up from Three Mile Island on the Susquehanna I literally just saw these today there's about a dozen of them in the river I'm assuming they're the exact same thing. Really cool!
We still cought eels till about 1990 here and there but not got any since then just up from your place on the river. I always wondered what that vee was great info and hard to beleave it lasted this long. Thanks for sharing
Great video! Some great history! Excellent piloting by your son!
Great video! Thank you
The third fish looks like a largemouth bass to me. Great video! I learned a ton about Eel Dams, I had no idea there was a such thing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Awesome, I am interested in this areas history.
My students love this! Thank you so much for sharing! Kudos to you and your students, Van! ☺
Wow - that's very interesting. I've never heard of such a thing. So interesting to know it was there all this time. And never really knew there were catfish in the river!
Thanks for the feedback. glad you liked the video.
That’s sooo neat I finally understand what they look like and now when you mention them in your music I’ll always remember this video😁
Great video! I've often sat on the riverbank and thought of all the food there must have been when eels and shad were running in the river and the mountains were covered in chestnuts.
So true!
I've been on the Delaware river all summer long and wondered what an eel Weir was. I did the section above Barryville NY last week and came across these. I also saw a hand written sign at a house "smoked eels" when I biked the route I was going to float. Great video. Thank you. "Older then the pyramids" Wow!
Thank you for the great video and the history of the eel weir. Loved watching this.
really appreciate this video, thanks
Hopefully PA will protect these sites
I believe I spotted a fish weir in the Conestoga River where the Eden Road bridge crosses in Lancaster County, PA. I reported this to the proper authorities. To my knowledge nothing was ever followed up about it. (That seems to be a habit. Local LEOs have not followed up on info I provided about a murder near my home.)
Yeah you're gonna get that! The Agencies have been corrupted. If they don't get some side profit from it ( herbicide spray grants, sporting goods handouts. Etc.) They don't work for you.
Looks like this might have been a double weir. There' s a second diagonal line to the right.
Amazing what history we have in our back yards. You would think that over the years the structure would have filled with silt and gravel and would have been lost. I had mentioned to my 96 year old father in law about you writing the eel song on my suggestion and he told us when he was a youngster he caught eels with a pitch fork in the mill race in Laddsburg which is between New Albany and Dushore. This would be the headwaters of the south branch of the Towanda creek.
that's really cool Francis! thanks for sharing.
I have heard they are working to try and build a new way from the eels to move past the dams. Not sure how close they are to doing that.
That's so sad to hear that eels can't go up stream anymore
With all due respect, there is no evidence that this structure is 6000 years old. You're careful in a couple of places to say that, but not in others. Most of the research I'm doing right now is leading to these NOT being native in origin, but I'm relying on Pennsylvania state records of land warrants and old newspaper articles, not anything archeological. As you mention, there is no protection for these and if there is no protection, there likely hasn't been any archeology performed on them. They probably wouldn't find too much here if they did do anything either, as the river would likely have swept anything of archeological value away long ago.
Thanks for the comment. I do not agree there is "no evidence". Fish weirs in the north east have been dated to almost 6,000 years old at other sites. the technology would have spread throughout the region just like we know other technologies did (atlatl, bow and arrow, etc). In addition, multitudes of artifacts have been found at the known native american village site at this location. These include Lecroys dated to up to 8,500 years old. Lastly, I have hear of local people "building eel weirs" in recent eras when really what the family or person is saying is their family rebuilt the stone dam and built a new wooden trap. they aren't claiming they originated the structure, no more than a farmer plows a field. Local farmers did make the fields, they inherited them yet they ofter refer to being the first to plow and area. At the end of the day, it's youtube. I'm hoping we can agree to disagree and still respect each others love of stone artifact history. I checked out your channel and think what you're doing is awesome.
@@vanwags Hi Van. " I do not agree there is "no evidence". Fish weirs in the north east have been dated to almost 6,000 years old at other sites."
The site that was dated to 6000 years old is an entirely different kind of weir, made not of stone, but of stick and brush.
When I say there is no evidence, I mean that the stone weirs in the PA rivers have not been examined archaeologically, to the best of my knowledge. I have not been able to find a single write up in the Pennsylvania Archeological Society's journals that discusses the stone weirs.
However, I *am* digging up old land warrants and newspaper articles that can connect certain stone weirs to colonial residents along the Juniata. I'm not done with this research yet but that's where my investigation is leading.
I would love to say that these are Native in origin, even if they were later used by colonials because the Indians had been driven from the area, but I don't have that evidence yet.
Thanks for checking out my channel, glad you like what I'm up to, thank you for the compliment.
@@vanwags Hey Van,
No animosity towards you on my part, I'm just dialoguing and sharing information, hoping to learn of new information as well.
"Fish weirs in the north east have been dated to almost 6,000 years old"
These weirs to which you are referring are wooden fish weirs, which makes them very easy to date via C14 testing. Stone weirs obviously can't be dated that way, and can only be dated by looking at what else is around them, as well as analyzing who was occupying the surrounding land.
There has only been one stone weir in the northeast that has been dated this way, it dates to 3800 YPB. But archaeologists know that there wasn't any colonial or later activity in the area, and that's why they can be sure of the date.
These other stone weirs in the Susquehanna, and especially the ones in the Juniata, have never been looked at by archaeologists (I find no evidence in the Pennsylvania Archaeological Society's 160+ journals), nor has there been much archaeology performed on the land around them (only two reports near the Juniata, one that discusses villages further up the Juniata, beyond the last weir I can find on Google and after it separates into 2 branches). Finding arrowheads nearby where a known village was still isn't enough to connect a stone weir to the Indians, especially with so much colonial activity around, so dating these weirs the same way as the one I mentioned earlier isn't possible.
While it's possible that colonials and later people rebuilt Indian stone weirs, I haven't found any evidence of this, so if you have something that you're relying on as a source, I'd love to see it. Stone weirs would have needed to be rebuilt year after year anyway due to the force of the water when the river was high in the spring after the winter melts, so rebuilding a weir was actually common. It's also possible that later colonials rebuilt weirs that earlier colonials built.
I have found separate 3 plots of land owned by the same man that all have stone weirs next to them in the river. The interesting thing is that the stone weirs are at the boundaries of the properties. The northern most property has 3 weirs next to it's northern most boundary. The lot just below that, which is the first one that the landowner purchased, has weirs at the northern most boundary (which is also the southern boundary of the lot above it) as well as at the southern boundary of the lot. Another plot of land he owned a little further down the river has a weir next to it to, and it's near the southern border of the plot, though not right at the end. I think this is a bit more than coincidental, although it may not be. I cannot yet prove that the land owner built them or was using them to fish in the Juniata, but it certainly seems more than coincidental. Hell, for all I know, they were all built after he died by other land owners.
Another clue I found is an ad in a newspaper from 1807 about a plot of land for sale. The ad says there is a "shad fishery" and makes it seem quite lucrative to potential buyers. I was lucky enough to find the land survey of the original owner, which was about 30-40 years before the ad. So either the land owner built the stone weir, or the Indians did and he rebuilt it later. Who knows, but the evidence is currently pointing more towards the colonial land owner.
That said, I know there's a ton of archaeological information I don't have access to, and surely there are answers in that data somewhere.
Thanks for checking out my channel. I can't wait to publish my piece on the Juniata weirs.
Best,
Matt
Go to Berwick and look in the river, plenty of eel dams there, all built in the 19th century , catching eels was secondary income for many people, Eels could only be caught betwee 8pm and 4am. Eel dams were common between Beach haven and Danville. Sorry but eel dams aren't some Indian mystery.
We've been here WAY longer than science is willing to admit or prove yet. You don't need a degree to use your eyes, or the Weather channel to tell you if it's raining
I'm in wapwallopen... Every creek walk I take I find rock carvings pietrogliff like almost celt or Egyptian inscriptions. Wish someone could identify thousands I've found
Please rerecord/remix your voiceover. The music is too loud.
Look into "ducking" which will automatically lower the volume of your music while you speak.
It can be done in the free and very capable Audacity recording software.
Thanks for the comment but there is no music in this video. Is it possible you had a video playing music in another window or tab?