It’s springtime, and shad are making their way back to the Mattaponi River in Virginia to spawn. It’s the time of net fishing and scooping out of the river a female fish that is filled with eggs. Fish roe, it’s called. The caviar of the not-so-rich and famous! I grew up on this fish and its delectable eggs. Fish eggs mixed with scrambled eggs. They don’t suit everyone’s palate, but having been raised on them – there’s nothing so evocative for me as their smell and taste that reminds me of the place where I started out my life – the Mattaponi Indian reservation in Virginia.
There’s a river that runs through it – our reservation sharing the eponymous name. On this river, my grandfather, father, and uncles fished not for fun but for necessity. Fishing and hunting have sustained my family’s people, the Mattaponi Indians, for hundreds of years. It was on this river that I learned the family tradition of fishing. A tradition that still evokes strong memories of my childhood of net fishing for shads. Not nets that are held in hand with a metal handle, but nets tossed out onto the water’s surface with corks that bob up and down, alerting you when the prized catch has swum in.
One night in my younger years, with my father, uncles, brother, and mother, we set out on the river with our small wooden rowboat and two wide nets. My muscular uncle rowed the medium-sized skiff, and my father would sling the nets out on the river, forming a long silky line in the night current. With the full length of the nets finally laid, my father placed wooden nailed-together boards on the moonlit river a top with lanterns so we could find the nets upon our return. Then, silently, we rowed away to quietly await our catch. As we sat whispering to each other in the dark, a crashing sound startled us. Unsettling noise and rapid movement in the woods along the banks of the river were moving in our direction. Crashing sounds of a creature running down to the water’s edge and swimming to our boat. It was my uncle’s dog! Yogi, who couldn’t bear being without my uncle, was determined to join us on this trip. We wondered if any fish would swim in the nets that night because of all the commotion by an oversized beagle who shook himself free of the water he was drenched in and crowded us even more in our small wooden flatboat.
But our patience paid off that night with the sight of dipping corks in the lantern light. As my uncle rowed back to the nets, my father grabbed the silvery twine and began lifting it with its heavy weight, pulling it into the boat and literally squeezing out its contents – the male and the prized female fish, full of pink glistening eggs inside. That bright moon night, we caught over 50 shad, the most I ever remember from my childhood. While the shad fish has suffered a great loss over my adult years, a small number still return to spawn for the only ones who can fish them – the tribal members of the Mattaponi. When I return to my reservation from my home in Roanoke, there’s a chance that my uncles have this prized food saved for me. Thawed, cooked, and scrambled with eggs, a vestige of my childhood returns, and I know that spring has returned once again.
ODE TO THE MATTAPONI
When evening wind across the river’s edge
Comes stealthily creeping on coldness, dark
I stand, feel poignant beauty and I pledge
My love for Native land – my heart its mark
Kingly trees bend and bow in nightly glow
White tails sleep quietly under their boughs
A river quiet remembers its flow
Bobbing with grace, green lily water flowers
Quiet boat ride out at nighttime calls us
To gather gold grey ones that swim at dark
Nets expand, prized fish in the evening dusk
As moon beams shine on waters cold and stark
Memories passed, ever etched on my heart
Remembrances forever to impart
Dawn is a co-teacher in the English department at William Fleming High School. The students in the English classes that she shares with Melissa Poff have been writing Shakespearean sonnets in iambic pentameter and Dawn wrote one as well so the students could have an idea of what modern sonnets can look like.