24
Visitors in the Bay
DÉJÀ VU. I’ve heard about it before. Aunt Maddie talks about stuff like this a lot. About how something happens and you feel as though it’s happened before? Or someone is talking to you and you pretty much know what they’re going to say next? Well, when I wake up in middle of the night, after Poos lands on my stomach and scares me into launch mode, I see that Yisella is up. Exactly like the night before, only this time she’s standing at the door of the longhouse, straining her ear toward the ocean. She doesn’t have to say anything because this time I hear it loud and clear. A boom, and then another one just minutes later, even louder. I jump to my feet as a third boom shakes the ground we’re standing on.
Yisella and I hold on to each other fiercely. We both grab blankets and on silent feet we fly down to the shoreline. This time there’s no waiting or straining to listen. There on the horizon, perfectly illuminated by the full moon overhead, sits a big ship, its white sails flapping from two tall masts. A dull glow spills out of several windows toward the back of the boat, and although it’s still quite far out, we can see that it’s totally headed our way! Right into Cowichan Bay!
Instinctively, Yisella and I duck behind a large boulder on the beach. Even though it’s the middle of the night, the light from the moon is pretty intense, and there’s no way we want to be spotted. Who are they? Are they friendly? And why is the ship headed straight for the village of Tl’ulpalus?
Yisella grabs my shoulders, pleading with me. “Hannah, I’m scared! I dreamed about this. It isn’t good. I dreamed that lots and lots of hwunitum were coming here and it seemed like something bad might happen.”
“What should we do?” I’m so sick of my own voice, always asking what we should do. At home, I usually feel so sure of myself, but here I’m out of my depth. I can’t just call Dad on my cell phone or run into the Toad in the Hole for a quick bite and a rest stop. Here you have to think on your feet all the time and act even faster. For Yisella and the people here, there’s no time to dither around.
She looks me squarely in the eye. “Will you help me, Hannah?”
“Of course I’ll help you!” I tell her, thinking it’s an odd question. We’re friends, after all. Isn’t that what friends automatically do?
“We’ll watch for a bit, but only until we’re sure,” she says solemnly.
“Sure of what?” I ask. How can we be sure of anything?
“Until we’re sure that they’re coming here. To Tl’ulpalus.”
“And if they are?”
“Then we have to go. And we’ll take mother’s blanket with us,” Yisella says firmly.
“But it’s not finished!”
“It doesn’t matter. The hwunitum have taken village baskets before. They like the weaving and the patterns on them. I’ve heard that they took dancing masks from villages too. And for these beautiful things our people only got whiskey, and some sugar and flour. If there are lots of hwunitum on that boat then all our things might be taken away.”
I get it.
“You’re right,” I say. “We’ve got to keep at least your mother’s blanket from them.” Even though the blanket isn’t finished, it’s valuable in more ways than one. Just like Mom’s things, hidden away in that chest. Even though I still can’t open that chest and look at them, there’s no way I’d ever want to lose them.
In my mind, I see the museum in Victoria, full of artifacts collected over hundreds of years. I see clothing, stone tools and photographs of people dancing in colourful ceremonies. I’ve seen blankets there too. Not like Skeepla’s, but similar.
Yisella looks at me, her voice pleading, “All I have left of my mother now is her blanket on the loom and her spindle whorl. I have to protect those things. I can’t let them be taken away!”
It’s the first time that I’ve seen real tears in her eyes. She doesn’t even try to brush them away as they slide down her cheeks.
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “No way will we let that happen.”
“If we could — HANNAH! LOOK! THEY’RE SO CLOSE!” Yisella isn’t exactly yelling, but her voice is still shrill and edged with fear. I swing around and see that the flickering light from the ship has grown brighter. I hear the sound of heavy sails bucking and flapping against the towering masts. The wind is stronger and, there’s no question about it, the bow of the boat is definitely pointing straight at us. Another boom breaks the stillness of the night, followed by the heavy smell of smoke. It reaches all the way across the bay to the boulder that hides us. And then we hear voices. Men’s voices, yelling instructions to each other. They’re close enough that I can hear what they’re saying. I can’t believe it — they speak English! My heart jumps in my chest. Who are these people?
“You! On the port side!” A deep voice booms.
“Hold your fire! The captain says hold your fire! No more warning shots.” Another voice this time.
“Governor Douglas and the captain have given their orders.”
WHAT? Governor Douglas? Governor James Douglas? He’s on the boat? This ship! I remember lots of stuff from my socials textbook. It’s one subject that isn’t boring, so I’m positive that this is the HMS Hecate! About to sail into Cowichan Bay with a whole bunch of European settlers! People who want to make their new home right here on the southeastern part of Vancouver Island. This means I’m right about the year. It is 1862!
My stomach knots up even more because now I know for sure: I am witnessing a major part of history and it is not a good time. At least, not for Yisella’s people. When they return, Yisella’s people will have to move their village to an isolated place reserved just for them. At least, that’s what the book said. I remember it clearly because our class talked about how it didn’t really seem fair. How it seemed more like a mean trick. The Hecate is sailing in now because the Native people are away on the mainland, and most of the passengers and crew aboard know it!
“Yisella!” I say urgently and she looks at me, confused and scared. Although she doesn’t understand the shouts coming from the ship, she understands the intensity in the voices. I tell her why they’re here. I tell her a bit of what I learned in school. And I tell her we need to leave right now! This time I’m calling the shots. I need to protect my friend.
She doesn’t question me and we both move fast. In minutes, we’re back in the longhouse. Yisella snatches two large root baskets and fills them with all the dried food she can find. Then she’s at the loom, carefully removing the warp threads from the bars. The half-finished blanket falls, limp, into her arms. She folds it carefully around her mother’s spindle whorl and places them both in the bottom of the largest basket. She piles food on top to hide her treasures.
She places a second blanket in another basket, along with dried plants wrapped in a thin piece of tree bark. I throw my hoodie over Poos as he sleeps curled up in his usual basket. Grabbing the basket and my backpack, I give Yisella a look that says, “Hurry!” With one last quick check, she is satisfied that we have everything we need.
We stay in the woods bordering Tl’ulpalus and wait, as still as mice, hidden behind a thicket of salal. And there it is. The big ship is right in the bay, its sails now flapping listlessly against the masts. The wooden stern creaks heavily, pitching first one way and then the other. There are many people on deck, maybe even a hundred, and they’re all talking excitedly. I can hear women’s voices too. The flickering light from the boat spills onto the water, illuminating the sea and casting an eerie glow. It looks like a pirate ship, the way it creaks and lists over as the passengers gather on the starboard side to survey their surroundings.
I take in the shape of the ship now, with its tall, straight steam funnel between two imposing masts at either end. A horizontal line of portholes dots the wooden hull, a few of them glowing, and two smaller wooden vessels hang from one side. We see a group of men wrestling with something, and when they shout to more men at the other end of the ship, I know that they’ve dropped anchor.<
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The HMS Hecate. Here in the bay, directly in front of Yisella’s village. I may be witnessing this historical event but all I really care about right now is Yisella. She was totally right. She sensed that they were coming the night before. She said that things were about to change and I doubted her. Why didn’t I believe her? Now I feel so bad.
But we can’t leave Tl’ulpalus yet. Not without knowing what the people from the boat will do next. Will they stay or will they move upriver to another village? I don’t remember any details like that in my social studies text. We bravely inch our way closer to where we have a clearer view, keeping cover under the arbutus and willow shrubs nearby.
It seems like we are waiting forever, and after a while the night turns to dawn and the lights go out on the ship. A small boat ferries a group ashore, women and children among them, and they wander through Yisella’s village with their arms linked, chatting and pointing as though they are a group of sightseeing tourists! They stop to pick up items off the ground, and marvel at the carved welcoming figures that face out to sea. Two of the children imitate the carved gesture, holding their arms out straight before them, and then laugh as they chase each other around the poles. A woman wearing a long, white cotton dress trimmed with lace, speaks to a bearded man in a tweed coat, “My, but it’s quiet.” She reties the mauve ribbon attached to her bonnet, which seems entirely out of place on this wild beach.
“Well, well, it’s just as they predicted,” the man replies, checking a watch on the end of a gold chain that leads to the pocket of his brown waistcoat. He snaps the watch shut. “They’ve all gone to the mainland. I’m told that the island villages are empty most of the time during the summer.”
“But how odd! They’ve just left all their things behind.”
“Well, Eleanor, have a look around. I don’t see why you shouldn’t take what you like. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever find curios like these anywhere else.” The man leans over to inspect a partially carved pole that is lying on the ground. It’s the pole that the old man, the naked man, was carving when Yisella first brought me here.
“Fascinating,” the man says, leaning over and adjusting his eyeglass, “absolutely fascinating.”
The woman returns from one of the longhouses with several cedar baskets in her arms, and joins the man waiting for her beside the tallest welcoming figure. He casts a glance up at the carved bear sitting proudly at the top of the pole, its paws curled forward in a crouch-like gesture.
“Incredible in a sense, isn’t it, my dear?” he says to the woman, who now brushes the front of her dress with a white-gloved hand.
“I beg your pardon? You mean these wooden monsters?” she sneers. She takes a step backwards, as if she’s worried that the bear is going to spring to life and pounce on her. There’s a part of me that wishes it would.
“But, they’re so primitive, so uncivilized!” The woman puts her hands on her waist and does a complete turn as she takes in her surroundings. “I’ve heard that they run around without any clothes on. Women and children as well! Dancing to drums and worshipping the strangest things! Can you imagine?”
“Ah, Eleanor,” chuckles the man, stroking his full beard. “Look at you. It’s the perfect place for you to do God’s work when the villagers return. We’ll have a place for them to live, farther away of course, and you and the other ladies can work alongside them. You can teach them how to be civilized, and teach them about Christianity. But Eleanor, I do hope you know what you’re in for. I’ve heard some very colourful stories from men who have travelled into Nootka territory farther north on the island. These savages might not be the most cooperative bunch. And the Cowichan? Well, they’re notorious warriors!”
“Oh my!” The woman says, flapping her hand in front of her face. They laugh together, call for their children, and then start back for the beach where most of the others and a couple of the sailors from the ship are gathered, waiting by the boat.
Moments later Jack appears, restless, just feet away, his gaze fixed on the spot where we hide.
Yisella looks at me with her dark eyes, which now seem almost as black as Nutsa’s. She does not understand the settlers’ conversation but I’m able to tell her what happened. I try to explain what the Englishman and his wife were discussing.
“What do they mean when they say ‘we’ll have a place for them to live’? This is the place where we live! This is where we’ve always lived.”
“I know, Yisella,” I reply. I don’t want to tell her everything that I learned from my history text: how things end up for her people, the challenges they will have to face. Then I see how large the crowd of people has become on the beach.
“Yisella,” I say quietly to my friend. “I think we need to leave.”
25
The Chase
WITH POOS TUCKED safely inside the spruce basket, Yisella and I make a dash from our hiding spot to a big cedar a few feet away. We watch for a minute and then, when the time is right, we run again, this time to take cover behind a big rock separating the sand from the forest edge. But then Poos blows our cover. He tries to leap from the basket and as I make a grab for him, without thinking, I shout, “come here!” I realize, too late, that they will hear me.
Halfway down the beach, the Englishman stops in his tracks and reaches for his wife’s hand. I freeze, partially hidden behind the rock, and then pull Poos back behind the rock in slow motion.
“William!” the woman screeches, lifting her skirt and moving quickly up the beach toward us. “There’s a little girl! Behind the rock near the trees. She called out to us. I think she’s in trouble!”
Yisella and I spring to our feet and make a beeline for the woods. She jumps up and over anything in her path, dragging me behind — her hand on my sleeve.
“Good Lord!” shouts the man, whose voice sounds so close. “The Indian girl has got her. After them!”
“Oh, no!” I wail to Yisella, “they’re going to catch us.”
But Yisella knows these woods better than anyone and soon we vanish, slicing through a carpet of swordferns, deep in the forest.
We head inland this time, following an open deer trail that’s carpeted with kinnikinnick and patches of thick moss. We weave and twist through the trees and, after several hours, we reach a village next to a big lake. Like Tl’ulpalus, it is also quiet and deserted, the inhabitants having already left for their summer camp on the mainland.
“Those people might come here too,” Yisella concludes. “They could be anywhere. Maybe other boats will also come here now. We should move tonight, after they’re all asleep. We’ll wait until it’s dark; it’ll be safer that way.”
We stop for a bit of a rest and so we can figure out a plan for our next move. I allow myself to relax and hunker down in the small dark longhouse we picked for our hiding place. I wonder how it happens that I am no longer afraid of the dark. Now I can walk quietly and quickly through the dense woods, smelling the deep earthy smells of moss and wet cedar, and listening for the crackles and snaps of branches and twigs beside me. I feel I’m part of the woods. I belong here.
Yisella and I lie down on the deserted platforms in the quiet longhouse, with Poos curled up inside the spruce basket. I can hear crickets chirping outside and soon Yisella is fast asleep, her breathing steady and rhythmic. I wonder how she can do that? How she can turn off her brain and fall asleep, just seconds after being wide awake. It takes me longer to clear my head and not think about my sore feet. It feels so good to be lying down on my stomach. Jack rocks slowly from one leg to the other on the floor near me. Maybe his feet are sore too. I unzip my backpack, pull out my journal and place it in front of me. I click on my mini flashlight and open the book to a page I wrote back in March …
March 7, 2010
Dear Diary:
What’s the point of math? It’s so useless. I’m going to be a writer when I grow up anyway, so I don’t need to know any of the stupid stuff that was on that test today. I know I totally failed
it! I bet Sabrina doesn’t fail it. I bet when she gets her test back she’ll be all like, “Oh nooo! I only got 94%! I’m SOO stupid!”
I stare at my own words and blink. I sound so lame. I have a hard time believing that I actually cared enough about Sabrina Webber’s math test mark to write it down in my beloved journal. I sigh and pick up the orca pen, determined to write something way more profound this time. I close my eyes in the dark, waiting for just the right words.
I wake up with my face pressed against my journal and my pen poking me in my ear. I feel super-disoriented and I’m not sure what world I am in. I blink several times, then shine my flashlight over at Poos who has ventured out of the basket and is sniffing around the interior of this unfamiliar longhouse. Jack is just outside the open door, ruffling his wings and rubbing the length of his beak against a twig on the ground, making soft little squawks while he does this.
My mind begins to clear and then I remember. I fell asleep, but I can’t decide if it was for five minutes or five hours. All I know is that I had a dream. But I can remember only fragments of it, bits and pieces that don’t really weave together. The clearest part is when I’m walking the trail near my home. The actual trail! I have my jeans on, and I’m drinking a mango slurpee from Brigg’s corner store. Max is with me, and we’re laughing and trying to trip each other for fun. I can see the boats in the bay and hear the traffic on the road. Real traffic. And I smell the bakery.
“What’s that?” Yisella is awake and pointing to my journal. One of her braids is undone, and she’s rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
I snap back to reality. “This? It’s my journal. I write things in it.”
“Write things?” Yisella looks confused.
“Yeah, stuff that happens. Like the way you draw pictures on the rocks and in the sand. It’s the same thing, only I like to write on these pages to remember everything that happens to me every day. I don’t like to miss too many days.”
Hannah & the Spindle Whorl Page 15