Winter Brothers

by Ivan Doig

  Ceremonies of Canadian-American amity aside, Swan paces the Masset shoreline day upon day, because still there is no sign of his canoemen. The site at least has its beguilements. Wild strawberries, fat little pellets of flavor, virtually carpet areas of the island. Elsewhere, for miles as far as the eye could reach were acres of wild roses in full bloom. McKenzie told Swan he had been visited the previous summer by a Russian traveler who marveled: “This is Bulgaria, the land of roses!”

  Swan’s own comparison is less exotic but as emphatic:

  The whole region about Masset reminds me of the appearance of the land of Neah Bay...covered with the same kind of forest and shrubbery. It is an Indians paradise, plenty of fish and berries in summer, wild geese and ducks in myriads in the fall and all winter, and with but little physical exertion their every want is supplied.

  The pause; the prepositional line which is as close as Swan ever comes to disclosing calculation:

  If there was a regular communication between this place and Victoria by steam so that one could come and go at least twice a month, I would as soon reside here as at any place I know.

  Two weeks and a day after Swan’s arrival at Masset, paragraphs of promise. The ninth of July: The old chief for whom I had been waiting returned home today. His name is Edinso or, as the whites pronounce it, Edin shaw.

  Edinso. There is a story of him terrible as any mythic lightning flung down from Olympus. When smallpox erupted in Victoria in 1862 a group of Haidas led by Edinso was there. Whether to clear the Haidas from the disease’s ravages or simply to get the obstreperous Edinso out of town—the Victoria Daily British Colonist once called him “a perfect fiend” when he had a few drinks in him—it is not clear, but the governor of British Columbia ordered in a gunboat to tow the Indians home. Not far north along the coastline of Vancouver Island, Edinso pulled out an axe and hacked free his canoes. He put to shore with his followers, they made camp, defiantly returned to Victoria, and smallpox swept them. When Edinso eventually led home to the Queen Charlottes those who had survived, the epidemic went with them.

  Which of course is only to say that horror came to the Haidas on one wind rather than the next. Yet that wind was Edinso’s, as if fate couldn’t leave him alone.

  Edinso likely was in his early seventies when Swan met him and started to talk canoe charter, and for decades had been a name in the North Pacific for the sumptuous potlatches he had staged; for whirling a Tsimshian chief into the path of a gunshot intended for him during a tribal fracas; for traveling about the Queen Charlottes in his glory days in a canoe “twelve fathoms in length, elaborately carved and painted at both ends, manned by a large number of slaves and dependents.” By now, however, he also was a fading figure, an aging sea-soldier who was merely one of a dozen chiefs basing themselves at Masset since their villages had died or dwindled and trying to accommodate to the tribe’s narrowed future. In the mid-1870s a missionary had arrived at Masset and impressed some of the Haida leaders with Christianity’s magic of inoculations and other medical care. Within a few years a number of the chiefs and even some of the shamans who had most desperately resisted the missionaries came into the new fold. Edinso, with whatever level of enthusiasm, was one of these Haida leaders to decide that the gospel-bearers were a milder plague than the horrific invisible diseases. He made his peace as well with the officialdom in Victoria, even erecting a carved column topped with the figure of the governor of British Columbia in frock coat and silk hat.

  But political accommodations with the white world were one matter, canoe charter was another. Swan will just have to wait longer, Edinso serenely tells him, until he completes a trading trip to Fort Simpson on the British Columbia mainland. Meanwhile, wouldn’t Swan care to look over a lot of ancient things he had for sale?

  The tenth of July, in probably not the best of moods, Swan shops through Edinso’s items. As he asked too much I did not purchase, the diary says shortly. What did seize Swan’s interest was the project of the chief’s nephew, Charley Edinso, a carver at work on a pair of caneheads made from the ivory teeth of a walrus. Two beautiful canes nearly finished, Swan records, each representing a serpent twined around the stick which was a crab apple sapling...on top of one was a clenched fist: yes. The writhing Port Townsend museum piece in gestation.

  The depiction, Charley Edinso enlightens Swan, is the hand of Apollo’s priest Laocoon, vainly grappling the serpent as it crushes him to death (or trying to warn his fellow citizens against the Trojan horse. Although I would not put it past the best of Haida artists to tune in from the very air whatever lore they wanted for the day, the Haida carver did not possess an advanced knowledge of Greek mythology; simply a picture from a London illustrated newspaper which had found its way across the planet to Masset.

  As for the other canehead, Swan squints close to find that this one is the head of an elephant. Newsprint provided these astounding details—thrust of tusks, bend of trunk—too: a picture of Barnum’s Jumbo, representing the hoisting on board a steamer when bound to New York.

  Veteran shopper of Indian art that he is, Swan is dazzled. Beautifully carved, the diary says again, then the cautious prod to Charley Edinso about price. He asks $10 each. Swan may even manage to keep a straight face as he says he’ll think on it.

  Edinso pushes off across Dixon Entrance and Hecate Strait toward Fort Simpson, Swan strolls down to watch a Haida canoe maker at work. As a canoe connoisseur, Swan is closely interested in the process of molding a hollowed log into a craft of honed grace. The builder first softened the wood by filling...with water which he made to boil by putting red hot stones in it. The canoe was then partially spread and allowed to remain for a day....The next morning after heating the water again with hot stones he built a slow fire of rotten wood and bark on the ground along the sides of the canoe to render the wood perfectly soft, or as he said, “to cook it” and then stretched the sides apart as far as was safe and kept them in position by means of stretchers or thwarts. I measured this canoe before he commenced to widen it and found that amidship, the opening was two feet eight inches wide, after he had finished the canoe I again measured it at the same place and found it was four feet nine inches....

  Days peel this way from Swan’s Queen Charlotte summer with practically no effort at all. On the twenty-first of July, a canoe at last glides up Masset Inlet. Not Edinso; out steps the tardy James Deans, by way of a supply steamer which brought him as far as Skidegate. Swan shows no measurable enthusiasm about the arrival.

  Instead, now that he has been beached at Masset for a solid three weeks, Swan’s thoughts turn inward. Stomachward.

  Not that his menu thus far hasn’t been fertile as usual. Johnny cooked a nice breakfast, runs one diary report, a stew of Potatoes and onions, Griddle cakes or “Slap Jacks” as Johnny calls them, and nice coffee. Another: Made some clam fritters for breakfast which were very fine. And again: Today I made a pudding of the roots of the brown lily...first boiled the root, then mashed and mixed with eggs, milk, sugar and spice and baked....I think it is the first pudding ever made of this kind of root. But if his own palate is faring splendidly, the victuals of the Hudson’s Bay colony horrify him. Prior to my advent, the H.B. Company people were content to live on Indian dried salmon cured without salt, canned meats, beans, peas and salted fish....In other words, like a colony of Martians bivouacked in an orange grove and eating galactic K rations. So I thought to give them a treat.

  The diary pages now whoosh with Swan’s marine gathering and garnishing...some clams which I put in a tub of water for two days to get rid of the sand...large crabs nicely boiled in salt water. Some fresh trout and fresh salmon....A soda-biscuit stuffing prepared for the trout, enhanced with dried herbs...fat bacon chopped fine...three cloves of garlic bruised, pepper and salt and water, the whole rubbed into a uniform mass with a potato masher.

  Swan chefs on to crabs, clams, salmon. When all was ready, I called the gentlemen to the repast which may be enumerated as follows, clam chowde
r, baked trout, roasted salmon and deviled crab, with a dessert of wild strawberries and strawberry short cake, coffee and tea; a banquet of natural products which elicited encomiums of praise from the guests.

  Even the glazed encomiums are not his final word. Where food is concerned, there seems never to be one with Swan. Two days later he is busy preparing an octopus salad and serving it up to his Hudson Bay converts with chutney sauce and another of his culinary perorations: when one knows how to render such food palatable it will be found that many a relishing and nutricious meed can be had from articles which previously excited disgust.

  Day Sixty-Seven

  Swan’s sunny idyll of strawberries and roses begins to be over. The final Thursday in July at Masset:

  Mr. McKenzie succeeded in harvesting his crop of hay this afternoon....The Indian children...Minnie and Charlotte were full of fun and frolic this PM I told Mr. Deans it was a sure sign of rain, as children and little pigs and kittens always were unusually frolicsome at approaching changes of the weather....

  Friday: Rain...commenced at 9:30 PM. It being a dull day I remained in the house drawing sketch of Johnsons fish trap.

  Saturday: Weather showery. Swarms of gnats were very troublesome all night. This morning I hilled quantities on the window with the fumes of burning matches....

  Sunday: No prospect of Edinso getting here so long as this gale lasts...must be windbound somewhere between here and Fort Simpson....I thinly if he does not get back by Tuesday that I will get Weeah to take me to North Island. Swan tries to take his mind off Edinso with the youngsters of Masset. After church some children came to look at some pictures of the Zuni Indians in the Century Magazine of December 1882, when they looked at the dancing scene and masquerade performances in the February number they chatted like magpies....

  On Tuesday, the last day of July, the details pause as Swan notes a favorable wind and hopes as I am very anxious to be starting off that it will waft in old Edinso.

  It does not, and the next day Swan sits back and listens to McKenzie and Johnny Kit Elswa discuss a Haida method of fixing guilt. When a person is taken sick and foul play is suspected two men, not doctors but relatives, drink salt water for four successive days. In this water a frog dried and pulverized is stirred and mixed. This causes purging and vomiting. This cleansing of the system enables them to see clearly both mentally and physically....A wood mouse having been caught is put in a little cage, and set up on a box or table. Its first impulse is to retire to a corner and setting on its hind legs it remains immovable for a short time. While it is quiet the men question it to learn who made their relative sick. They name the persons suspected....The person whose name causes the mouse to nod its head is considered the guilty one, and unless he or she pays a number of blankets or give a present of equal value they will have the same sickness and die.

  By now, Swan has been encamped at Masset long enough for hair to grow down to meet his collar, so Johnny Kit Elswa trims him as well as any barber and better than most.... The young Haida shines steadily in the triple diarying. I like particularly his imaginative moment early in the Masset sojourn: Johnny...procured a bottle of Lime juice and a bottle of Raspberry syrup at the store and made a drink which he said was to celebrate the fourth of July....A good interpreter, a good cook, and good valet, Swan praises him to the diaries, and a splendid hand about a camp and managing a canoe, young active and strong, and faithful in looking after my interests. It might be added, no slouch at other interests, either. Before their time in the Queen Charlottes is ended, Swan will act as scribe for his helper: Wrote to Rev Charles Harrison Massett that Johnny wants to marry Charlotte....

  Friday, August fourth, no Edinso. Wrote letters and packed specimens today.

  On Saturday, Swan buys the pair of Charley Edinso’s extraordinary canes. They are beautifully carved and when varnished will look finely.

  Day Sixty-Eight

  “In Northwest coast art, perhaps more than in any other art, there’s an impulse to push things as far as possible.”

  “Haida artists worked mostly within a rigid, formal system, but occasionally burst out and did crazy, wild things which out-crazied the other people of the Coast.”

  “They weren’t bound by the silly feeling that it’s impossible for two figures to occupy the same space at the same time.”

  As accompaniment to Swan’s notes on Haida art I have been reading Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: A Dialogue on Craftsmanship and Aesthetics, by Bill Holm and Bill Reid. In my kingdom, the pair of them will be the highest priests. Holm of the University of Washington’s Burke Museum and Reid himself a Haida artist, they sat to discuss item by item one of the great exhibitions of Northwest Indian art—the Haidas, Kwakiutls, Tlingits, Tsimshians, Bella Bellas, and Bella Coolas created so much there has come to be a kind of academic sub-industry based on numerous museum holdings—and the talk of Holm and Reid as they pass back and forth incredibly carved pipes and dagger hilts and ceremonial masks is as exuberant and nuanced as their topic. The quotes are from Reid, who has done a carving surely as great as any of those of his ancestors: a depiction of Raven, as the Haida legend vows, discovering mankind in a clamshell; the clever bird poised atop, wings cupped out in shelter—or is it advantage?—while tiny mankind squirms to escape the birth-shell, pop forth from the sea-gut of the planet. Reid’s insights make me wish for more rumination from Swan while ensconced at Masset, with those dozens of carved poles looming as skyline around him. What Swan does say of that most soaring of Haida art is this:

  These carved columns are pictographs, and the grouping of animals illustrate Indian mythological legends....They are all made of the cedar (Arbor Vitae), which abounds on the Islands and attains a great size. In order to relieve the great weight of these massive timbers they are hollowed out on one side and the carving is done on the other or front side, so that what appears as a solid pillar is in reality but a mere shell of about a foot in thickness, thickly covered with carvings from base to summit....These columns are generally mentioned as “totem poles” without regard to their size some of which are six feet in diameter at the base and ninety feet high, and to call such great monuments poles is as inapplicable as to apply the term to Pompeys pillar or Cleopatras needle or Bunker Hill monument.

  Day Sixty-Nine

  Monday, the eighth of August 1883, 8:30 that morning, a plash of canoe paddles at last. Swan, Johnny Kit Elswa and Deans push off from Masset, in company with Edinso and his squaw, three men and two boys. I am to pay Edinso $1.00 per day. His wife and the three men 75¢ each and the two boys 50¢ each and canoe 50¢ per day...which makes a total of $5.50 per day, plus rations.

  The expedition’s start had not been promisingly smooth. Edinso did not give instructions about stowing the things and when I got in I found myself perched up on some boxes with Mr. Deans. Old Edinso asked in a curt manner why I sat so high up. I told him...if he wanted me to stow his canoe I could do so. I then ordered several packages placed properly and made myself comfortable and we proceeded on....

  After that bit of bramble, the canoe rides before a fair but light wind west past Wiah Point, its passengers let out fishing lines with spoon bait and trawled them astern and soon caught three large salmon. Edinso’s squaw had about two gallons of strawberries and a lot of red huckleberries and she gave us as many as we could eat.

  The floating picnic crosses Virago Sound by midafternoon and a stop then called to cook a meal for the canoe crew. Mr. Deans and I lunched on strawberries, sardines, bread and cold coffee.

  They go on to make their first-night camp at a village called Yatze; little to recommend it even to Indians, Swan thinks. The Haida villagers of Yatze are gone somewhere, a few wan potato patches and one lonely carved monument the only signs of life. Human life, that is. Mosquitoes and gnats were plentiful and...quite lively.

  As if not wanting another clear look at the place, the canoers paddle out of Yatze the next morning before dawn. Edinso complains of having sprained his bac
k while launching the canoe and, Swan notes perhaps a bit apprehensively, is quite cross, but the expedition progresses west several miles to the Jalun River before breakfasting.

  The queer beach there impresses Swan as a singular exhibit of volcanic action in which the lava had burst up through the upper strata of rocks as though the region had boiled up like a pot. The lava...of a brick color and a pale sulphur yellow in places, filled with boulders and pebbles of stone blackened outside with the heat and looking like a gigantic plum pudding. This is the first instance I have seen of such an evident volcanic action on the direct sea beach.

  In early afternoon Pillar Rock is passed, and Swan hurriedly pencils a sketch which shows it as a ninety-foot-high spike of stone driven into the offshore shoals.

  A few hours later the canoe eases ashore at Edinso’s own village, Kioosta, deserted except for many carved columns the handsomest of which are in front of Edinso’s house.

  Swan is in his tent after supper this second night out from Masset, possibly congratulating himself on the expedition’s unruffled progress, when Edinso drops by to inform him of new terms of canoe hire: he and the crew desire hot biscuits and coffee to be served them every night.

  I knew the old fellow put on considerable style with strangers and I determined to settle our status at once. I told him I did not wish him to dictate to me what I should do, and he knew that since we left Masset we had no time for any cooking but the most simple kind, and it was no use to talk to me about hot biscuits till we got to camp where we would have leisure.