Another horrible idea in home decorating...

Last time I wrote about the general ghastliness of the Colonial era beef-tallow candle.  But long before the European arrived on the scene, indigenous peoples living in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada came to utilize a small, silvery fish - and I don't mean the oil extracted from the fish, I mean the fish itself - as a means of illumination.  I mean, they came to burn the Candlefish.

This is a little something I stumbled on while researching colonial candle making. Apparently the small Candlefish, or Eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus), is a type of smelt whose body mass is so fatty with fish oil that it could be (and indeed was) "dried, strung on a wick, and ... burned as a candle."  Think of that: dried fish one can light and use as candles!  How's that for smelly? 

The Candlefish is native to the Northern Pacific coastal waters stretching from Northern California to Alaska.  It's name, Eulachon, which is also sometimes spelled Oolichan or Oulachon, comes from the Chinook language, and it was both an important part of the diet and the economy of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest and Canada's West coast.  It was also the first of the fishes to migrate from the sea and up the rivers after winter, thus ending late winter hunger anxiety with the river-dwelling tribes, who came to call them "salvation fish" or "savior fish".  Lewis and Clark even dined on them, too, when their expedition was camped out on the Pacific coast in 1806 - and boy am I ever going to write about Lewis & Clark and their diet - but no word as to whether or not the duo penned their famous journals in the flickering, fishy light of the Eulachon...

The Candlefish fish candle is certainly a phenomenon past its apogee, though I would say it's open for a comeback. All that sort of thing really takes is the right tastemaker at the right time.  But maybe it really is better to curse the darkness than light a candlefish, since as of 2010 the Eulachon is officially listed as a threatened species.  Hydroelectric dams, chemical pollutants, El Niño-related climate change - it's all taking a toll on the little guys.  The last thing they need is to end up on some avant gardist's tablescape.