The Chinook tribe were fishing people, and their staple food was salmon. They also caught many other kinds of fish and sea mammals from their canoes and nets. The Chinook men were responsible for fishing, hunting, and protection, while the women gathered clams, mussels, shellfish, and berries. The Chinook devised many kinds of nets, lines, rakes, hooks, fish-baskets, and traps which made them skilled fishermen, but the most common method of securing fish was by spearing. Besides salmon, the Chinook tribe also ate wild roots like wapato (similar to a potato) and huckleberries, and a lot of dried or roasted salmon that they caught in the Columbia river and other rivers that ran into the Columbia. They also ate other animals such as mountain goats, sheep, raccoon, deer, moose, bear, duck, geese, and other birds. The Chinook people cooked their food in the longhouse, and each family had its own small fire. To roast the salmon, they put the salmon into a split cedar wood stick that held the salmon tight like a clothespin, and stuck the wooden stick in a sand pit near their fire. To boil their wapato, they put the roots in a wooden box or a basket that would hold water, and they put water in too. Then they heated rocks in the fire and dropped them into the water to heat up the water and cook the roots.