Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  All hunters were answerable to the Hunters Lodge and were subject to severe and continuous supervision. If a hunter—child or man—did not clean and skin his catch properly, distribute the meat, hide, etc., appropriately, and dispose of the waste, he would be lectured at or ridiculed as an incompetent. If a hunter killed excessively, or without a pretty good excuse of wanting food, hide, or furs, he would be in danger of getting a reputation as a psychotic, a “crazy” man, a “lost” man, like a dangerous bear. The Hunters Lodge exerted heavy social pressure upon individuals who overstepped these ethical restraints.

  At the same time, since a certain degree of shame attached to hunting as an adult pursuit, the hunter got his reward of real understanding and admiration only within the Hunters Lodge, and, if he was a Blue Clay man, in his heyimas. For there the association of the House with the hunter and the hunted was not shameful, but sacramental.

  Quail and Deer were celebrated over and over in the poetry, dancing, and art of the Blue Clay heyimas, and were identified with far more closely than any other animals, beloved in a way that even the domestic animals were not. It was a different intimacy. The game animals were the link between the Wilderness and the human soul; and the hunter, just in that he was somewhat less than fully human, was, with the animal he killed, both accomplice and sacrifice in a truly mysterious act. The meaning of the sacred as the dangerous, the holy as transgression, was implicit in Blue Clay animal dancing and in the hunters’ songs.

  The walls of this House

  are of blue clay,

  clay mixed with water,

  clay mixed with blood,

  blood of the rabbit,

  blood of the deer.

  Beating, beating,

  this spring is red.

  Red is this spring,

  beating, beating.

  You drink from it,

  you start from it,

  Woman of this House,

  you start, Deer Woman!

  I give you my arrow, my knife, my mind, my hands,

  You give me your flesh, your blood, your skin, your feet.

  You are my life. I am your death.

  We drink from this spring together.

  (There are more examples of hunting and fishing songs in the section “How to Die in the Valley.”)

  Kinfolk

  There were four kinds of relatives in the Valley:

  People who lived in one’s House: one of the five great divisions of the human and other beings of the Valley, the Obsidian, Blue Clay, Serpentine, Red and Yellow Adobes. The relationship was called maan.

  People who were related by blood (consanguines)—chan

  People who were related by marriage (affines)—giyamoudan

  People who were related by choice—goestun

  The interrelationships of these four kinds of kinship could evidently get very complex; but there was no lack of time and interested people to figure them all out and keep them in order.

  HOUSE KINSHIP.

  Relatives within the House included creatures other than human beings: the chief ones being, in the Obsidian, domestic animals and the moon; in the Blue Clay, game animals and all springs and streams; in the Serpentine, stones and many wild plants; in the Adobes, earth and all domestic plants. To call an olive tree grandmother or a sheep sister, to address a half-acre field of dirt plowed for corn as “my brother,” is behavior easily dismissed as primitive, or as symbolic. To the Kesh, it was the person who could not understand or admit such relationship whose intelligence was in a primitive condition and whose thinking was unrealistic.

  The human groups in the Five Houses were, in anthropological lingo, matrilineal and exogamous: descent was through the mother, and you could not marry another member of your House.

  The charts (here) show some of the complicated interlinking of House and blood relationship. For instance, your mother’s mother would always be of your House, and your father’s father might be, but your father, his mother, and your mother’s father could not be. Going down the generations, one might notice that a man is cut off from House relation with his own children. A woman’s children were of her House, but a man’s were not, nor were his grandchildren through his daughter, though his son’s children might be. The two patterns interwove, not so much contradicting as complicating and enriching each other.

  CONSANGUINEOUS KINSHIP.

  The household, marai, typically consisted of a mother and her daughter(s), their husbands and children, and unmarried sons or other relatives on her side, living together in one set of rooms and sharing work as an economic unit.

  When a household got too crowded, a daughter would move out with her husband and children and set up in a different set of rooms as a new unit; and thereafter the relationship between the two households was most importantly that of the House affiliation. But blood relationship was kept close track of, and the obligations of blood kinship were taken seriously. On the mother’s side this ensured a double bond; on the father’s side it could easily turn into a double bind.

  Blood kinship was reckoned generally as it is in English, with some finer distinctions. These are the commonest kinship terms:

  mother: mamou

  father: bata, ta, tat

  grandmother: homa

  mother’s mother: ama

  mother’s father: mavta

  grandfather: hotat

  father’s mother: tatvama

  father’s father: tativta

  daughter: sou

  son: dúcha

  grandchild: shepin

  sibling: kosh

  sister: kekosh (i.e., my mother’s daughter, or the daughter of both my parents)

  brother: takosh (my mother’s, or my parents’, son)

  half-sister: hwikkosh (my father’s but not my mother’s daughter)

  half-brother: hwikkosha (my father’s but not my mother’s son)

  aunt (my mother’s sister): madí or amasou

  aunt (my father’s sister): takekosh

  uncle (my mother’s brother): matai

  uncle (my father’s brother): tatakosh

  (For great-aunt, etc., the word old, ho, is prefixed to these words.)

  niece (mother’s sister’s daughter): madísou

  niece (daughter of mother’s brother or of father’s sibling): ketro

  nephew (mother’s sister’s son): madídú

  nephew (son of mother’s brother or of father’s sibling): ketra

  cousin (in maternal line, or of my House): machedí

  cousin (in paternal line or of a different House): choud

  There are other terms, which varied from the Upper to the Lower Valley, for the complicated relationships resulting from second or third marriages. Terms of pure House relationship, used to a person not necessarily related by blood, were made by prefixing ma (and the possessive adjective) to the term: marivdúcha, son of my House; makekosh, House-sister, and so on. Terms of both blood and House kinship were in continual use as salutations and endearments.

  KINSHIP BY MARRIAGE.

  The Kesh were matrilocal: a couple marrying were expected to live at least for a while in the bride’s mother’s household (which might involve some other relatives moving out). The custom was not rigid, and very commonly a young couple set up their own household in the same house or a different one or in a different town if their work took them there. The Kesh considered themselves as firmly rooted as trees and hills, but it was my observation that in fact many of them moved around for a great part of their grown life from one town to another.

  When a marriage ended, the woman might stay in her mothers’ household, or go back to it, but by no means was this a rule. The divorced man almost always went back to his mothers’ household to live “as a son,” handúcha. Children of divorced patents usually stayed with the mother, but if the father wanted to stay with them more than the mother did, he would go on living in his children’s mother’s mothers’ household, bringing them up in that House.

  The words giya
moud, married person; giyoudo, wife; giyouda, husband, were reserved for those who had publicly undertaken marriage at the Wedding Ceremony of the annual World Dance. For people who were living together unmarried, the term -hai, now, came in handy; haibí, “now-dear,” was a temporary spouse; dúchahai, “son-now,” a transitory son-in-law, and so on. Homosexual marriage was recognised, and homosexual spouses were distinguished, when such distinction was relevant, as hanashe and hankeshe, (living) in a man’s or a woman’s manner. There was no term for ex-spouse, nor any equivalent of our words bachelor and spinster. Marriage-relationship terms were, like the terms of House and blood kinship, much used in conversation; one addressed a relative by marriage as my aunt’s husband, madív giyouda, or my brother’s wife, takoshiv giyoudo, for instance, or just called them giyamoudan, in-law.

  KINSHIP BY CHOICE: GOESTUN.

  Two people might agree to undertake the obligations and privileges of relationship closer than House and descent gave them. Often this was simply adoption: an orphaned child at once became somebody’s goestun child, always within the child’s House. A baby of course had no choice in the matter, but an older child might; and sometimes children who were not orphaned opted to be the goestun child of another household (again within their House). Goestun siblings were usually friends of the same sex who wanted to assert and bind their friendship, rather like “bloodbrotherhood”; and sometimes friends of the same House but opposite sex undertook to be goestun brother and sister, asserting affection but reinforcing the incest ban. The goestun relationship was taken very seriously, and defaulting on it was held a most contemptible betrayal.

  In Stone Telling’s story, the man she calls her side-grandfather, amhotat, was a magoestun or stand-in grandfather. The House provided these stand-in relatives for people who lacked them—in this case, Stone Telling lacked any male relatives in her own House, the Blue Clay, having no maternal uncle, and no kin at all on the father’s side, and so an older man of the Blue Clay asked to take that responsibility.

  INCEST PROHIBITIONS.

  Sexual relationship with any of the following was considered to be incestuous and was forbidden:

  Any member of one’s House

  Anyone currently related by marriage to a blood relation

  Any goestun relation

  And the following blood relations: parent/child; grandparent/grandchild; sibling; uncle and aunt/nephew and niece; great-uncle and great-aunt/great-nephew and great-niece. First-cousin marriage was permitted with cousins and half-cousins on the father’s side, but if a paternal uncle married a woman of my House his children would be my House siblings and so proscribed. My maternal aunt’s children were of course of my House; my maternal uncle’s children were not, but marriage with these cousins was unusual—“It is too close to the mothers.” Second-cousin marriage was restricted only by House affiliation.

  The Kesh gave no reason or justification whatever for incest prohibitions, neither religious, nor genetic, nor social, nor ethical. They said, “That is the way people are: that is how human people behave.”

  Lodges, Societies, Arts

  As explained by Thorn of Sinshan in response to questions from Pandora.

  PANDORA: I don’t think I understand when you say that a Lodge is in one of the Five Houses.

  THORN: Well, that just means that the meetings of the Lodge are in the heyimas of that House, like the Planting Lodge always meets in one of the Adobe heyimas. Or that if the Lodge people need things they ask that House for them, like Doctors using Serpentine songs.

  PANDORA: It doesn’t mean that to be in that Lodge you have to have been born in that House, then?

  THORN: No. After all, all women join the Blood Lodge, don’t they, it doesn’t matter if they’re Obsidian people or not. And men who aren’t Blue Clay join the Hunters. And practically everybody belongs to the Planting Lodge. Although it’s mostly Adobe people who dance the Planting dances. The only Lodge that’s only for people of one House is the Salt Lodge, I think. That’s Blue Clay people only. And it only does one thing—they keep up the salt ponds down by the Mouths of the Na, and make the Salt Journey every year, and learn those songs. Have you seen the salt ponds? The new ones are bright red with the brine shrimp and the older ones are turquoise blue with the algae and I always wonder how the salt comes out pure white.

  PANDORA: I hope to go down there soon. Now, how does a Lodge come under the auspices of one of the Sky Houses, that don’t have heyimas to meet in?

  THORN: It meets in its own place, a built lodge. The Madrone has an archive building, a library, you know, and the Black Adobe always has a lodge on the hunting side of town. The Finders can use that lodge too, and the Bay Laurel boys meet there when it rains. They’re supposed to meet outdoors on the hunting side, in the open; but when it rains they always go to the Black Adobe earth lodge.

  PANDORA: Are the Societies the same thing as the Lodges?

  THORN: Well, not exactly They’re smaller, for one thing. And usually their speakers are people of the House they’re connected with. But people of other Houses can join them. Except the male Clowns. Blood Clowns, you know, are women from any house, not just the Obsidian. But the White Clowns are Obsidian men, and the Green Clowns are Adobe men.

  PANDORA: How does a person get to be a Clown?

  THORN: You learn how. From the people who are Clowns already, in secret. It can take a long time.

  PANDORA: What do the Societies do?

  THORN: People in the Societies sing and learn. Each one has certain songs, certain ways of being, certain gifts.

  PANDORA: They…learn with each other? [In English I would have asked, Are they schools?]

  THORN: Some of them teach secrets. And the Oak Society is different from the others, it’s got a lot of people in it, and it works with the Book Art and Madrone Lodge and the libraries in all the heyimas. The Oak is really more like an Art than a Society—it teaches reading and writing and bookmaking and inkmaking and copying and printing and all the skills that have to do with written words.

  PANDORA: And the Arts, how closely are they connected with the Five Houses?

  THORN: I don’t really know how it’s supposed to be. Here in Sinshan, women are likely to join one of the Arts that belongs to their House, but the men don’t. And in the big towns I’ve noticed that the women don’t either. An Art doesn’t usually meet in the heyimas of its House, it usually meets in the workshop. But if something goes wrong, you know, some work isn’t done, or is badly done, then the House takes responsibility for getting it right. And a person working in an Art can go to the House of that Art for help, if there’s some kind of trouble. One reason it’s dangerous to be a Miller is that the Millers Art doesn’t have an Earth House—they are under the Sky. So it a Miller does anything wrong she gets everybody mad at her and hasn’t got a roof over her head, as they say.

  CHART OF LODGES, SOCIETIES, AND ARTS

  THE FIVE HOUSES of EARTH

  First

  OBSIDIAN

  Second

  BLUE CLAY

  Third

  SERPENTINE

  Fourth

  YELLOW ADOBE

  Fifth

  RED ADOBE

  Blood Lodge ♀

  (ritual and

  social)

  Hunters Lodge ♂

  Fishers Lodge ⚥

  Salt Lodge ⚥

  Doctors Lodge ⚥

  (medicine

  and ritual)

  Planting Lodge ⚥

  (agriculture and ritual)

  Blood Clown Society ♀

  White Clown Society ♂

  Lamb Society ♀

  (cult)

  Oak Society ⚥

  (writing,

  books)

  Green Clown Society ♂

  Olive Society ♂

  (cult)

  Glass Art:

  windows, vessels, instruments

  Tanning Art:

  butchering, leather goods

  Cloth Art:<
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  spinning, weaving, dyeing, knitting

  Potting Art:

  utensils, tiles, pipes

  Water Art:

  wells, aquifers, irrigation, sewage, storage

  Book Art:

  paper, ink, bindings, paints

  Wood Art:

  carpentry, architecture

  Drum Art:

  musical instruments

  Wine Art:

  viticulture, oenology

  Smith Art:

  mining, smelting, metallurgy, tools, wire

  Lodges Belonging to All Five Houses:

  Bay Laurel Lodge ♂

  (adolescent boys: scouting, athletic prowess, border-guarding, hunting, ritual, and social)

  Finders Lodge ⚥

  (exploration and trade outside the Valley)

  THE FOUR HOUSES of SKY

  Sixth

  RAIN

  Seventh

  CLOUD

  Eighth

  WIND

  Ninth

  AIR

  Black Adobe Lodge ⚥

  (Earth lodge outside town. Funeral rites and burial)

  Madrone Lodge ⚥

  (archives, records, history)

  Toyon Society

  (cult)

  Mole Society

  (cult)

  Dancers of the Inner Sun ⚥

  Milling Art:

  windmills, water mills, turbines, electric power sources and motors, solar collectors, lighting, heating, refrigeration

  What They Wore in the Valley