“Puget Sound” a friend from the Northwest who had spent time as a beachcomber in Sitka told me, “is as good as Alaska for eating off the beach.” When Lewis and Clark first arrived on these Pacific shores, they were puzzled by large numbers of Indians who seemed to be inspecting the sand, until they realized they were looking for fish freshly stranded by the tide. Eating off the beach was as simple as picking up a fish and roasting it on a spit over a fire. But these coastal Indians had developed a sophisticated spit for their salmon barbecues. “The spit for fish is split at the top into two parts, between which the fish is placed, cut open, with its sides extended by means of small splinters,” Clark wrote in 1805.
