Everlasting and the Great River

by Bumppo

  “I’d be delighted to meet your children,” replied Everlasting.

  The wolves could each carry three lemmings hanging from their mouths and Everlasting offered to bring the last two in her canoe. She paddled after the wolves as they trotted along the bank of the river. Around a couple of bends, the wolves stopped and suggested that Everlasting pull her boat up the bank where it would be safe. They climbed a trail that zigzagged up the bluff. Just over the top was a pile of boulders. When they got close, the female wolf dropped her lemmings, yipped, and six round, fuzzy wolf pups scampered out of a hole under the rocks and greeted their parents with squeaks and squeals and licking of faces. The adult wolves piled the lemmings on the ground. The pups gathered around, sniffing the lemmings and wagging their short tails.

  The mother wolf introduced Everlasting to her pups. At first they were shy, but as soon as Everlasting sat down, the pups crawled all over her, licking salt from her skin and tugging her clothes with their tiny sharp teeth. Everlasting stroked the pups and admired their coats, which came in all shades from white to gray and black.

  The black father wolf tore open the lemmings from head to tail so his children could eat them, which they eagerly did. After dinner, the mother wolf carefully cleaned them with her soft tongue. Everlasting opened her pack and ate the last of her smoked salmon strips. She saved strips of salmon skin, tore them into pieces and fed them to the pups as an after dinner treat.

  After everyone had eaten and cleaned up, they gathered outside the den to watch the sun set behind the hills. As dolt’ol, the moon, cleared the horizon to the south in the summer sky, the wolves began to sing. The big wolves sang about running in the clear, cold winter under the stars. They sang about following herds of thousands of caribou as they crossed the tundra on their migrations. They sang about happy times when meat was plentiful, and about sad times when food was hard to find. The pups tried to join in but could only sing yip, yip, yip. Not yet could they produce beautiful long howls that carried for miles in the still evening air.

  Everlasting crawled into her warm caribou sleeping bag. A couple of pups crawled in and curled up with her. She fell asleep with the glowing moon overhead.

  The next day Everlasting hugged all the wolves goodbye. She carefully climbed down the bluff trail and returned to her canoe. A cold damp wind was blowing up the river so she put on her salmon skin rain gear that would keep her warm and dry. She set off down the big river, paddling hard, anxious to find her father and uncle. She still felt they must be somewhere ahead, farther downstream.

  Gone was the dried salmon Everlasting’s mother had given her. She knew she must find food soon. After hours of hard work moving down the river against the wind, Everlasting spotted a side channel where part of The Great River flowed between sand bars. She decided to take the channel where wind and waves would be gentler.

  Not far down this arm of the river she spotted two mizreya, land otters, playing along the bank. It’s hard to know if otters are searching for food or just playing. Otters are one of the few animals who always seem to do both at once. They hopped along the shore and then chased each other up the bank. They slid down the muddy riverbank on their bellies, then wrestled each other in the water. They climbed up the bank, sniffing.

  Everlasting glided up to them in the slow-moving channel current and picked up her talking stick.

  “Hello, dear cousin otters!” she said. “I hope I’m not disturbing your busy day.”

  The otters stopped their play and looked at her curiously with their bright dark eyes.

  “Not at all,” they chirped in their chattering voices. “We always have time in our day for something new and interesting, and a little Déné girl who can talk to us is both.”

  “I was wondering,” she asked, “if you knew where I could find some fresh fish to eat? Since otters are the best fish catchers of all the animals, I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “Well, we are quite nimble and quick in the water,” said one otter proudly. “There is a deep hole in the channel where the salmon are laying their eggs. Fat trout are waiting behind the salmon to eat any eggs that wash out of their gravel nests. When we chase the trout, they manage to escape downstream. But if you could block them from getting away I’m sure we could capture enough for all of us to eat.”

  Everlasting eagerly agreed to the otter’s plan. Not far down the channel they found the deep water hole. Everlasting pulled her canoe up onto the gravel bar and quietly made her way to the shallow water at the downstream end of the deep pool. The otters dove into the clear water, their shiny, smooth, brown bodies twisting and turning as they chased big rainbow trout. Everlasting ran back and forth across the narrow channel with her walking stick, scaring trout back toward the otters. Soon the otters were piling fish on the gravel bank. Before long, they had caught enough fish to feed them and Everlasting for many days. Everlasting spent the next day smoking and drying the trout over a fire of cottonwood limbs she gathered along the riverbank. She also found many edible wild greens and roots growing in the rich soil near The Great River.

  As soon as she finished smoking the trout, Everlasting felt an urgency to continue down the river. The spirit voice within her said that she would find her father and uncle soon and that they needed her help. She bid goodbye to her otter friends and paddled hard for three long days. Moving with the strong current of The Great River, she traveled ever further from her home. Late in the evening of the third day she spotted smoke from many fires. She arrived at a large village at the fork where a big river flowed from the north into The Great River.

  She stroked her canoe to the beach below the village. Three women ran from the village to meet her. Everlasting climbed out of her boat, pulled it up the beach, and faced the women with her talking stick. The women spoke an unfamiliar language and their summer dresses were cut and decorated in patterns Everlasting had never seen before. The short woman leading the group shouted urgently. Fortunately, Everlasting could understand her. Her talking stick, she discovered, helped her speak with people as well as animals.

  “You must leave right away, little girl. Our village is cursed with cangerlaqpak, the coughing sickness that is killing our people, especially the children and elders.”

  Everlasting could see the fear and sadness in their eyes. In her own village she had heard about a new sickness that killed entire villages far upriver from her home. Rumors said the sickness came from tall light-skinned men whose faces were hairy like bears. She had thought the stories were only told to scare little children to be good. Everlasting spoke to the women in their language.

  “I have come from far up The Great River, honored mothers, searching for my father and uncle who were washed away in a flood.”

  “We are amazed that you can talk to us, little girl. Are you perhaps an ircinrraq, a bad spirit who brings more hardship to our suffering village?”

  “I am Everlasting, a Déné child. I have received a powerful medicine that gives me the ability to speak to animals and to people not of my tribe. Please tell me if any strangers have arrived here.”

  “There are two denaa, men of your tribe, who appeared wet and exhausted a couple of weeks ago,” said one of the women. “They were being nursed back to health by our Yup’ik healer when the coughing sickness reached our village, carried by the winds that blow up from the south.”

  “Please take me to them!” Everlasting asked excitedly. “Perhaps my medicine can help them, and your sick people too.”

  “There is great danger to you, little Everlasting, if you enter our village,” said the tallest woman.

  But the short woman leader said, “Maybe Cillam Cua, the Creator, has brought you here for a purpose. Come with me.”

  Everlasting picked up her pack and walking stick and followed the women to the Yup’ik village. As they walked, Everlasting noticed there were no children running around playing or helping their parents with chores, nor were the elders sitting outside their homes sewing or making
tools. The adults she did see looked sad and worried and walked with slow, heavy steps.

  The three women brought Everlasting to the qaygiq, the large, round, sod-covered community house buried in the ground where, before the coughing sickness arrived, men and boys slept and worked on projects. Now the village wise man and his young assistant spiritual healer worked inside trying to cure the sickness that had invaded their village.

  One of the Yup’ik women peered inside the community house and called for the wise man. She was afraid to enter with so many sick inside. An old, weary elder appeared, his face lined from the many years he had survived and now from the pain of so many of his people sick and dying.

  “Ah, Everlasting,” he said, “You have finally arrived. I have been told of your journey by the birds who travel along The Great River. I have called out to you, hoping you would arrive here as quickly as possible. Your father and uncle were weakened by the hardship of being flooded down the river. They are now very weak from the coughing sickness. I’ll take you to them if you choose to risk the coughing sickness.”

  “Oh yes, please take me to them, grandfather, for I miss them terribly, and have traveled a long way to find them.”

  The wise man and Everlasting crawled into the low entrance to the community house. From the light of a central fire, smoke rose through a round hole in the roof. The wise man’s assistant moved around offering people water, and wiping their sweaty faces with a soft skin. People lay on the benches that surrounded the large round room. The sound of coughs and fevered moans filled the room. The old man led Everlasting to the back of the room. Her father and uncle lay on the benches, their faces shiny with sweat. Everlasting ran to her father, dropped to her knees, and threw her arms around him.

  “Oh father, I have missed you so much! We were worried about you, but mother kept assuring us that you and uncle are strong, wise hunters and would survive to come back to us.” Everlasting was alarmed to see her father’s beautiful far-seeing eyes were glassy with fever.

  Everlasting’s father wrapped her in his big arms, and said in a thin voice, “I have thought every day of your mother, of my children, and especially of you, little Everlasting, while your uncle and I floated down The Great River. I prayed to the Great Spirit that you all survived the flood and that you were safe and well fed.”

  “Everyone in the village survived, dear Father. Our homes washed away but we are rebuilding. We were blessed with good salmon runs and we will eat this winter.”

  “But how were you able to travel so far down The Great River and find us? Your mother always told me to expect great things from you, but this is much more than my expectations.”

  “Father, I found a magic walking stick that gave me the power to talk to animals, and now, I’ve discovered, with people who speak other languages. A wise raven spotted your canoe upside down along the riverbank. I patched it up, and with the help of my talking stick, have found you and uncle. I hope to help you both get well and return to our village.”

  “I am very proud of you, Everlasting. The Creator has blessed you with a great power and I’m sure you’ll use it to become an ahthii, a spiritual leader for our people. But I must tell you that your uncle and I, who together survived many dangerous adventures over the years, are very sick. I fear we may never return to our beautiful village, except in spirit.”

  Everlasting choked back her tears and said, “I will do what I can to help you and uncle and the good people of this village to fight this sickness. Perhaps you will see our family and village again.”

  One of the good women who had met Everlasting on the beach invited her into her home. She had lost a daughter of Everlasting’s age to the coughing sickness and was comforted by her company.

  The next day, Everlasting hiked out behind the village into the hills between the two rivers. She carried her walking stick and wore her backpack so she could gather healing herbs. In the middle of the day, Everlasting grew tired of walking and rested in a small, grassy depression out of the wind. She fell asleep and had a dream. In her dream, a huge glowing white yismo, a snowy owl, landed on a point of rock rising from the tundra. In his right, curved black talons he held a red-backed vole, a small rodent. In his left claws he held a rosewort, a flowering plant with a thick root, called caqlak by the Yup’ik. In his strong, black beak he held a willow branch.

  The great bird spread his wide white wings and Everlasting saw that the black specks in his feathers were the people of The Great River who spoke many languages but were tied together by the river that provided all the necessities of life.

  Everlasting awoke from her nap but could still see clearly the details of her dream. She immediately began searching in the small, grassy meadow for iitaq, the edible lower parts of cotton flowers that are gathered by voles for their winter food. She found some old caches underground from the previous winter that had molded during the warm summer. She felt that this was what she needed. She searched for the rosewort plants she’d seen in the snowy owl’s claws, and found them growing on the sunny slope of a low hill. She dug them up carefully with the roots intact and put them in her pack. She found a stand of willow and used her stone knife to cut thin willow branches that she bundled into her pack-basket.

  Everlasting carried these treasures back to the suffering Yup’ik village and her sick father and uncle. Inside the community house, she worked with the wise man and his assistant. She told them about her dream of the snowy owl and the medicine that he held in his claws and beak. They peeled the willow sticks, saving the inner bark. They gave this to her father and uncle to chew. Within a couple of hours their burning fevers came down. Everlasting peeled the fleshy roots of the roseworts and her father and uncle chewed them. This relieved their sore, swollen throats. The Yup’ik healers had never heard of vole caches of cottonflower stems for medicine, and suggested they be discarded as they were moldy. Everlasting, however, had a strong feeling that they should be used. She poured some warm water into a stone bowl with the moldy stems and let them soak. She then gave this water to her father to drink. He made a face from the bad taste of the nasty drink, but trusted Everlasting to do what was right.

  The next morning her father and uncle felt much better and had stopped coughing. Their eyes were bright once again but they were still very weak. The Yup’ik healer and his assistant began to treat everyone with the medicine she had gathered. Everlasting and those villagers who were strong enough went out into the hills to collect more.

  Everlasting learned that she could take the vole tea and dampen cottonflower stems with it to make the mold that seemed to help the people get well. Soon there were smiling children and loving grandparents in the village again, although it took many weeks for all the sick people to regain their strength.

  It was autumn and days were becoming shorter on The Great River. The curaq, or blueberries, were ripe and the Yup’ik of the village between the two rivers gathered many to make akutaq, or berries mixed with seal oil. Seal oil was a new treat to Everlasting. The Yup’ik traded for seal oil with ocean hunters who lived across the mountains to the west, or from Yup’ik traders who came up The Great River from the ocean.

  Everlasting began to think about the ocean. She was told it was a lake so big that no one could see across it, and its water was so salty it could not be drunk. The Yup’ik villagers told her about an ocean animal so big that many sod houses would fit inside one. She couldn’t picture such a thing, but she wanted to see this ocean.

  Everlasting’s father and uncle were now strong enough to take short hikes near the village. The were not yet strong enough to paddle their canoe up to their home village against the strong river current.

  Then came the time of the Yup’ik festival of iteraaq. For five days Everlasting and her father and uncle accompanied the villagers going house to house for the festival. There was frost on the tundra at night. Hunters were preparing their tools to harvest caribou from the great herds that migrated through the area. The last runs of silver salmon
were caught and smoked for winter. The Yup’ik people gathered fresh moss and used the moss to seal their half-underground, sod-covered homes against the cold to come.

  Everlasting worked every day with the village healers taking care of those who were still sick. With the herbs shown to Everlasting by the dream owl, very few died.

  Everlasting was taught cuuyaraq by the old healer. This was the Yup’ik way of life, how a human should live. The Yup’ik way included subsistence knowledge, environmental understanding and spiritual balance.

  The grateful people of the village were happy to host Everlasting, her father, and her uncle until they would be able to travel back to their home in the spring. Everlasting missed her mother and sister and big brothers but was happy to be with her loving father and uncle in this friendly village far down The Great River from her home.

  They had long black beards like yudesla, the black bear.

  Chapter 6

  Everlasting and the Bear Men

  Everlasting spent the winter in the Yup’ik village between the two rivers. Her father and uncle grew stronger every day and soon were able to make tools and go hunting for caribou to help feed the village. Everlasting learned much from the kind woman in whose home she lived. The Yup’ik were masterful sewers. Everlasting learned to make beautiful fur parkas and waterproof mukluks made of seal skin.

  There were times in the past when the Déné and Yup’ik were enemies and had even gone to war with each other, but Everlasting found the Yup’ik to be warm, friendly people who were especially kind to children. She discovered that although their customs and ceremonies were quite different from her people’s, their spiritual beliefs were similar. Both her people and the Yup’ik believed in a Creator that cared for people and animals. Both cultures believed it was important to respect the animals and plants, share the bounty of nature with others, and give thanks for their blessings.